Amber Alert

The AMBER Alert is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement agencies, media, and others to distribute an urgent bulletin in the most serious child abduction cases. It was created in 1996 as a response to the kidnapping and murder of a nine-year-old girl, Amber Hagerman, by a stranger in Arlington, Texas. The acronym stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. The goal of the AMBER plan is to involve the entire community to help assist in the safe return of abducted children by publicizing the abduction. After law enforcement has confirmed a missing child report, an AMBER Alert is sent to media outlets such as radio stations, television stations, cable companies, Internet bulletin boards, and electronic highway billboards. Since its inception, the AMBER Alert has been an important and successful tool in rescuing kidnapped children in the states that voluntarily participate in the program.

After the safe recovery in March 2003 of a Utah teenager, Elizabeth Smart, who had been abducted from her bedroom nine months earlier, Smart's father called for a national AMBER Alert system. Congress responded and on April 30, 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Protect Act of 2003, which encourages states to establish AMBER Alert systems to quickly post information about child abductions and also provides for the coordination of state and local AMBER plans. The Protect Act mandated creation of a national AMBER Alert coordinator to be appointed by the Department of Justice. Deborah Daniels, an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, was named coordinator. She is responsible for working with law enforcement agencies and broadcasters to ensure that state and local AMBER [Page 536]plans are consistent and also for overseeing funding and training issues for the entire program.