[Bonnie Feller Hagen]

I know that some states use WEA for other than Amber Alerts. I have kind of mixed feeling about that usage of WEA for EMA’s because our state, South Dakota, has a very low volume of Amber Alerts (one every few years) and we are fortunate not to have complaints from the public about overuse of the WEA system. We do several Endangered Missing Advisories a year and have been questioned why we do not utilize the WEA for those EMA advisories. In one case a couple of years ago an elderly female that we had an Endangered Missing Advisory on in South Dakota was recovered alive in North Dakota because they activated on behalf of South Dakota and they do use the WEA on their Silver Alerts and it directly led to her safe recovery in North Dakota. I have had discussions with surrounding states about using EMA’s for other than Amber Alerts and I think population and volume of alerts are the deciding factor on whether they are in favor of that usage or not. (states with a high volume of alerts generally say no and states with a low volume of alerts are more in favor of this usage.) Personnally, I would support using EMA’s on a case by case basis but not on all Endangered Missing Advisories.
South Dakota has three alerting plans, Amber Alert, Endangered Missing Advisory (all ages and a wide variety of endangering factors) which both use DOJ recommended criteria and our third plan is a Blue Alert.

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