The Garden City Telegram
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High alert
Published 2/3/2010 in Commentary : Editorial
Amber Alerts have gone a long way in helping to track down abducted children.But some officials know they often don't go far enough.
A law enforcement official in Oklahoma recently questioned the program after an Amber Alert there failed to turn up any sighting of a missing 7-year-old girl.
Amber Alerts are emergency messages broadcast when a law enforcement agency determines that a child has been abducted and is in imminent danger. The goal is to blitz the area with information to spur a community-wide search. At times, though, the search needs to expand well beyond the victim's community.
Recently in Oklahoma, Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said he had assumed Amber Alerts were broadcast nationwide, but found out otherwise during a search for Aja Johnson after the girl's mother, Tonya Hobbs, was found slain. An Amber Alert said Aja was believed to be with her stepfather, Lester Hobbs.
In that case, the suspect easily had a day-plus jump on authorities. That meant he could have traveled well beyond Oklahoma, which demonstrated the need for a national Amber Alert.
While the Department of Justice has Amber Alert guidelines, policies and enforcement vary from state to state. For example, some states require a vehicle description before issuing an Amber Alert, while others do not.
A number of states -- Kansas included -- do indeed cooperate in issuing Amber Alert requests for other states.
Many, but not all. That needs to change.
Stringent, consistent federal standards for Amber Alerts would boost the effectiveness of a program in place to save all endangered children, whether they and their abductors are nearby or have crossed state lines.
The alerts would have to meet specific criteria, so it's not as if agencies would be inundated with requests from throughout the nation.
Plus, the Amber Alert program currently is voluntary. Why not make it mandatory?
A single, uniform system nationwide would make a good program better. Allowing the Amber Alert system to cast an even wider net in nabbing those who would abduct a child should be easy for officials at every level to embrace.
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