Kate McCann due to be a special guest at the launch of Child Rescue Alert

by ufercoffy 25.05.10 7:57

By Rod Chaytor [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
EXCLUSIVE:
Child kidnap alerts could interrupt national TV programmes whenever a youngster is snatched, it will be announced today.
Kate McCann, mum of missing Madeleine, was due to be a special guest at the launch of Child Rescue Alert.
The project, being unveiled on International Missing Children's Day, will mean police across the country can "press the CRA button" if a child under 18 is thought to have been abducted.
Individual police forces have had the powers to trigger such alerts in the past but the new scheme will be co-ordinated nationwide.

A senior police source said yesterday: "Research in the States shows that 75% of children abducted by strangers are dead within four hours.

"If a CRA is put out, it means we believe we may have just hours to save a child's life.
"If the alert is nationwide, broadcasters have agreed to put it out immediately. Coronation Street, if it's on at the time, will be interrupted." It will be backed by the missing persons bureau at the National Policing Improvement Authority's London head office. The CRA, based on the US's Amber system, will also link with existing set-ups in other European countries.
And its launch will highlight the plight of children abducted by a parent or relative, with 1,000 such cases every year in this country.

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by ufercoffy 25.05.10 8:00

3:35am UK, Tuesday May 25, 2010

Rob Cole, Sky News Online
Kate and Gerry McCann will today help launch a revamped nationwide alert system for missing children.

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Sigourney Chisolm disappeared in 1993 aged two - she is thought to be in the UK

The parents of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] have been campaigning for a system to be operational in the UK since the disappearance of their daughter in Portugal in May 2007.
The network will be compatible with other European countries for the first time.
Similar to the amber alert in the US, the system is aimed at raising public awareness if a child goes missing and will also allow police to issue Europe-wide alerts.
Regional and national television and radio stations will broadcast messages, in some cases interrupting scheduled programmes.
The revamped system is being launched on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, head of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (NPIA), said: "Through Child Rescue Alert the community is able to form a strong alliance to help in the hunt for child abductors when an alert is activated.
"It is fitting that the NPIA should relaunch (the) alert on International Missing Children's Day, which forms a poignant reminder of the sense of devastation caused to the parents and families of children who go missing."

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Madeleine McCann's parents believe their daughter is alive

Police say the first few hours after an abduction are crucial in locating a missing child.
But they expect the alerts to be rarely issued and will use new computer software to handle the anticipated deluge of calls from concerned members of the public.
The system is being co-ordinated by the NPIA and any national abduction will be led by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Portugal, Spain and the Czech Republic have already introduced their versions of child abduction alerts that link with the European network.
The previous national alert system was established in 2005 and has only been used on a handful of occasions.
An alert can only be issued when the child is aged under 18, there is a reasonable belief he or she has been abducted and could be in imminent danger.

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by ufercoffy 25.05.10 8:03

Child Rescue Alert launch

POLICE have unveiled a revamped alert system aimed at enlisting the public to help rescue abducted children.

The new network is like the amber alert system in the United States, and will be compatible with other European countries for the first time.

Kate and Gerry McCann have campaigned for such a system since their daughter Madeleine disappeared in Portugal in May 2007.

Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, head of the National Police Improvement Agency, said: "Through Child Rescue Alert the community is able to form a strong alliance to help in the hunt for child abductors when an alert is activated."

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by **PeterMac** 07.07.11 16:03

AMBER alert
p. 292 “It is important that it is reserved for the most serious situations (defined by a set of criteria) [which she then omits] to avoid the airwaves being constantly inundated by false alarms that might dilute the attention and response of the public....
It was clear to Gerry and me that if such a procedure had been in use in Portugal, Madeleine might have been swiftly tracked down.”

For those who are still not familiar with AMBER Alert - there are many web sites, but all follow the same pattern. See for example
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Criteria for activating an AMBER Alert
Law enforcement agencies ensure these conditions are met before activating an AMBER ALERT:
• The investigating law enforcement agency confirms an abduction has occurred.
• The victim is 17 years of age or younger, or has a proven mental or physical disability.
• The victim is in imminent danger of serious injury or death.
• There is information available that, if provided to the public, could assist in the child's safe recovery.

So in fact the Amber Alert would never have been activated.
No one from a law enforcement agency ever confirmed that an abduction took place. Not even 4 years later has it ever been ‘confirmed’. And no matter how often you state it, thiat does not confirm it.
The Police look for that boring thing that gets in the way of all lynch mobs and Kangaroo courts, and is what we in the civilised world call "evidence".
And further, what information was there which could have assisted in the Madeleine’s recovery ? If the McCanns and the PJ had had such information, no doubt they would have acted. Searched, for example !

by **PeterMac** 07.07.11 16:07

Wikipedia is interesting
QUOTE
Retrieval rate
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, of the children abducted by strangers and murdered, 75% are killed within the first three hours. Amber Alerts are designed to inform the general public quickly when a child has been kidnapped and is in danger so that "the public [would be] additional eyes and ears of law enforcement." As of August 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that 17 children had been successfully recovered after an Amber alert was issued, including one case in which the abductor released the child after hearing the alert.

A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the Department of Justice's criteria.
Fully 50% (117 alerts) were categorized by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as being "family abductions," very often a parent involved in a custody dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted at all, but were lost, ran away, involved in family misunderstandings (for example, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where police didn't know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an abduction.
70 of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in 2004 (30%) were actually children taken by strangers or who were unlawfully traveling with adults other than their legal guardians.

Controversy about success rate
Some outside scholars examining the system in depth disagree with the "official" results. A team led by University of Nevada criminologist Timothy Griffin looked at hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2006 and found that Amber Alerts actually played little apparent role in the eventual return of abducted children.

Furthermore, AMBER Alerts tended to be "successful" in relatively mundane abductions, such as when the child was taken by a noncustodial parent or other family member. There was little evidence that Amber Alerts routinely "saved lives", although a crucial research constraint was the impossibility of knowing with certainty what "would have" happened if no Alert was issued in a particular case.

Griffin and co-author Monica Miller articulated the limits to AMBER Alert in a subsequent research article. They pointed out that AMBER Alerts are inherently constrained, because to be successful in the most menacing cases there needs to be a rapid synchronization of several felicitous events (rapid discovery that the child is missing and subsequent Alert, the fortuitous discovery of the child or abductor by a citizen, and so forth).

Furthermore, there is a contradiction between the need for rapid recovery and the prerogative to maintain the strict issuance criteria to reduce the number of frivolous Alerts, creating a dilemma for law enforcement officials and public backlash when Alerts are not issued in cases ending as tragedies.

Finally, the implied causal model of AMBER Alert (rapid recovery can save lives) is in a sense the opposite of reality: In the worst abduction scenarios, the intentions of the perpetrator usually guarantees that anything public officials do will be "too slow."

Because the system is publicly praised for saving lives despite these limitations, Griffin and Miller argue that AMBER Alert acts as "crime control theater" in that it "creates the appearance but not the fact of crime control". AMBER Alert is thus a socially constructed 'solution' to the rare but intractable crime of child-abduction murder. Griffin and Miller have subsequently applied the concept to other emotional but ineffective legislation such as Safe Haven laws and Polygamy raids, and continue their work in developing the concept of "crime control theater" and on the AMBER Alert system.

False alarms
Advocates for missing children are concerned that the public is becoming desensitized to AMBER Alerts because of a large number of false alarms — where police issue an AMBER Alert without strictly adhering to the U.S. Department of Justice's activation guidelines.
Ontario
An AMBER Alert is not intended for cases involving parental abductions or runaways except in life threatening situations. The duration of an alert will depend on the circumstances surrounding the abduction and will vary from one incident to the next. In most cases five hours would be the maximum.
UNQUOTE
There are examples of mis-use of the system, a really stupid one being at
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which involved a child out in a car with a family friend, who was a bit late coming home.

by lj 08.07.11 15:07

A couple of years ago there was an abduction of a girl, I believe 7 years old from the frontyard of the house where she lived. There were several eye witnesses, adult and minors who identified the abductor as a acquaintance of the family. An Amber alert was issued, which in Texas means all road signs will flash the alert in rotation with other alerts, all radio and tv stations will mention it. Name and photos of the alleged abductor where all over the place.
The abduction happened late afternoon. That evening in a town about 60 miles away, someone, who had not heard the amber alert, saw a man and a young girl and noticed something in the interaction between those 2 was way off. He warned the police who quickly spotted them, stopped them and discovered that this was the abducted girl. The man however was not the man mentioned in the alert. It was someone, not from that area, and completely unknown to the family and girl.

The girl was unharmed, apart from the mental anguish of being taken. Of course the Amber alert counted this as one of their success stories, while, if anything, they might have had the reversed effect with the identification of the wrong man.

Sadly. as a lot of good causes, the Amber alert has become big business too. Something the McCanns can appreciate no doubt.

It has been said to everyone involved, including the parents, that for Madeleine there would not have been an Amber alert since the whole case did not meet the conditions for an alert.

Of course that does not stop these megalomaniacs of claiming the border should have been closed, every pedophile should have been brought in, heck every man between 7 and 70 should have been interviewed, and the country should be in lock down until Madeleine was found.

by **PeterMac** 08.07.11 16:35

lj wrote:
Of course that does not stop these megalomaniacs from claiming the border should have been closed, ...

Many people in the UK still think there are borders throughout Europe, capable of being "closed".
There aren't.
Think of it as trying to close the border between Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and you may get the idea.

by lj 08.07.11 21:28

I hop on a regular basis a real border: the one between US and Mexico and in spite of huge efforts and enormous amounts of money from both sides I can assure you: it's almost impossible to close a border.

by Gillyspot 08.07.11 21:40

The only "border" I know that was ever kept closed (and how!) was the Berlin Wall and I am sure Portugal doesn't have one of those. How would any police block every small track and road (or even field if it comes to that). Not forgetting small boats in and out of PDL and coves nearby.

by lj 08.07.11 21:46

I believe Albania did a pretty good job too.

But those regimes are not known for their respect for human rights.

Exactly like the McCanns: there is only one family with rights: theirs, all others, including children can be investigated, held, their photos published all over etc.