AMBER Alert Policies – Age Criteria

[Christopher Meier]

What other states are including adults with disabilities in their AMBER consideration criteria? In reviewing our statewide policy, we include “The child shall be under eighteen (18) years of age, unless there are special circumstances such as a proven mental or physical disability.” I’m proposing we simplify by limiting to children only, more in line with the national model. Our Silver Alert includes adults with mental health concerns.

[Jolene Hardesty]

Hi Christopher,

Here in Michigan, our state laws read that the AMBER Alert shall be administered by “the department” (which is defined as us as Michigan State Police), so we have the ultimate say in how we run the program. With that, we only follow the national guidelines for AMBER alert as it must be a child, under the age of 18. Instead of a Silver Alert, we have an Endangered Missing Advisory (EMA) that we use for all other scenarios, to include children with autism that have eloped, or elderly wanderers, etc.
We have recently experienced a legislature that wishes to appease their constituents by making us use the WEA for all EMAs. We are extremely protective of the AMBER Alert program as we don’t want the public to become desensitized to it (the “car alarm theory”), so we have articulated an extremely strict adherence to those guidelines. I would fight heavily against any “wiggle room” in AMBER Alert. The Silver Alerts/EMAs/EMPAs, etc are available for all other scenarios, but once we start to chip away at AMBER, it will lose it’s efficacy and become watered down and useless.

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