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Today as I was commuting to/from work, the highway marquees informed me that an AMBER Alert had been issued for the Seattle area. My first thought: parental abduction. I looked the info up on the 'net, and sure enough, a mother had abducted her 9-month-old from an area hospital, where he was to undergo kidney surgery that she didn't want him to have. My instincts were on the money.
Now, AMBER Alerts are a good idea in theory, but the reality is that they are abused far too often, being issued in cases where they should not be. The U.S. Department of Justice has strict guidelines for issuing the alerts (More info on AMBER Alerts here), and they most certainly should not be issued when "family abductions" in custody battles are taking place, where there is no clear and present danger to the safety of the child. The abusive issuing of alerts by overzealous police departments desensitizes the public to the alerts. It's a case of "Crying Wolf" -- ESPECIALLY when it is a custody dispute. And frankly, I don't want to get involved in parental abductions... so I often tune AMBER alerts out, because I know Washington State is one of the states that abuses the system in this manner.
Anyway, because I find the AMBER Alerts for custody battles annoying, I decided to investigate the AMBER Alert system more fully, educating myself, and especially looking for evidence of what I suspected -- that the system was being misused. I hit paydirt when I found this study by Scripps Howard News Service, which analyzed all of the AMBER Alerts issued in the U.S. in 2004. Though the results didn't surprise me, they are still shocking: Fully 50% of all AMBER Alerts are issued in cases of family abductions. Another 20% are issued in cases of lost children, runaways, and misunderstandings. Only 30% of AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 fit the government's criiteria for issuing an alert.
Is it any wonder that people like me are tuning AMBER Alerts out?
So anyway, I decided to write a section for the Wikipedia article on AMBER Alerts about "False alarms." Here it is:
False alarms
Advocates for missing children are concerned that the public is becoming desensitized to AMBER Alerts because of a large number of false alarms -- where police issue an AMBER Alert without strictly adhering to the U.S. Department of Justice's activation guidelines.
A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the Department of Justice's criteria. Fully 50% (117 alerts) were categorized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as being "family abductions," very often a parent involved in a custody dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted at all, but were lost, ran away, involed in family misunderstandings (for instance, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where police didn't know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an abduction.
Only 70 of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 (30%) were actually children taken by strangers or who were unlawfully traveling with adults other than their legal guardians. [1]
Now, AMBER Alerts are a good idea in theory, but the reality is that they are abused far too often, being issued in cases where they should not be. The U.S. Department of Justice has strict guidelines for issuing the alerts (More info on AMBER Alerts here), and they most certainly should not be issued when "family abductions" in custody battles are taking place, where there is no clear and present danger to the safety of the child. The abusive issuing of alerts by overzealous police departments desensitizes the public to the alerts. It's a case of "Crying Wolf" -- ESPECIALLY when it is a custody dispute. And frankly, I don't want to get involved in parental abductions... so I often tune AMBER alerts out, because I know Washington State is one of the states that abuses the system in this manner.
Anyway, because I find the AMBER Alerts for custody battles annoying, I decided to investigate the AMBER Alert system more fully, educating myself, and especially looking for evidence of what I suspected -- that the system was being misused. I hit paydirt when I found this study by Scripps Howard News Service, which analyzed all of the AMBER Alerts issued in the U.S. in 2004. Though the results didn't surprise me, they are still shocking: Fully 50% of all AMBER Alerts are issued in cases of family abductions. Another 20% are issued in cases of lost children, runaways, and misunderstandings. Only 30% of AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 fit the government's criiteria for issuing an alert.
Is it any wonder that people like me are tuning AMBER Alerts out?
So anyway, I decided to write a section for the Wikipedia article on AMBER Alerts about "False alarms." Here it is:
False alarms
Advocates for missing children are concerned that the public is becoming desensitized to AMBER Alerts because of a large number of false alarms -- where police issue an AMBER Alert without strictly adhering to the U.S. Department of Justice's activation guidelines.
A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the Department of Justice's criteria. Fully 50% (117 alerts) were categorized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as being "family abductions," very often a parent involved in a custody dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted at all, but were lost, ran away, involed in family misunderstandings (for instance, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where police didn't know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an abduction.
Only 70 of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 (30%) were actually children taken by strangers or who were unlawfully traveling with adults other than their legal guardians. [1]
