Who decides when and where to issue an AMBER alert?

The alleged kidnapping of a Florida 4-year-old this past weekend served as a reminder of how effective the AMBER Alert system can be — if it spreads fast and far enough.

A man who’d been living in Seale, Ala., visited friends in Lakeland, Fla., before taking the girl Saturday morning, when a sister awoke at 9:45 a.m. and noticed her missing. The family reported this to the Polk County Sheriff shortly after 11 a.m.

After searching the area with bloodhounds, the sheriff asked for an AMBER Alert that went out about 5:30 p.m.

Soon reports were coming in: The man and girl were spotted off Interstate 75 in Forsyth, Ga., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Then around 10 or 11 p.m. Sunday, a park ranger saw them at Cove Lake State Park in Campbell County, Tenn. Then at 2:28 a.m. Monday, they were seen at a convenience store in Nashville. And finally, sometime Monday afternoon, a worker at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis saw them and called police, who arrested the man and took custody of the child.

Back in Florida, the Polk County Sheriff was relieved, and perturbed: Had Tennessee issued an AMBER Alert earlier, the park ranger might have detained the two Sunday night, but it didn’t, he said: Tennessee did not sound the statewide alarm until Monday afternoon.

So, who decides when and where to issue an AMBER alert?

Each state has a coordinator usually associated with whatever agency constitutes a statewide bureau of investigation. Here the coordinator is with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and that designated GBI guy takes information on missing children from local agencies for a statewide alert, and he – not the local agency reporting the case – requests adjacent states do the same, if the child’s having left Georgia seems likely.

Such interstate cooperation would be crucial in border areas like Columbus, where leaving Georgia requires only crossing a bridge.

Each state establishes its own criteria for issuing AMBER Alerts, though the U.S. Justice Department offers guidelines with these factors justifying the warning:

• Law enforcement believes the child has been abducted.
• The investigating agency believes the child is in imminent danger of injury or death.
• It has sufficient information such as the child’s description and other details to inform the public.
• The child is 17 or younger.
• The child’s name and other critical data have been entered in the National Crime Information Center system for law enforcement agencies to use.

The alert system started in Dallas-Fort Worth, in 1996, when news media joined police in creating an early warning system to find missing children. Though named for 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was murdered after being kidnapped in Arlington, Texas, AMBER is an acronym for “America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”

Today it’s among other alert systems available to local law enforcement, said Columbus police Lt. Joyce Dent-Fitzpatrick with the department’s special victims unit.

A second alert created just for Georgia is “Levi’s Call,” named for 11-year old Levi Frady, who while riding his bike home in rural Forsyth County was abducted Oct. 22, 1997. His body was found in the woods in a neighboring county the next day.

The criteria for a Levi’s Call matches the Justice Department guidelines for an AMBER Alert.

For the elderly or disabled, Georgia has “Mattie’s Call,” which the Georgia General Assembly established in 2006. It’s named for Mattie Moore, an elderly woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's, who went missing in Atlanta in 2004. A local law enforcement agency can issue a Mattie’s Call, but first it must eliminate “alternative explanations for the disabled person's disappearance,” according to the GBI.

Also established by the General Assembly in 2006 is “Kimberly's Call,” a warning issued by local law enforcement when violent criminals present an imminent danger to public safety. It’s named for Kimberly Boyd, who was kidnapped and killed by a known criminal in Acworth, Ga., in 2005.

Lt. Dent-Fitzpatrick said families can help law enforcement with missing-person alerts by keeping updated photographs of those at risk.

Telling a parent to take more pictures of their children might sound silly to anyone on Facebook, where it seems that’s all parents do, but it’s not, she said: “We have to do it all the time.”

She advised the parent of an autistic child to take a cell-phone photo every morning, to have a record of what the child’s wearing that day. Any outdated photos can be deleted later.

Having a current photo is also crucial for finding the elderly. Sometimes families trying to find missing relatives have only photos taken decades earlier, Dent-Fitzpatrick said: “They don’t look like that anymore.”

Her other advice: Don’t wait hours to report someone missing, thinking maybe they’ll come back home. That time can be crucial in finding the person before anything worse ensues.

This story was originally published October 12, 2016 at 5:58 PM with the headline "Who decides when and where to issue an AMBER alert?."