On October 2, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft designated Deborah J. Daniels, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, to serve as AMBER Alert National Coordinator at the Department of Justice. AMBER Alert plans are voluntary partnerships between law enforcement agencies and public broadcasters to notify the public when a child has been abducted. The first AMBER plan was introduced in Texas in 1996 in memory of Amber Hagerman, a young Dallas girl who was kidnapped and murdered. Since then, more than 60 plans have been established at the local, regional, and state levels. Twenty-four states have statewide plans in place.

Deborah J. Daniels, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.

President Bush highlighted the AMBER Alert concept at the October 2 White House Conference on Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children. In reference to the Attorney General’s appointment of a National Coordinator for AMBER Alert, the President said, “We should not allow another day to go by without taking steps to expand the AMBER plans’ reach all across our country.”

As National Coordinator, Ms. Daniels will help develop, enhance, and coordinate AMBER plans nationwide. She will serve as a central point of contact, working with states and localities to increase the number of AMBER plans and ensuring that these plans work together to create a national network.

“Our intent is not to make AMBER a federal program,” said Ms. Daniels. “Rather, we want to help communities, states, and regions to develop effective AMBER Alert plans and collaborations among themselves. It is critical that we assist communities throughout the nation in being prepared to act in those decisive first hours after an abduction.” Statistics indicate that children are at greatest risk of harm in the first hours after an abduction: of those children who are killed by their abductor, 74 percent are killed within 3 hours, and 99 percent within 24 hours.

In announcing Ms. Daniels’s appointment, Attorney General Ashcroft noted, “Few things grip law enforcement with more urgency than finding a missing child. Rapid response is vital in abduction cases, and taking the acclaimed AMBER Alert system nationwide will save lives and thwart would-be predators.” The Attorney General will provide approximately $3 million to deliver AMBER Alert training and technical assistance resources to front-line authorities, develop voluntary standards for activating alerts, and support software upgrades for emergency alert systems. The U.S. Department of Transportation has pledged an additional $7 million to assist communities with AMBER Alert activities.

“AMBER” stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. AMBER Alert plans activate urgent bulletins in the most serious cases of child abduction, with the goal of instantly galvanizing the entire community to assist in the search for and safe return of the child. The plans use the same Emergency Alert System (EAS) deployed in severe weather emergencies. When a law enforcement agency confirms that a child has been abducted, it notifies a designated primary EAS radio station, which relays the information to all area radio and TV stations and cable systems. Radio stations then interrupt their programming with the alert, and TV stations and cable systems run a “crawl” message on the screen (often with a photo of the child). Some AMBER plans also use electronic highway billboards to disseminate the alerts.

Interest in AMBER Alert is growing steadily. A National AMBER Alert Network Act has been passed by the U.S. Senate and is pending in the House of Representatives.

Recently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and America Online, Inc., announced the launch of “AOL AMBER Alert,” which expands the reach of AMBER bulletins via the Internet. Regional conferences are being held to facilitate greater collaboration among AMBER Alert plans of neighboring states, and new successes provide an impetus for the addition of new communities to the effort. Since the establishment of the first AMBER Alert plan in 1996, 32 abducted children have been successfully recovered as a direct result of the prompt response of communities using their AMBER Alert plans.

“These successes,” said Ms. Daniels, “demonstrate that the AMBER Alert plan can save the lives of children all over the country. We will do everything we can to see that our communities are fully prepared to protect these, our most vulnerable and precious citizens.”