AMBER Alert Review Process

[Anonymous]

Do you have an AMBER Alert review process or after-action meeting after each alert, quarterly, or yearly? What do you discuss and who is included in the discussions? Do you get valuable information from these? Would you change anything?

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions.

-Lyndsey (Florida)

[Denise O’Leary]

The Houston Regional Amber Alert does have After Action Reports completed and returned after each alert. The Advisory Committee, comprised of law enforcement, media, and community advocates, meets semi-annually (more or less, as needed) to review and discuss the activations. It is a valuable process and we fine-tune and make significant policy changes from these discussions, when warranted.

[Anonymous]

We do quarterly meetings in Nebraska for AMBER and Endangered Missing alerts. As a result of these meetings over the years, we have changed the way we can receive requests to activate and have changed the way we activate the alerts, taking out steps which slowed the process. The group includes media, Lottery, Roads, community groups, law enforcement, weather service, emergency management, and the Attorney General’s office. Our discussions include the alerts which were issued and how they met the criteria, we also review requests which did not meet the criteria and any issues which occurred during the issuing of the alerts.

Our last meeting was on Zoom and everyone liked it so much, our future meetings will no longer take place in person, but on videoconference to save travel time.

[Anonymous]

Iowa has an after-action procedure for every alert we issue. We meet with the requesting agency and discuss how they thought the process worked and if they thought anything could have gone better. The AMBER Alert Coordinator, Assistant Coordinator and representatives from all of our Dept. of Public Safety divisions attend these after-action meetings. We do these meetings within a week of an alert being issued.
We have quarterly reports where all alerts are reviewed. All information is stored on a separate drive as well as in paper folders.
We also have an annual meeting with all the representatives to discuss improvements and recent call-outs.
We have weekly checks to ensure the functionality of the website. Each specialist that works on alerts is required to login weekly.
We find these procedures to be valuable in keeping our system as up to date as possible.
Also, we have a training class for all new specialist and quarterly reviews for all specialists.

[Ben Patterson]

The state of Texas conducts a mini internal AAR within 24 hours of the discontinuance of the individual alert (we have 6 alerts in Texas). The shifts that participated (we have three) in the alert prepare input. The input is then combined into one combined AAR. Management then reviews the AAR with supervisors and discusses any changes/enhancements that need to be made to field training, internal operations or discussion with the original requesting LE agency. Below is the information collected from staff:

Dates and Times
Request received (date and time):
Alert activated (date and time):
Alert discontinued (date and time):

What were some problematic issues or potential needs for improvement?
What are some possible measures that can be taken to counteract the problematic issues?
What were some lessons learned that might be worth sharing?

[Erika Hock]

In New York State we generally hold an after action review post activation if we are able to schedule with the requesting agency. We invite all of our amber partners and any of the members of the investigating agency. We produce an after action report to show how the Alert was “pushed out” and to how many social media, lottery terminals, highway signs, radio stations, tv stations and other traditional email and fax alert notifications were made. We seek in these reviews to continuously improve our activation request process and to seek input if the activation directly assisted in the recovery of the child.

Hank Abeel

[Nona Best]

HI Lyndsey
Hope all is well. NC holds an annual meeting in February or March. We invite each agency that actually activated and AMBER
ALert the year before. Preferably the Detective that worked the case will be the one that attends the meeting.
We let each person describe their case to everyone, report good and bad ecperiences. There is a question and answer session and then the
Center will give any updates and review. The last two times we held a meeting we used phone conference calling so no one would have to travel.
We did not have one in 2019 or 2020.
Hope this helps.

Nona

[John Graham]

Lyndsey,

Texas Region #2

Keep in mind Texas uses a Regional AMBER Alert Program but we utilize the same Amber Alert criteria as the State of Texas.
We use an internal form document for after action reviews for the following purpose.

1. to make certain the required criteria/procedure has been followed
2. to identify any errors/mistakes/learning points
3. ensure we have operated at maximum efficiency
4. to encourage input and ideas from involved staff
5. to facilitate ownership/buy in from staff that do not fully understand how critical this type of event really is
6. to encourage the relationship/communication avenues between the involved agencies

Regards

John

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