The AMBER ALERT System

What is it?

An Amber alert or a child abduction emergency is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children.

The AMBER Alert system (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) is used in all 50 states, Washington D.C., US territories, and many other countries to assist in the rapid recovery of a juvenile who has been abducted.

Nebraska State Patrol AMBER ALERTS

Criteria

The alerts are broadcast using the Emergency Alert System, which had previously been used primarily for weather bulletins, civil emergencies, or national emergencies. In Canada, alerts are broadcast via Alert Ready, a Canadian emergency warning system. Alerts usually contain a description of the child and of the likely abductor. 

To avoid both false alarms and having alerts ignored as a “wolf cry“, the criteria for issuing an alert are rather strict. Each state’s or province’s Amber alert plan sets its own criteria for activation, meaning that there are differences between alerting agencies as to which incidents are considered to justify the use of the system. However, the U.S. Department of Justice issues the following “guidance”, which most states are said to “adhere closely to” (in the U.S.):

1. Law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has taken place.
2. The child must be at risk of serious injury or death.
3. There must be sufficient descriptive information of child, captor, or vehicle.
4. The child must be under 18 years of age.

Many law enforcement agencies have not used #2 as a criterion, resulting in many parental abductions triggering an Amber alert, where the child is not known or assumed to be at risk of serious injury or death. In 2013, West Virginia passed Skylar’s Law to eliminate #1 as a criterion for triggering an Amber alert.

How it all started

The Amber alert was created in reference to 9-year-old Amber Rene Hagerman, who was abducted in Arlington, Texas, on January 13, 1996, and found murdered four days later. 

We produced a podcast on the history of the AMBER ALERT system in 2021 and played it on the second part of an episode where we were asking questions about the disappearance of Chance Englebert. Chance’s remains have since been found, so if you listen to this podcast, you can jump to the 3 minute mark to hear the segment on the AMBER ALERT system.

The discussion regarding the origin of the AMBER Alert system on a podcast hosted by Brian Hale refers to Episode 145 of the Digging Deeper LIVE with Andi and Brian Hale podcast.

This specific true crime and deep-dive audio episode focuses on the history of child abduction alerts. In the broadcast, the hosts recount the tragic origin story of how the emergency broadcast system was inspired by the real-life kidnapping of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas, back in January 1996.

AMBER ALERT Cold Cases

Amber Alert Cold Cases