What you should know about Amber Alerts for missing children
Hundreds of thousands of children are reported missing in the United States each year but only a small fraction of them receive an Amber Alert, which broadcasts their information over smart phones, radio, television and electronic road signs.
In 2021, local police agencies entered more than 337,000 missing child reports into the FBI's National Crime Information Center. That year, there were 254 Amber Alerts, fewer than one for every 1,000 missing-child cases.
From 1996 through December of 2022, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says 1,127 missing children had been recovered as a result of Amber Alerts. Of those, 131 were due to the Wireless Emergency Alerts that have been broadcast to cell phones since 2013.
But that's not the whole story. USA TODAY conducted its own survey of Amber Alerts' effectiveness last year and examined research that questions their effectiveness. To see what we found, read our investigation.
USA TODAY investigation:Do Amber Alerts work? Data shows how often they help bring missing kids home.
Here are some answers to common questions about Amber Alerts:
Why is it called an Amber Alert?
The first Amber Alert program started in 1996, when Dallas-Ft. Worth radio and television stations banded together to use the federal Emergency Alert System to quickly broadcast news of child abductions, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
That effort came in response to the case of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who had been abducted and killed in Arlington, Texas earlier that year.
Soon after, AMBER, for “America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response,” became part of federal and state laws.
Was Amber's killer ever found?
No. January 13 marked the 27th anniversary of Amber Hagerman's abduction and murder. The Arlington, Texas Police Department has an open, active investigation into the case, a detective told the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children on the 25th anniversary, and that has not changed.
Her mother, Donna Williams, continues to implore anyone with information about the unsolved case to come forward.
Is there an active Amber Alert in my area?
Amber Alerts are broadcast to cell phones when the system is activated in 86 state and regional jurisdictions throughout the United States. If an alert is active in your area, it should automatically appear on your phone.
You can also sign up for social media accounts that will notify you when an Amber Alert is issued:
On Facebook: Visit www.facebook.com/AMBERAlert and “Like” the page to receive Amber Alerts in your newsfeed. Facebook also automatically notifies users near the location of an Amber Alert.
On Instagram: If an Amber Alert is activated by law enforcement and you are in the designated search area, the alert will appear in your Instagram feed.
On Twitter: Follow @AMBERAlert to receive rapid Amber Alert notifications on your Twitter feed and share the alert with your followers.
Who triggers Amber Alerts?
In almost every state, Amber Alerts can only be issued by regional or state coordinators, usually working for a state police force, following guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice and state laws. They typically are requested by local police. Most guidelines greenlight alerts for endangered, abducted children 17 or younger only when there is enough information to help the public find the child.
That rules out missing children considered runaways, the designation in most missing-child cases. Unless there is a clear danger to the child, some states also will not issue alerts for abductions stemming from child-custody disputes – the cause of most abductions.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amber Alerts: how they work and what they are used for
