The AMBER Alert Program: Background information when reading City of the Sun

The AMBER Alert Program

This article relates to City of the Sun

The AMBER Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. The goal of an AMBER Alert is to instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for and the safe recovery of the child.

Named for 9-year-old Amber Hagerman who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas in 1996, it is also an acronym for "America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response".

In 2001, only two children were recovered due to AMBER Alert. In 2006, 69 children were recovered because of an AMBER Alert. To date, the program has helped save the lives of over 430 children nationwide. Over 90% of those recoveries have occurred since October 2002 when President Bush called for the appointment of an AMBER Alert Coordinator at the first-ever White House Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children. It has been shown that some perpetrators release the abducted child after hearing the AMBER Alert on the radio or seeing it on television.

Filed under Cultural Curiosities

This "beyond the book article" relates to City of the Sun. It originally ran in March 2008 and has been updated for the February 2009 paperback edition. Go to magazine.