Why No Amber Alert For Missing Arlington Heights Girl Sydney Alaya?

5:03 AM Friday . The lack of an AMBER Alert for missing Arlington Heights girl Sydney Alaya has many people asking, "Why no AMBER Alert?" The answer can be found in the standards or guidelines offered to states by the United States Department of Justice.

Each state AMBER Alert plan has its own criteria for issuing AMBER Alerts. The PROTECT Act, passed in 2003, which established the role of AMBER Alert Coordinator within the Department of Justice (DOJ), calls for DOJ to issue minimum standards or guidelines for AMBER Alerts that states can adopt voluntarily. DOJ's guidance on criteria for issuing AMBER Alerts is:

Law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has taken place

The child is at risk of serious injury or death
There is sufficient descriptive information of child, captor, or captor's vehicle to issue an alert

The child must be 17 years old or younger

It is recommended that immediate entry of AMBER Alert data be entered in FBI's National Crime Information Center. Text information describing the circumstances surrounding the abduction of the child should be entered, and the case flagged as Child Abduction.

It's the possible abduction situation with the lack of a trigger for an AMBER Alert caused by these standards from the US Department of Justice that has been the primary reason for The Cardinal's criticism of the use of secret military grade police radios by police agencies in the Northwest Central Dispatch System.

Sydney Alaya was reported missing at 12:15 p.m. A statement about the missing girl was not released until 10:55 p.m. -- almost 11 hours Many people didn't received reverse 9-1-1 alerts from the Village of Arlington Heights until after midnight.

If police radios weren't secret, the media would have released the missing juvenile information within minutes or hours of the missing person's report. The alert would have occurred while it was still daylight, not near midnight when thousands of citizens were in bed, and when the critical opportunity to report a possible sighting or suspicious incident had passed.

Warning from The Cardinal on February 18, 2013 before police switch to a secret military grade encrypted police radio system on June 5, 2013 ...

"A missing or kidnapped child, or recent criminal activity regarding a child sex offender at large will have an ineffective emergency response when media, neighborhood watch groups are not able to monitor real-time police communications. Police that want encryption might tell you that the AMBER ALERT is effective for this scenario. But early detection, and fresh memories are far more important than the AMBER ALERT which is often delayed and must meet certain criteria before it is activated."

-- The Cardinal Arlington Heights Police and Other NW Suburbs Encrypting Police Communications; A Tale from Mobile, Alabama Too

The first missing child scenario has now occurred in Arlington Heights under the umbrella of police radio secrecy. Whether the missing juvenile incident from yesterday, October 2, 2014 is a runaway case or a dreadful child abduction is uncertain at this point. What is certain, is that public safety awareness methods when it really counts regarding police agencies in the Northwest Central Dispatch System is a big failure. The expensive Motorola secret police radio system has failed its first reality test.

Read complete article on Arlingtoncardinal.com ...

http://www.arlingtoncardinal.com/?s=Why+No+Amber+Alert+For+Missing+Arlington+Heights+Girl+Sydney+Alaya?


missing person, missing juvenile, Arlington Heights Police Department, police radio encryption, Motorola