This is Not a Test

Last night, I was sitting in front of the television writing checks for my bills and idly watching Dog the Bounty Hunter. It was a train wreck sort of fascination; I think I might have to develop a compulsion to watch this show whenever I run across it while channel surfing. But that’s not the point.

The point is, while watching Dog and his boys gather for a prayer circle before chasing after some fugitive, the screen suddenly went grey and the speakers started to blare out a buzzing alarm. Text started scrolling across the screen: AMBER ALERT—TURN TO CHANNEL 20 FOR MORE INFORMATION. The blood ran cold in my veins—the same sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you get when a tornado warning is sounded for your area.

I wasn’t planning to leave the apartment or anything, but I turned to the designated channel anyway. Who knows what might happen? If everyone just ignored an Amber Alert because they aren’t planning to leave the house, then there would be no point in having an Amber Alert at all. However, Channel 20 was showing only the message that an Amber Alert had been sounded at 8:32 p.m. No description of the child or the adult presumed to have abducted the child. No information about where they were last seen or where they might be headed (if known). Just “Amber Alert!”.

It turns out that the local police mucked the whole thing up from the get-go. The abduction of the child was reported at 4:40 p.m. The Amber Alert, if you remember from the last paragraph, was not called until 8:32 p.m.—nearly four hours’ delay. If the abductor had actually been heading for FL (as reported by the news), he would have been at least two states away by that point. Furthermore, the news reported that the abductor had contacted a friend of the mother’s shortly before the Amber Alert was actually sounded to tell her that he had the little girl and wanted to turn her over. The friend met the man (who was the mother’s boyfriend) somewhere and got the little girl from him. Happy End, right?

Well, what on earth were the police doing all this time? What if this had been a stranger abduction? What if the boyfriend had wanted to hurt the mother by hurting her child? Time is of the essence in child abductions—again, this is the whole point of having Amber Alerts: it allows the public to be the eyes and ears of the police in those crucial first moments when it is most likely that the child can be successfully recovered. How can we, the public, be the good guys, when the local authorities can’t be bothered to sound the alarm? The local broadcasters are standing by. I remember another Amber Alert maybe a year ago in which Channel 20 gave out the child’s description and a description of the car he was thought to be traveling in. The local highway authority is standing by—I was actually almost home from a trip to the City of Light when the Amber Alert was sounded and saw the message on the LED signs over the highway. According to the news, the highway authority was not notified, so the messages never went out.

I’d like to think that the community would demand some answers of the police. But I know better. Apathy is endemic here. There will be a few angry, self-righteous blurbs on the evening news, then this story will fade into oblivion until the next time there is an Amber Alert. They were lucky this time; things worked out and the little girl is safe at home this morning. It’s a shame that we’ll probably be betting the next child’s life on that luck holding out.