I couldn’t be happier that Hannah Anderson was rescued and that the Amber Alert was effective in her case. Unfortunately, too many deserving kids fall through the cracks through carved in stone criteria, time delays or other bureaucratic nonsense. I have listed my problems with the Amber Alert and easy fix solutions. The problem is that the architects of the system, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are more concerned with control than efficiency than saving children. Therefore I doubt that my criticisms will be heard.
- Statewide alerts are mindless. States have borders, but kidnappers do not. In the Anderson kidnapping I received an Amber Alert, yet I live 500 miles away from the crime scene, while people in Yuma, AZ did not receive the Amber Alert despite the fact that they live about 110 miles from the crime scene. I recommend a radius around the crime scene that is not bound by borders.
- The current iteration of the smart phone Amber Alert provides sketchy information and cannot be easily verified. Provide a link or other easy reference.
- Local authorities should be able to issue Amber Alerts within their jurisdiction. Kicking responsibility up the ladder to a State authority wastes time, results in filtered information and costs lives. Currently, it takes far too long to issue an Amber Alert and statistics clearly state that if a child is murdered as a result of a kidnapping, almost ¾ of those children will be dead within a 3-hour radius.
- Don’t alienate your audience. Issuing a bleating Amber Alert in the dead of night or early hours of the morning will cause people to opt out of the service. A better approach would be to depend upon radio and highway signs in the wee hours to notify those individuals that are on the roadways. Radio is and always has been the primary delivery system for motorists, and motorists are the ones who need to know.
- Fast food outlets, service stations, truck stops, and highway motels should be notified with graphic/text Amber Alert information.
- Don’t be too strict with the Amber Alert criteria. My Polly, Jessica Lunsford, Adam Walsh, Elizabeth Smart wouldn’t qualify under the current system.
- Because of the strict criteria Amber Alert is most useful in family abductions. Predators don’t leave vehicle or license plate information.
I think Marc is correct and the first priority should be to issue an Amber Alert with the childs photo, discription, and where last seen. They could install those road signs that the casinos use to advertise that have digital photos constantly moving across the sign. Use that kind of tecnology, and put them at all truck stops, and radio info and whatever it takes to get that info out ASAP. There are more people conscious and caring to be of help than Don Vine thinks possible.
Mark is 100% correct
We must fix it now
Kidnapped children don’t have the time to wait for this to be fixed, fix it now!
While I agree with some of your statements, I must disagree with some. Allowing local law enforcement the ability to issue Amber Alerts will make the system become less viable to the nation and people will start paying less attention to it as every time a child under 17 goes missing and local law enforcement just goes ahead and issues an Amber Alert, after a short period of time people will stop paying attention to them and we will lose the whole purpose of why the system is in place to begin with. Your statistics in most cases are right, but as an experienced law enforcement investigator, it would take an agency approximately 2-3 hours of good investigative work for them to have enough information, even at the local level, to issue an Amber Alert anyway. Now of course this is not the case in all situations, but when there is unknown factors some kind of investigation has to be done before you go forward. This still does not help in your argument that the typical murder takes place in that window. In this scenario, you are still placing law enforcement in a recovery mode with an Amber Alert in place. I agree that more information and tweaking needs to be done to our new national alert system, but until it is used and feedback is received, how do we fix what we do not know what is broken. We need to continue to educate law enforcement and law makers on the importance of the Amber Alert and the Silver Alert Systems and the need for less constrictive criteria and governmental restraint when they are being considered. We also need the backing of individuals with clout in media and with national attention, such as yourself, to help with this education. However, to pick apart a system that was put in place to help bring Children home when they become missing and say it is broken is not the way to address the problem. Initially, the Amber Alert was a federal system. Now it is up to interpretation by states, who have made up their own rules and laws. I say that a start to make it better is to take it away from the states again, and make it federal again and make the criteria apply to all states, equally, without interpretation. Then there is no question as to if one can be issued or not and if it applies. Additionally, Amber Alerts for the public and information for law enforcement are different when it comes to kidnappings. How does one determine a radius of where to send an Amber Alert if you have no idea where these people/person is going? You can post the information on the Department of Transportation signs state wide and law enforcement is given the information state wide and usually in surrounding states by the highway patrol. I would agree that if the location is near a bordering state, that information should be also broadcast on their Department of Transportation signs (and I have seen this done in Missouri for neighboring states Amber Alerts as we have 2 major interstates cross our state). I just don’t know how you decide on how one determines a radius that would help cover in the case of an Amber Alert unless you took into account time=distance. But, if you are talking 4-5 hours out and you say freeway at 70mph x5=450 miles. Just say, 500 miles radius of notification initially for the Amber Alert. I do not think that the government phone system was designed to alert people in that fashion. Now we are back to the old fashioned way of TV and radio. We both know how that has worked in the past, although I agree that radio while on the road is the best way to get an Amber Alert out besides the freeway signs. I just don’t think that this will ever work…To time consuming. Sorry this is so long, but lastly, without a suspect description or a possible vehicle description, what do you put on a Highway billboard. The child’s name and short description? I know, every bit helps, but there are no pictures on that message. So once again, people ignore it or will eventually start to ignore it because it will happen every time and they will say to themselves what is the use without any further information that could be any child matching that little description they could fit on the Department of Transportation computer board. Again, we need criteria and certain things in order to put the information out for the public to help us find these children when they are taken. We can’t speak with emotions and not understand the how’s and why’s of some of the reasons that some of the criteria needs to be in place.
Marc, I wouldn’t call the statewide Amber Alerts mindless. Perhaps not very efficient?
Dear Mark, This was the first time the AA was used on cell phones. Of course, there are going to mistakes – it’s not going to go perfectly. I think we’re heading in the right direction. As you, a parent who lost a child, would have been properly happy to have a cell phone blast alert. I know I would — regardless of the distance. All the best.
I’ve always questioned the bureaucracy surrounding Amber Alerts. In theory, it’s a wonderful idea, in reality, it has fallen short of it’s intended purpose.