Your phone "goes off" at 0200 hours, rudely awakening you just in time to cut short a dream about a day on the lake with some old friends. You gaze blearily at the screen in your fogging headed effort to decide who or what should be cursed to blazes. "Oh, another Amber Alert!", you think. Then, "Like at 0200, who is going to start driving the streets looking for the missing kid of the week." Then again, maybe you!?! In Texas, 2022, there were 262 "missing people alerts". Most states have at the least an AMBER alert program; Texas, not to be outdone by anyone, has six categories which cover missing kids, seniors, military, the generally endangered and those who threaten Law Enforcement Officers (LEO). Not quite 1 per day but about 5 a week. Luckily your phone doesn’t blow up for every alert. You sigh and yawn. You think, “Shouldn’t someone do something about this?” Yes, Amateur Radio Operators should. It is clear that the need is real and that it is constant. How could we conceivably make any difference? Would that even be possible? We have the numbers. Texas has about 54,000 hams. If 10% participated in just one-of-each of these cases then we’d add about twenty pairs of eyes, radios and a significant amount of attention to each search event. (Think what it would mean to a family just to know that ham radio operators were actively conducting a "search net"; out looking for their child. Would this make the news? You bet it would.) We have the time. Listen in on your local nets and repeaters; most hams just talk about the weather (though some go out and spot it), their declining health and numbers and some gripe about politics. Am I right? Of course, I’m right! Do you and your club want to give back to the community in a significant way? Is preparing for a calamity just a bit to abstract or ‘in the future” to keep your interest. Is passing traffic that doesn’t really have any real sense of urgency or purpose, getting somewhat tedious? Then I ask, what could be more significant than someone’s missing child, or their grand parent who’s wandered (this is the term, 'wandering') off from the nursing home? How about passing traffic from field deployed amateur operators to local law enforcement about the status and progress of an AMBER alert search team? Do you want “Real” ? For a family, searching for their lost grandparent or child, this is the very definition of Real; the need is almost every day. Here in NTX, we’ve kicked off the ASAP. You don’t have to be from Texas (but it helps). It is just as relevant a subject/need in your state. Stop by our various pages. We’re posting net procedure, template logs, guidance, instructions and doctrine online. https://mewe.com/join/ambersilveralertnetprogramasap Want to know the answer to how you get “young people” involved in ham radio; the answer is be relevant. Relevant means to “have a significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand.” That is to say, we need to influence, effect change, improve, and better the world around us. If not this, then find some other way to make a meaningful, positive difference.
you can get them involved in resources like that providing all hams refrain from using the specified frequency designated for the operation unless they have pertinent information to pass along or relay. but that's the crux of it! the amateur operators must be willing to do so! once the net is setup and the alert is sounded, operators can log in but once the login is complete refrain from tying up the frequency until the crisis is passed. and the priority message should be broadcast in Spanish, English, and French. I agree. Its a pertinent and great idea, but will rely heavily on compliance of all hams
You are absolutely correct! Functionally, this would be very similar to some of our "Tornado Alley" skywarn/stormspotter activations. Here, these nets are very "regimented" and given the nature of the event, understandably so. Most hams are willing to abide by operating rules; I’ve seen discussions about various Part 97 issues that really get into the weeds, so to speak. I'm not sure how this idea will be received by those who are basically our "ham radio establishment". An ASAP deployment would, in order to be effective, require much more physical activity of many participants (net control excluded) than to which they are accustomed. That being said, I would think that the only problem with younger hams is having the time away from work or school to actually deploy. Thanks for your complementary remarks. I have set up a mewe page (another story, another time) where files containing guidance, net log templates and other “rules of the road” will be uploaded. Also, in the future, we’ll have a page on the ARRL NTX website (ARRLNTX.ORG) and there we’ll keep copies of the instructional documents.
This has been my thought for a long time, we don’t get near as many alerts as you guys do. We get about two a year. even so deploying extra eyes quickly in a situation where time counts is something local amateurs could do easily.
Washington is a big state so I can imagine that, like Texas, you could get a lot of alerts in a year and none of them be very close or close enough to you to do anything about them. I checked the Twitter page for Washington and see that there are three active right now. Www.Twitter.com/WSPMissingPers1
One of the things many people do not realize about Washington is that when you get west of the Cascades Mountains it’s a whole different world. The Seattle metro area is at the minimum 2 1/2 hours away from where I live. We here about 2 1/2 hours away from everything. (it doesn’t matter which direction you drive)
Some states use Twitter to get the message out. Texas and Oklahoma are among these. I have been unable to find media public information outlets for some states. It's hard to imagine that Texas can have over 260 missing persons (2022) and New Mexico appears to have ??? (maybe none). This guy has gone missing from near Tulsa Oklahoma and for a few days. Wow! Anybody from Oklahoma (my home state ) on here? Tulsa? https://twitter.com/OHPAlerts
Missing in the Houston Tx area right now! https://twitter.com/TX_Alerts/status/1635677510615678977 Missing in the Dallas Texas area right now!~ https://twitter.com/TX_Alerts/status/1635711798610481152
Here is the official Texas DPS page which lists current alerts. If there are no current alerts, the page may appear "blank." https://txsubscribealerts.dps.texas.gov/alerts
RAND did a study a few years ago and found that up to half of Texans have opted out of alerts, depending on type and area. I'm one of them. I have disabled it all, and it's not necessarily because I don't care in general; it's because the way the system is operated and its information disseminated is pretty much a joke. Example 1: I live out in West Texas. It makes no sense for me to receive an Amber Alert concerning some 14 year-old-girl who is missing 700 miles away in Burkeville, Texas. It's even more aggravating when it turns out she ran away from home because she got mad at her mom's live-in boyfriend, and that they found her three hours later eating waffles at a truck stop. That's how a large number of these cases go. Granted, sometimes missing teen alerts are legitimately serious, but if you've ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf, you'll understand the current state of the alerting system and why so many people don't care anymore. If ham radio is to take up this torch, it'll have to be thorough in culling the superfluous cases or people will tune it out as well. Example 2: Critical information in many of these alerts is often so sparse and incomplete as to make any personal effort at assistance futile. A recent study of alert information in Texas showed that forty-eight percent included no vehicle information and twenty-eight percent gave no information on what the children were wearing when they disappeared. The list of other important unavailable or omitted data goes on. If ham radio has no additional detail at its disposal than the alerts provide, holding any kind of related net would perhaps be of little efficacy. Example 3: There is little prioritization of the alerts or explanation of their magnitude regarding danger level. 65 percent of all Amber Alerts are issued because a parent kidnapped his or her own child in a custody dispute. In the vast majority of those instances, the child is in virtually no danger, and might even be safer than if with the other parent. Still, the alert gets issued and everyone rolls their eyes. Managing this dynamic would be another important aspect of getting anyone to take a "search net" seriously. If the net just ends up being more of the same, you'll have people spinning the VFO in short order. It should also be pointed out that five percent of these alerts are abuse of the system and nine percent turn out to be hoaxes; another challenge for ham radio in providing accurate and useful info. The upshot is that about 20 percent of all the actual legitimate alerts across every genre that get solved are assisted by the system, so at least there's that. But ham radio, as a hopeful helper, should proceed in any such endeavor with extreme caution, because passing on bad or false information via radio based on an alert system that's pretty crappy to begin with could be a black eye to the service in more ways than one.
And I'm going to agree with that 100%. Without citing statistics, I have a low opinion of the veracity and quality of "Amber Alerts", and I have all of them I can turned off on my phone. Getting up out of bed in the middle of the night for someone reported missing just isn't in my plan.
Guess I'm really missing out on all the "excitement" by turning my cellphone off every night. Or, at a minimum, putting it on "Do Not Disturb" mode, usually when I'm on vacation somewhere.
Not trying to be a naysayer but the only benefit I see is letting hams who do not have cell phones know about these alerts. Otherwise cell phone alerts suffice for those who subscribe to them. I don't know about other places but where I live the geographical area of such alerts can be customized. In my case I restrict such notifications to 100 miles and on the side of the Cascades where I live. No point in my getting notifications for Portland OR since I am never in that area. If this "system" prompts hams to go out looking and report sightings via "net control" I think that would constitute a frustrating waste of time. Chances of actually finding the object of the alert are about as great as me working a legit P5 in the next 30 minutes. If this sort of thing floats your boat go for it. I view it as a "make work" exercise and, frankly, as something that would attract new hams essentially worthless----a false promise of being relevant just like so much of the hype regarding ARES. I get it that the more eyes looking the better....BUT there are already a whole lot more LEOs looking than there will ever be hams willing to get out of the rack at 2 AM to join in the search.
The overwhelming majority of Amber Alerts were in situations where a family member was the abductor, which is usually know or highly suspected at the time of the abduction. It's usually a parent, but grandparents and other relatives, including stepparents have also been involved. That fact usually accounts for a vehicle description, as the person reporting has knowledge of what the suspected abductor drives. Actual stranger abductions are very rare. There is strict criterion that must be satisfied to trigger an Amber Alert. Law enforcement but have a strong belief that child has been abducted. They must believe the child is in immediate danger of injury or death. They must have descriptive information the victim, suspect or suspect vehicle. The missing child must be under 18 years of age. In suspected parental abduction cases, it's the requirement that the child must be in in immediate danger is the part that needs to be exaggerated in lots of cases where the abducting parent has visitation or partial custody and has had ongoing angry disputes with the other parent over the visitation arrangements and in anger over the disagreements have threatened to not return custody to the other parent. Some minor embellishments to the actual scenario can be all it takes to trigger the alert. In cases where the justification is weak, law enforcements best practice is to activate the alert other than deny it and take the chance that the child will be safe. It can be very risky. Even a traffic accident that is not the fault of the "abductor" but the child is injured could result in a serious lawsuit if the alert was denied under questionable circumstances. Year by year Amber Alert stats can be found here: https://amberalert.ojp.gov/statistics Here is a chart from the 2024 report:
