Читать книгу Murder In The Heartland - M. William Phelps - Страница 28

In the state of Missouri, Amber Alerts are issued by the Missouri State Highway Patrol when a child is said to be in danger. The MSHP relies on “detailed physical descriptions…such as the color, license plate, and type of vehicle to watch for,” MSHP patrol spokesman Captain Chris Ricks told reporters. The reason the detail has to be as exact as possible is, Ricks added, “you’re flooding your system with calls that don’t mean anything.”

If any vehicle even remotely matching the description became suspect, law enforcement had to chase down hundreds of leads that might never amount to anything. As of September 25, 2005, 377 children had been involved in 316 published Amber Alerts, issued in forty-two different states. It is a system that produces results when put into effect immediately.

How was the program initiated? In January 1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her bicycle in a remote Arlington, Texas, neighborhood when a neighbor heard her scream. It was a terrifying cry for help, not as if Amber had fallen off her bicycle or was being chased by the neighborhood bully. There was no doubt she was scared and yelling for help.

When the neighbor ran toward Amber’s voice, she saw a man pull the helpless child off her bike and toss her into his pickup truck.

Within seconds, the child was gone.

The neighbor ran back to her house and called 911 immediately. She provided a detailed description of the man who had abducted Amber, along with the vehicle he was driving.

It was enough to get law enforcement started, especially since the call had come in promptly after the abduction.

Police in Arlington, working with the FBI, canvassed the neighborhood and interviewed several other neighbors while a massive search got underway for the vehicle Amber had been abducted in and for the suspect, who had supposedly grabbed her.

Sadly, though, four days later, Amber’s body was located in a ditch about five miles from her home. Her throat had been slashed.

Several concerned citizens, feeling angry and sick over Amber’s death, thinking more could have been done to save her life, contacted a Dallas, Texas, radio station and changed the way law enforcement officials deal with child abductions today. One of the callers suggested local radio stations “repeat news bulletins about abducted children just like they do for severe weather warnings.”

An early warning system was subsequently initiated by the Dallas–Fort Worth Association of Radio Managers, who teamed with local law enforcement agencies in northern Texas, developing an innovative system to help locate abducted children, or at least get word out of the abduction as fast as possible.

It was a brilliant idea, and general managers from several radio stations throughout the Dallas area signed up. Everyone agreed it was a public service that could save lives potentially, simply because time is an abducted child’s worst enemy after being kidnapped.

Thus, by July 1997, about eighteen months after Amber’s death, the Texas Amber Plan went into operation. Other states adopted the program in short order.