COLUMBUS, Ohio – Today has been set aside to call attention to the Amber Alert program in Ohio and across the U.S. and to honor the memory of the Texas girl who gave the program its name,
The abduction and murder of Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas, in 1996 was the inspiration for the broadcast-advisory system that has grown nationwide.
To date, more than 672 children nationwide have been successfully recovered as a result of the Amber Alert Program.
National Amber Alert Awareness Day on January 13 is a day set aside to honor her memory and the establishment of the Amber Alert Program.
The following criteria have been established by the Ohio Amber Alert Advisory Committee to ensure Amber Alerts are only used during witnessed or confirmed abductions of children:
An abducted child must be under 18 years of age.
The abduction poses a credible threat of immediate danger of serious bodily harm or death to a child.
There is sufficient descriptive information about the child, the abductor, and the circumstances surrounding the abduction to indicate that activation of the alert will help locate the child.
A law enforcement agency determines that the child is not a runaway and has not been abducted as a result of a child custody dispute, unless the dispute poses a credible threat of immediate danger of serious bodily harm or death to the child.
Ohio’s programs utilize a variety of distribution methods including the Emergency Alert System for radio and television broadcasters, electronic billboards, lottery terminals, Twitter, Facebook, as well as secondary distribution efforts through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
In 2013, Ohio implemented Wireless Emergency Alerts as part of their secondary distribution efforts. These are issued on a 24 hour basis just as all other notifications types.
AMBER Alerts can only be issued by a law enforcement agency and should be used for situations meeting the established criteria. For other missing child emergencies, the Ohio AMBER Alert Advisory Committee has established the Endangered Missing Child Alert, which uses many of the same public information distribution methods as the AMBER Alert program.