Speaker 1: Hey, I'm welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, which makes
Speaker 1: everything normal. That's right, Chuck. Yes, we're going to do
Speaker 1: this like an old school stuff you should know episode.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling I know what's coming.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten an Amber Alert?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: There's nothing more sort of ear splitting and troublesome, immediately
Speaker 2: troublesome and upsetting than getting that claxon Amber alert all
Speaker 2: of a sudden at your nightstand, coming through your smartphone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's actually a little older than I thought. I
Speaker 1: think those started in twenty twelve. Wireless emergency alert Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes you can turn them off. But if you
Speaker 1: turn them off, you are shedding a slight amount of
Speaker 1: your humanity perhaps, although there's a debate about whether they're
Speaker 1: being over used or not. But one of the wireless
Speaker 1: emergency alerts that you can get is an Amber alert. Specifically,
Speaker 1: there's other ones we'll mention at the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: but the Amber alert is like the OG and it
Speaker 1: has a terrible tragic origin story to it. Amber actually
Speaker 1: is an acronym for America's Missing Colon of all things
Speaker 1: broadcast emergency response AMBER. But it's also the namesake of
Speaker 1: a girl, I think a nine year old named Amber
Speaker 1: Hagerman who lived in Arlington, Texas in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: That's right, And we should probably tell you what an
Speaker 2: AMBER alert is before we get into that sad story,
Speaker 2: because if you're from abroad, you don't know that an
Speaker 2: AMBER warning is when a child has gone missing and
Speaker 2: they send out basically we'll see it's operated by the state,
Speaker 2: but essentially almost always ends up being a nationwide alert
Speaker 2: sent to highway billboards that are digital, sometimes lottery signs
Speaker 2: that are digital and can be changed your cell phone,
Speaker 2: on the television, and they just they get it out
Speaker 2: in all these ways that hey, we're issuing this now
Speaker 2: because you know, usually it's like this child is in
Speaker 2: this kind of car and on a highway, and if
Speaker 2: everyone keeps their eyes open, we may get lucky here
Speaker 2: if everyone really pays attention for the next few hours.
Speaker 1: That was a great definition of the amburlers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I sort of went off on my
Speaker 2: own thing, but I think everyone knows that the likelihood
Speaker 2: of finding an abducted person or a missing person gets
Speaker 2: less and less as time goes on. So those those
Speaker 2: first that first hour is just so critical, even if
Speaker 2: they can get out a warning that says there's a
Speaker 2: Ford Taurus with this license plate and this kid is
Speaker 2: in it, so keep your eyes.
Speaker 1: Peeled exactly all right, Well, thanks for setting me up
Speaker 1: for telling the tragic story of Amber Hagerman, but I
Speaker 1: kind of have to now. Yeah, back in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, Amber, who was, like I said, a
Speaker 1: nine year old from Arlington, Texas, had gotten a bike
Speaker 1: for Christmas and was riding it around near her grandmother's house.
Speaker 1: And there was an abandoned wind Dixie grocery store the
Speaker 1: parking lot of which she was riding around, riding her
Speaker 1: bike around, and there was a local man, a seventy
Speaker 1: eight year old man named Jimmy Kevell, who was watching
Speaker 1: a ride her bike. And Jimmy Kevill apparently is the
Speaker 1: lone witness to Amber's abduction. He said that a black
Speaker 1: pickup truck showed up and a white or Hispanic man
Speaker 1: in his twenties or thirties got out and took Amber
Speaker 1: forcibly with him, and there was a nationwide search for Amber.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what it was about. That case
Speaker 1: that got everybody, but her disappearance launched a nationwide search
Speaker 1: pre amber alert, and tragically, three i think three days later,
Speaker 1: dog walker found her body in a creek. Because of
Speaker 1: the need, it showed to coordinate to get the word
Speaker 1: out at the Dallas Fort Worth Area Police Department's law
Speaker 1: enforcement got together with the broadcasters from the area and said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's figure out like a basic way to get the
Speaker 1: word out for abducted children, like asap. Let's figure out
Speaker 1: a standardized way to do that. And they came up
Speaker 1: with the Amber alert. I think within ten months they
Speaker 1: had the system up and running.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a great thing. Sadly, they it's a
Speaker 2: case it remains unsolved, but let's take a break and
Speaker 2: we can get back and talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: the specifics of how they work right after this, all right,
Speaker 2: So I mentioned that it was up to the state,
Speaker 2: which is true. Every state has their own criteria for
Speaker 2: issuing amber alerts and how it goes down. But the DOJ,
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice, did issue guidelines about recommendations that
Speaker 2: kind of break down into five categories for different reasons.
Speaker 2: The first one is law enforcement has a reasonable belief
Speaker 2: that a child was abducted. This one's pretty obvious on
Speaker 2: what that means. The second one is law enforcement believes
Speaker 2: the child will suffer serious bodily harm or worse. And
Speaker 2: the reason they have these criteria is because there are
Speaker 2: missing children all the time and not all of them.
Speaker 2: In fact, very few of them get the actual Amber alert.
Speaker 2: So this is to sort of qualify for that specific case.
Speaker 2: And the bodily harm one is the need for just
Speaker 2: a timely response that they have information where they believe,
Speaker 2: you know, in a lot of times it could be
Speaker 2: like a relative that has them that's very upset or
Speaker 2: has made threats and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think the the crux or the underlying
Speaker 1: gist of AMBER alerts is abduction by a stranger, because
Speaker 1: that's the greatest danger typically that an abducted child can
Speaker 1: be in. There's also a standard that most states have
Speaker 1: adopted seventeen or younger. They're like, let's not put pronouncements
Speaker 1: on what's a child or not. We can all just
Speaker 1: basically agree anybody under eighteen as a child and if
Speaker 1: they meet this criteria, then we're going to issue an
Speaker 1: Amber alert. And then the last part is and this
Speaker 1: is a step that not everybody takes, but it seems
Speaker 1: very critical. You want to take that information that you
Speaker 1: send out on the Amber alert and enter it in
Speaker 1: the National Crime Information Center system, flag it as a
Speaker 1: child abduction, and all of a sudden, the AMBER alert
Speaker 1: will go from a local or a state or a
Speaker 1: regional thing all the way out to national like nationwide.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement all around the country will have an alert
Speaker 1: that this kid has been abducted, so be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for them. But not all states have that as
Speaker 1: part of their criteria contingency plan, which is supper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, there was one we missed. The other
Speaker 2: criteria is there's enough detail about the appearance and the
Speaker 2: abduction of the child so they won't issue an Amber
Speaker 2: alert if it's just like like I don't know what
Speaker 2: my kid was wearing, I don't know where she last was.
Speaker 2: I really have no information. They have to have pretty
Speaker 2: concrete information about what the child was wearing at the time,
Speaker 2: what they looked like at the time, and where they
Speaker 2: might have been adducted, and especially if there's anything like
Speaker 2: you know, it was a black pickup truck or it
Speaker 2: was it was definitely my brother in law and this
Speaker 2: is his car. And license plate number, and on the
Speaker 2: seventeen and younger thing, because it's different states. Some states
Speaker 2: may have a guideline that it's let's say fifteen, but
Speaker 2: they agree to honor the rule of the state that
Speaker 2: the abduction took place in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the amber alert makes it across state lines, yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's I said that some people are are critical
Speaker 1: of not necessarily Amber alerts, but just alerts in general.
Speaker 1: Because if you're woken up at three am, whether it's
Speaker 1: an Amber alert, a silver alert, which is used to
Speaker 1: alert people of a missing person with dementia Alzheimer's purple alert,
Speaker 1: is one for an adult with cognitive impairment who's going missing,
Speaker 1: it's all the same to you. So there's a part
Speaker 1: of issuing amber alerts. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: the criteria is so strict is you don't want to
Speaker 1: get people used to those alerts. You want it to
Speaker 1: be a big deal when your phone goes off with
Speaker 1: an Amber alert at three in the morning, that everybody
Speaker 1: takes the time to wake up and look, that's that's crucial.
Speaker 1: It's a crucial part of it because if everybody becomes
Speaker 1: desensitized to it, that's a problem. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there are people who are like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who need to have their their the fact that
Speaker 1: they're missing be alerted out to everybody that just don't
Speaker 1: meet the criteria of the amberl alert. And so there's
Speaker 1: other kinds of alerts. Someone's Everbridge alert, which is it's
Speaker 1: cases where children have been targeted or abducted or gone missing,
Speaker 1: but they don't meet the criteria of the Amber alert.
Speaker 1: Like say, you know for a fact the child was
Speaker 1: abducted and that they're probably in danger, but you don't have,
Speaker 1: like you said, the description of what they were wearing
Speaker 1: or what kind of car they were forced into, you
Speaker 1: might not issue an Amber alert. And in fact, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, there were three hundred and sixty five thousand
Speaker 1: entries that year in the National Crime Information Center system
Speaker 1: for missing kids, but two hundred of them met the
Speaker 1: criteria for AMBER alerts to be issued. So there's a
Speaker 1: weird balancing act that you have to go through that
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's figured out yet, But that's why
Speaker 1: that criteria is supposed to be so rigidly adhered to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and from what I've read, it's not like there's
Speaker 2: any it's just about the alert, not like necessarily how
Speaker 2: hard the cops may be working to try and find
Speaker 2: this missing kid. It's just a very specific criteria because
Speaker 2: I think when it meets that criteria, that means there's
Speaker 2: a decent likelihood that if you act fast in the
Speaker 2: next few hours, like I said at the very beginning,
Speaker 2: then somebody might see something that could really help. Because
Speaker 2: we have all this information, I feel like most of
Speaker 2: the ones I've seen have been family members, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that it was supposedly for stranger abduction,
Speaker 2: but they've done a lot of good work. From nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six to twenty twenty three, Amber specifically Amber alerts
Speaker 2: have contributed to the recovery of one and eighty six children,
Speaker 2: and then other wireless emergency alerts rescued one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty five and over that that may not seem like
Speaker 2: a high number over that period of time, but if
Speaker 2: it's literally the success of a single signal being sent
Speaker 2: out finding eleven hundred and eighty six children, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the stories I've seen bandied about by
Speaker 1: pro Amber alert people just basically everybody that there was
Speaker 1: like a kid who had an amber alert miss or
Speaker 1: issued and was recovered within like less than thirty minutes
Speaker 1: because of the amber alert. So it definitely does work.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're only issuing two hundred a year
Speaker 1: and they in seven years they managed to cover almost
Speaker 1: twelve hundred or thirteen hundred children, that's a pretty good
Speaker 1: track record.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you got anything else, I.
Speaker 2: Got nothing else. Keep that alert on. It's distressing. But
Speaker 2: and if you're you know, if you're on the road
Speaker 2: at the time and you see something like that, like
Speaker 2: you do your part. That's what they're looking for, is
Speaker 2: people to really keep their eyes peeled and be vigilant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're a state legislator, maybe take the
Speaker 1: time to really sit there and see if your state
Speaker 1: has too many or is issuing too many of these
Speaker 1: things and is in danger of desensitizing the public because
Speaker 1: you do not want to do that. And of course,
Speaker 1: since I just spoke directly as state legislators, that means
Speaker 1: short stuff is out.
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