On New Years Day, a car was stolen in Anchorage. It was a Silver Nissan Sentra with dice on the rear mirror, according to a release sent out at 5:38 p.m. that evening from the Anchorage Police Department. Also inside was a three-year-old girl, information that wasn’t sent out to the public until 6:18 p.m. During that time, police were verifying information to put out an Amber Alert, an official process followed by the state under federal guidelines for broadcasting messages over the airwaves, mobile phones and the Internet to let the public know when a child has been abducted and could be in danger.
Renee Oistad is a public information officer for APD, and said the delay was the result of police verifying all the information coming in at the time.
“It’s par for the course,” Oistad said. “It feels like a long-time for people who aren’t involved. But if you’re actually involved in the situation there are a lot of moving parts, there is a lot going on. We actually got the information out fairly quickly.”
Within a few minutes of the Nixle alert, just as APD was getting ready to active an Amber Alert, the car was discovered.
“The citizen who saw the vehicle thought it looked out of place, physically looked in the car, saw the child strapped inside and called police,” Oistad said. “That particular individual hadn’t actually seen the Nixle alert, isn’t signed up for them, so didn’t know that we were looking for a car or missing child.”
Alaska has only ever had six Amber Alerts go out in the last two decades, and the actual protocols for issuing one are clearly laid out in state guidelines. An official checklist for law enforcement is used to verify whether a case meets the Amber Alert criteria, asking whether there’s the threat of harm, whether the victim is a minor, and whether or not a description is available. Because the alerts are treated so seriously, law enforcement has a high threshold for issuing them — to make sure broadcasters and the public don’t get overly accustomed.
“Well any delays that we see in the activation of an Amber Alert are not due to the process that’s in place,” Oistad said.
Lieutenant Steven Adams coordinates the state’s Amber Alert system, and says emailing or faxing the actual materials to the State Trooper’s Dispatch Center in Fairbanks isn’t time intensive. But getting accurate information can be.
“The most significant delay we’ll ever see with the activation of an Amber Alert is the officer being able to interview witnesses, take information from complainants, getting statements from those witnesses on what they say,” Oistad said. “That’s the biggest delay in the activation of an Amber Alert.”
According to a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety, Alaska’s last Amber Alert was issued in 2015.
Zachariah Hughes reports on city & state politics, arts & culture, drugs, and military affairs in Anchorage and South Central Alaska.
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