AMBER Advocate › Topics › Operations and Structure – Current Status and Future Needs › "Time" As a Criteria for AMBER Alerts › Reply To: "Time" As a Criteria for AMBER Alerts
Hello
I am a regional coordinator in Texas. Here is the Texas criteria from the Texas DPS web site.
The below represents AMBER Alert criteria for the state’s network:
Is this child 17 years of age or younger, whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose disappearance law enforcement has determined to be unwilling which poses a credible threat to the child’s safety and health; and if abducted by a parent or legal guardian, was the abduction in the course of an attempted murder or murder?
OR
Is this child 13 years of age or younger, who was taken (willingly or unwillingly) without permission from the care and custody of a parent or legal guardian by:
someone unrelated and more than three years older,
or
another parent or legal guardian who attempted or committed murder at the time of the abduction?
Is this child in immediate danger of sexual assault, death or serious bodily injury?
Has a preliminary investigation verified the abduction and eliminated alternative explanations for the child’s disappearance?
Is sufficient information available to disseminate to the public to help locate the child, a suspect, or the vehicle used in the abduction?
26 years of training and experience: I believe AMBER Alerts are an investigative tool and should be only that. They are crucial to the successful recovery of abducted children as proven over the years. However, the timing of the AMBER Alert is also crucial and needs to be left to the discretion of the Law Enforcement Agency of jurisdiction. My experience is, that too much criteria and or mandatory requirements for anything we do as investigators creates another set of unnecessary obstacles and takes focus away from the priority. My opinion is this: there are too many dynamic and contributing factors present in each child abduction case to mandate an AMBER Alert or require a mandatory window of time to issue the AMBER Alert. I believe that time and as well as the other “should’s” are better suited for best practices. Keep it simple, flexible and usable. That’s my 2 cents and it may not be worth that!
Regards
John L. Graham