Amber Alert
This program started in Texas and is named after a 9-year-old abduction victim, Amber Hagerman from Arlington. She was kidnapped by a stranger soon after riding her bike around her grandparents house, then found four days later brutally murdered. For the four days that she was missing a man hunt went underway with news stations and radio stations covering the story whenever they could. News and radio were very effective in alerting and notifying the public, hence the use of the media in the distribution of AMBER Alerts today.
The US House of Representatives put into action H.R. 605 in 2000 which set forth a nationwide initiative to implement the “AMBER Plan”. In 2003, G.W. Bush signed the AMBER Alert legislation or Protect Act, an unfunded mandated, where each state has to implement and maintain an abduction alerting plan and system in place to distribute alerts to the media and public.
The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) guideline was put into place, acting as an alert distribution system for all states to use. This system is a legacy whether alerting technology system that records and sends voice recordings to radio and t.v. stations. This cuts into broadcasting and informs the public of an abduction. The EBS is now called the Emergency Alert System (EAS).
Some states still use the EAS as their Primary Alerting System. Other states have funds to put towards more technologically advanced and quicker alert distribution systems, such as The AMBER Alert Web Portal, operated and owned by AmberAlert.com. It is a Primary Abduction Alerting and Notification System, which is free to AmberAlert.com’s participating states. Our Company explains in more detail The AMBER Web Portal.
There are also secondary alert distributors like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who works with Primary Alerting companies to re-distribute alerts to their own distribution list.
In a nutshell, the common misconception is that there is a “national AMBER system”, in fact its an unfunded mandate requiring each state to implement the AMBER Plan, hence each state been lead to find, develop and maintain its own alert distribution partners and channels. Some may find the lack a national system as an issue, others think its not. Cross state boarder alerts also stems from the use of multiple plans, platforms and systems for alerting.
The Potential Price of a Text Message: A Child’s Life
November 8, 2007
When it comes to the abduction of a child, minutes count. AMBER Alerts are most commonly broadcast over the Emergency Broadcast System through the radio and on your television. Since most abductors probably aren’t going to be found in your house, the TV broadcast might not help.
Nowadays, however, with satellite radios, iPods and CDs, how many of us actually listen to the radio in the car?
And, how would either of those alerting venues help if we aren’t tuned into something at the time?
The greatest answer to this problem for the time being is the cell phone. Signing up to receive AMBER Alerts as text messages on your cell phone makes it possible for you to be notified and on the lookout immediately, no matter where you are. At the mall? Dining out? Getting gas?
Most abducted children that are found dead were murdered within the first three hours of their abduction. Time is of the essence, and getting as many people alerted as possible in the shortest amount of time is key.
The Wireless AMBER Alerts Initiative is a voluntary partnership between the wireless industry, law-enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), to distribute AMBER Alerts to wireless subscribers who opt-in to receive the messages and are able to receive text messages on their wireless devices.
No, your phone is not going to blow up with text messages once you opt-in for this alerting service. Depending on which site you use to sign up, you will either receive alerts for certain zip codes or for entire states. Plus, there are very few AMBER Alerts per state each year.
Opting-in using The AMBER Alert Portal lets you choose as many of the participating states as you’d like, including Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Rhode Island, Washington and Oregon, with more additions to come.
The Wireless AMBER Alerts System asks that you designate zip codes for which you’d like AMBER Alerts, letting you choose up to five. However, since most alerts are issued state-wide, you may receive an alert outside of your chosen zip code but within your state. This is important, however, as it’s likely that we don’t limit our daily travels to five zip codes.
And, no, the service isn’t going to run up your cell phone bill. Many of the large cellular providers, including ALLTEL Mobile, Cingular Wireless, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and more, have a partnership with www.wirelessamberalerts.com so that there is no fee for the text messages coming from their site.
Even if you aren’t a subscriber to one of the participating cell companies, or choose to opt-in with www.amberalert.com — which bypasses law enforcement, saving up to an hour’s delay— the cost of a text message is so insignificant that it shouldn’t be an excuse against participation. Text messages range from 10 to 20 cents depending on the carrier.
Even with several updates being issued, you’ll be looking at less than $1.00 as the maximum cost to participate in the safe retrieval of an abducted child. You can probably find $.20 cents laying around on the floor somewhere to reimburse you.
Why not take a moment right now to opt-in? Visit one of the aforementioned sites or your state’s specific AMBER Alert website to sign up for the service. If you don’t have a cell phone, or one that receives text messages, some sites also provide AMBER Alerts to your email, pager or fax machine.
Posted Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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