The International Cold Case Analysis Project is teaming up with the Police Expert Network on Missing Persons (PEN-MP) of AMBER Alert Europe. The collaboration will also include Locate International, the Police Academy of Lower Saxony, and several British and Australian Universities. The project enables young police officers and students to establish a close link between theory and practice in cold cases. The goal is to help families across Europe find closure after the disappearance of a loved one. The project has already help bring in leads about a 1991 murder in Germany.
A group of 35 German members of the European parliament are calling upon all European countries to have an AMBER Alert program. Currently, 17 of the 28 countries of the European Union have child abduction alert plans.
“To save missing children it is crucial to act immediately, every minute counts,” said German Parliament Member Bernd Kölmel. “German citizens need to be informed as soon as possible via all available media. It is absolutely necessary that Germany builds a modern, digital AMBER Alert system.”
So far just 8 European countries have issued at least one AMBER Alert.
Germany has joined with the Netherlands to be part of the AMBER Alert Europe program. The two countries will now be able to reach more than 100 million people if an AMBER Alert is issued.
The Netherlands started its child abduction alert system in 2008 and is the founding member of AMBER Alert Europe.
The program uses SMS text messages, email, social media, smartphone apps, pop-ups and screensavers, website pop-ups, highway signs, TV and radio, digital signs and advertising screens to notify the public when a child has been abducted in a certain area.
The two countries already had an ad-hoc cooperation agreement to notify the public when a child was abducted. The first AMBER Alert was issued for two missing brothers who were last seen near the German-Dutch border. The second alert was issued for a 4-year-old boy from Groningen, Netherlands, which is only 30 minutes away from the German border. A citizen’s tip helped to safely find the boy in less than 2 hours.
“Germany and the Netherlands are 2 of the most interconnected countries in the world,” said Viviane Kusters-Brokerhof, spokesperson for AMBER Alert Netherlands. “We need to make sure that in the future it only takes a child alert 90 seconds to be issued in the entire region–-in German and in Dutch—and on both sides of the border.”
German and Dutch residents can register to receive the alerts at www.amberalert.eu.
An AMBER Alert in the Netherlands helped recover an abducted 4-year-old boy who was taken to Germany. The suspect's car was recognized after the alert went out to the media and social networking sites. This was the second time a Dutch AMBER Alert helped recover a child in another country.