Don’t delay—register today! The 2024 National AMBER Alert and AMBER Alert in Indian Country Symposium is set for February 27-28 in New Orleans!

Registration for the no-fee training and networking event—and getting a discounted room rate at the event’s venue, the historic Hotel Monteleone—closes January 29, so click here to ensure your spot. 

The 2024 Symposium will bring together hundreds of professionals—state and regional AMBER Alert coordinators, missing persons clearinghouse managers, law enforcement officials, emergency management/public safety personnel, and Tribal community officials—to collaborate, discuss developing trends and case studies, share best practices, and train with other child protection partners to better respond to cases involving endangered missing and exploited children.

The two-day event will be hosted by members of the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP) and feature leading subject matter experts. Sessions will focus on the following topics:

  • Endangered missing and abducted child case studies, including Tribal cases
  • Decisional considerations for AMBER Alert/Endangered Missing Advisory activations
  • The importance of CART development, preparedness, and certification
  • The significant rate of, and complications stemming from, family abductions
  • Technology and information system best practices
  • AMBER Alert in Indian Country initiatives and collaboration opportunities
  • Discussions about current trends in Cross-Border/Southern Border abductions
  • Tools and resources to bolster long-term/unsolved child abduction cases
  • Mental health awareness/support for professionals working to combat and respond to crimes against children

The Symposium will also offer regional breakout sessions to foster collaboration among partners and inform future AATTAP outreach and course/event planning. Tracks will provide participants with a self-curated choice of sessions to attend.

We look forward to seeing you in person at the 2024 Symposium. For questions, contact [email protected], or call (877) 712-6237.

Training is made possible through the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program provided by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

 

By Jon Leiberman

“Holy cow, we need more hands on deck immediately.”

Tony Rodarte realized this while working child abduction cases early in his 20-year tenure with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department (MCSD) in Arizona.

“A child abduction response is a low-frequency event, but when they happen, there is a lot of stress,” Rodarte says. And compounding that stress? “We weren’t training regularly for such cases; we weren’t keeping up with best-practices; we weren’t coordinated,” he recalls. “Ultimately we created a team in conjunction with the state.”

Rodarte has been an active and instrumental member of Arizona’s statewide Child Abduction Response Team (CART) since its inception in 2011. The MCSD served as a host agency with the AZCART, and Rodarte served as the team’s co-coordinator in 2016.

Two years later, Rodarte retired from the MCSD, having spent the last 11 years there working in the homicide division. But post-retirement, his eagerness to continue refining the CART process – by sharing his experiences and lessons learned during his career – led him to become a subject matter expert for the National Criminal Justice Training Center (NCJTC) and AMBER Alert Training and Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP).

Participants of the Klamath Falls, Oregon, Child Abduction Response Team (CART) training session
Klamath Falls, Oregon, Child Abduction Response Team (CART) training participants stand with their CART course instructor, NCJTC Associate Tony Rodarte (front row, far right).

Klamath Falls, Oregon is a city of about 20,000 people and the gateway to Crater Lake National Park. It also was the site of a recent AATTAP CART training, during which Rodarte provided instruction alongside other NCJTC Associates committed to improving responses to cases involving endangered missing and abducted children.

“It was a great group in Oregon, and what made it great was the diversity,“ Rodarte says. “There was a mix of sworn officers, search and rescue personnel, civilians and others – all of them engaged and vigorously taking notes.”

The course Rodarte taught focuses on the most vital elements of a CART response, including activation and deployment; establishing incident command and field considerations for mobile command operations; search and canvass operations; volunteer management; and other physical and personnel resources that can improve the overall response to endangered missing and abducted child incidents.

“At night, during an active child abduction, is not the time to learn. Now is the time
to learn.”

Rodarte emphasized this best-practice principle and others while working with class attendees.

Julie Harper with the Klamath County Community Corrections Department had great things to say about the legal issues module. Rodarte “is an excellent speaker and kept my attention throughout his presentation,” she said after the class. “I liked that he brought some humor into the discussion, since it’s such a serious topic.”

A key objective of AATTAP’s CART training is to encourage collaboration among agencies and resource providers within jurisdictions, so that when missing children cases happen, there is a team approach.

“Everything that was taught will help me improve our response to missing children,” said Ryan Kaber of the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office.

Another key component of the training involves tabletop exercises that give participants from different agencies – and who have different roles within their law enforcement and public safety work – to think through elements of response and decision-making together.

“I enjoyed being able to work with others from different agencies to come up with answers and see what we did right and wrong,” said Craig Delarm of the Lake County Search and Rescue Department.

Course participants walked away with actionable ways to begin making a difference in their communities – and partnering with neighboring law enforcement agencies. “We hope to partner with the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office to create a team,” said Kami Wilton of the Klamath County Community Corrections Division.

Hearing such positive feedback left Rodarte energized and encouraged.

“I hope they never have to use the information – but if they do, they will be ready.”

“In a perfect world, we all hope to never need a CART response,” Rodarte says. “But the world we live in means such investigations will take place. So we have to be ready. And readiness involves participants not only retaining the fundamentals, but also building on that readiness when returning to their agencies.”

Klamath County Sheriff Chris Kaber spoke directly to just the sort of readiness Rodarte hopes to impart. “The information we obtained in this valuable training has better prepared us for responding in the initial hours of a missing child investigation,” he said. “We’ve already used some of the techniques we learned at this training in other high-profile investigations. The benefit was almost immediate.”

Learn more about the AATTAP’s CART training, and find an array of CART resources, at amberadvocate.org/cartresources.

Dear fellow CART Partners:

Over the last several years, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has held an annual conference to bring together stakeholders involved in responding to and investigating crimes against children with one particular focus being the utilization of CART resources. 

The 2018 conference will take place in Orlando, FL,  for three days running from December 10-12, 2018.  This year we wanted to reach out nationally and provide an opportunity to those of you on other teams outside the state of Florida to present at the 2018 conference. 

If there is a case study from your jurisdiction or other unique topic that you believe would be interesting and beneficial, we would like to hear about it and potentially have someone come and present it to our Florida law enforcement community.  

Thank you for consideration and, as always,  let’s keep vigilant in our efforts to successfully bring the children home safely.   

Please refer all questions or comments to:

FDLE Inspector Brett Lycett at brettl[email protected]

2018 Family Roundtable Participants gathered for an outdoor group photo.
Pictured left to right: Back Row – Gus Paidousis, Jesus Serna, Janell Rasmussen, Beth Nathan, Jamil Zouaoui Middle Row – Karen Block, Ruth Ann Parker, Lesley Small, Nacole Svendgard, Susan Morrow, Pattie Bastian, Ron Laney, Nina Flores Seated – Pamela Foster, Vicki Kelly, Abby Potash, Jennifer Wycough

On June 21-22, 2018, the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP) and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) hosted the 2018 Family roundtable on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Plano, Texas.  This year’s panel was made up of 13 family members of missing and abducted children from across the country.  The cases ran the gamut from international parental kidnappings to long term missing cases.  This year’s roundtable continued the trend of more cases that involved the use of technology by the perpetrator, children who went missing as a result of human trafficking, and long term missing children’s cases.

This annual event is designed to gain input of family members from their perspective in the aftermath of their child going missing. The first hand experiences of these families is used to improve training and technical assistance programs and to provide recommendations into how child protection officials and the judicial system respond to these types of cases. .

Family roundtables have been a part of the AATTAP since its inception and have been instrumental in bringing the family perspective to the program.  These roundtables have resulted in important initiatives such as efforts to eliminate “waiting periods” or delays on entering the missing child into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC)..  Roundtables and requests from families have also lead to the development of successful training programs such as the AATTAP Advanced Cold Case and Long Term Missing course.

Among many topics, this year’s participants highlighted;

  • The perception of runaways and the need to train first responders to take these cases seriously and consider that the child may have been lured away by a predator
  • The reunification between the child(ren) and family, and long term recovery care for the abducted and exploited child
  • Additional training on parental and international parental abductions due to the complexities and challenges that law enforcement encounter, especially when there is no court order in place
  • Wellness training and emotional survival programs for law enforcement officers who work child abduction cases
  • The impact of turnover, transfers and retirement among investigators and how families and law enforcement can collaborate, keep the case alive and maintain the investigation
  • The need for improved access to family advocates and others to assist the family in those critical hours after the abduction