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| **Subscribe to Amber Alerts |About Amber | The Amber Plan | The Houston Plan | About EAS | Sponsors & Partners | Tips for Parents | News | Links |
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THE DALLAS AMBER PLANThe
Amber Plan was started in July 1997 to help safely recover missing
children that police believe have been abducted.
The Association of Radio Managers (ARM) in Dallas, Texas, created
the program in memory of 9-year-old Amber
Hagerman who was abducted and murdered in 1996.
The
goal of the Amber Plan is the safe recovery of missing children that a law
enforcement agency believes has been abducted and is in danger of serious
harm or death. Missing
adults, runaways, and children taken in child custody disputes usually do
NOT qualify for Amber Plan activation. How
does the Amber Plan work? In Dallas, for example, a law enforcement agency faxes an
Amber Alert message to two radio stations in Dallas.
Those stations will relay the message to other radio and television
stations using the Emergency Alert System (EAS), the same system used to
broadcast severe weather warnings and TV crawls. Broadcasters
agree to interrupt their programming and broadcast the Amber Alert message
(and any updates) every half-hour for the next two hours or until the
child is safely recovered.
Dallas
Amber Plan - Questions and Answers
Dallas
Amber Plan - Police Procedures
Dallas
Amber Plan - Radio Procedures Over
the years, the Dallas Amber Plan has expanded to 33 law enforcement
agencies in north Texas, 30 radio stations and 11 television stations in
the Dallas metroplex. Since
1997, the Dallas Amber Plan has been activated approximately 30 times;
eight children have been safely recovered due to the Dallas Amber Plan. For
more information about the Dallas Amber Plan, contact Steve
Mace with the Association of Radio Managers at 214-520-7550 or Dee
Anderson at the Arlington Police Department at 817-459-5600. OTHER AMBER PLAN PROGRAMS
Since the Dallas Amber Plan was established in
1997, more than 40 other Amber Each city or state’s Amber Plan program is administered separately in accordance with EAS procedures approved by the FCC. Each program establishes its own Amber Alert criteria, activation procedures, and distribution methods. For example, the Houston Regional Amber Plan has four Alert criteria:
Missing
adults, runaways, and children taken in child custody disputes usually do
NOT qualify for Amber Plan activation. The Houston Regional Amber Plan not only distributes Amber Alerts using the Emergency Alert System, but also integrates broadcast fax, e-mail, and the Technology to Recover Abducted Kids (TRAK) system with a website (http://www.amber-plan.net/secure) to post Amber Alert messages and photos. For more information about the Houston Regional Amber Plan, contact Beth Alberts, CEO, Gabriel's Gifts, at 713.521.2694 or via email, or Captain Richard Holland, Houston Police Department, at 713-308-3600 or Bryan Erickson, News Director at KTRH-AM 740, at 713-630-3598. For more information
about the Emergency Alert
System or to identify the local primary EAS stations for your city or
state, e-mail the FCC or call the
Emergency Alert System office at 202-418-1100. In October 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted House Resolution #605 encouraging communities nationwide to implement the Amber Plan. In
November 2000, Reader’s Digest published a 6-page article “This Is An
Amber Alert” by Per Ola and Emily d’Aulaire describing the Amber Plan.
For reprints, call 800-289-6457 or go to “http://www.readersdigest.com/”
and click on “Reprints”. The
Amber Plan is also endorsed by the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
This non-profit center was founded by John Walsh after the
abduction and murder of his son, Adam.
John is also the host of the “America’s Most Wanted”
television program.
In
February 2002, the FCC amended its rules for the Emergency Alert System to
add
a new Child Abduction Emergency (CAE) event code which may be used to
activate
Amber Plan messages. The FCC has "strongly encouraged" radio, TV
stations,
and cable outlets to voluntarily use the new CAE event code as soon
as
their EAS encode/decoder equipment can be modified. Updated Aug 10, 2002 |
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