Does New York’s AMBER Alert system need to be updated?

By the end of last year, 1,200 children had been saved by AMBER Alerts nationwide. However, high-profile AMBER Alert cases in the Capital Region last year have raised questions about how the system works, how long it can take for an AMBER Alert to be activated and whether changes are needed.

Last spring, an AMBER alert was issued following the disappearance of a 10-month-old girl in Schenectady. The alert was later lifted. Police believe the baby died as a result of her mother’s actions.

About five months earlier, an AMBER alert was issued after a nine-year-old girl was abducted from a state park in Saratoga County.

In both cases, the emergency alert was issued more than 12 hours after the child first disappeared.

Spectrum News 1 To better understand how AMBER Alerts work in New York and what changes lawmakers are proposing, we took a closer look at the September 30, 2023 case that made national headlines.

A young girl went for a bike ride in Moreau Lake State Park on a family camping trip just after 6 p.m. last fall. When she didn’t return, her family began searching for the missing child, who was last seen wearing a Pokémon tie-dye shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and a gray bike helmet.

Family members found the girls’ bike around 6:45 p.m. Police arrived shortly afterward around 7:00 p.m.

A missing person report was issued around 11 p.m. However, police did not issue an AMBER alert until 9:30 a.m. the next morning. It took two days before she was found.

“Part of me says, ‘Leave the AMBER Alert System alone. It’s fine the way it is. Don’t leave anything behind,'” said Jené Sena, the child’s aunt, in a recent interview. “But another part of me says, ‘OK, it took a little too long.'”

So what does it take to activate New York State’s AMBER Alert Plan?

In the hours after her niece disappeared, her family learned just that, Sena says.

“There is no guarantee that she was taken by a stranger because at that point they didn’t know… I mean, they had to rule out all those things,” Sena said.

In New York, an AMBER Alert can be issued when an investigating law enforcement agency There is a reasonable suspicion that a minor has been abducted and is in danger of serious bodily harm or death. The local law enforcement agency then contacts the New York State Police Special Victims Unit and requests activation.

If the criteria are met, the State Police issues an AMBER Alert.

“They notify their primary distribution network,” said Leemie Kahng-Sofer, executive director of case management at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). “That includes emergency alert systems, Department of Transportation signs, and their various state resources, and then we receive the alert. We then relay the information to our secondary distribution network and to the wireless emergency alerts. The wireless emergency alerts are what the public is most used to in terms of their cell phone alerts.”

During the night hours of October 1, 2023, law enforcement officers equipped with drones, helicopters, underwater technology and bloodhounds searched the state park grounds in search of Sena’s niece.

“When the dogs lost their trail, it was pretty clear that a kidnapping had taken place,” Sena said.

It is unclear how much time passed between this incident and the decision to issue an AMBER alert, but it was approximately 14 hours from the time police arrived on the scene until the AMBER alert was issued.

“When you actually issue the AMBER alert, you have very little information. You have no vehicle description and no license plate number,” Sena said.

At this point, Kahng-Sofer said, it is important that AMBER alerts contain enough descriptive information about the kidnapping so that the public can help. While this is not a requirement for activation However, New York State’s plan states that activation may not be practical if the information available is not specific enough.

“What’s really critical is getting a picture of the child out there and the vehicle, if a vehicle is involved,” said Leemie Kahng-Sofer.

Available data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s annual AMBER Alert reports show that 3,264 AMBER Alerts were issued nationwide between 2006 and 2022. Of those, 435 cases were later determined to be unfounded or hoaxes. During that 16-year period, data shows that 684 cases were successfully resolved as a direct result of an AMBER Alert being issued.

Kahng-Sofer called the system an invaluable resource. Others say there is an opportunity for change.

“When a person is missing, immediacy is of the utmost importance,” said State Senator Jim Tedisco, who has advocated for this cause for decades.

Tedisco helped establish the nation’s first program to print photographs of missing children on highway toll tickets in the 1980s and co-authored a book on the causes and consequences of child abductions in the 1990s.

He is now one of the co-sponsors of a bill in the Senate that was originally introduced by state Rep. Angelo Santabarbara.

“I think it’s our job to look at what happened,” Santabarbara said. “Is there room for improvement?”

The bill aims to create a formal procedure through which a parent or guardian can request the early activation of an AMBER Alert, particularly in special cases.

“In some cases it may be the harsh weather. In some cases it may be children with disabilities. But there may also be other special circumstances,” Santabarbara said.

New York State Police declined to be interviewed for this report.

In the end, it wasn’t the AMBER alert that brought Sena’s niece home, but a fingerprint on a ransom note that led to her rescue. The man who kidnapped her was sentenced to 47 years to life in prison in April.

New York lawmakers aren’t the first to try to change their criteria for the AMBER Alert. Sena isn’t sure if it would have made a difference if the AMBER Alert had been issued earlier, but she’s still hopeful that her niece’s story can lead to change.

In Texas, where the system was put into operation after the kidnapping and murder of Amber Hagerman, a law was passed last year allowing local law enforcement agencies to request activation of the system even if the criteria are not met.

“I think this is a great solution, frankly,” Sena said. “It gives the people directly involved in the investigation a little more latitude to make decisions or move things along a little faster.”