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On January 13,
1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman of
Arlington, Texas was riding her bicycle
when a neighbor heard the girl scream.
The neighbor saw a man pull Amber off
her bike, throw her into the front seat
of his pickup truck, and drive away at a
high speed. The neighbor then called
police and provided a description of the
suspect and his vehicle, but couldn't
recall much else. At the same time,
Amber's brother Ricky went home to tell
his mother and grandparents what had
happened. Richard Hagerman, Amber and
Ricky's father, and Amber's mother,
Donna Whitson, called the FBI and
several media outlets. The Whitsons and
their neighbors began the search for
Amber.
Arlington Police and the FBI interviewed other
neighbors and searched for the suspect
and vehicle. Local radio and TV stations
covered the story in their regular
newscasts. Sadly, four days later, a man
walking his dog found Amber Hagerman's
body in a drainage ditch less than five
miles away from her home. Her throat had
been cut, and she had been sexually
assaulted. Her kidnapper and murderer
remains unknown.
During this time, Richard Hagerman had contacted Marc
Klaas, whose daughter Polly had been
abducted and murdered in 1993, leading
him to establish the KlaasKids
Foundation and become a children's
activist. Klaas had made himself
available to anyone whose child had been
abducted, and Hagerman sought his advice
on how to search for Amber.
The Hagermans and Whitsons, along with Bruce Seybert
(whose daughter had been involved in the
Girl Scouts with Amber), soon
established People Against Sex
Offenders, or P.A.S.O., which began
operations in Seybert's truck parked
behind the abandoned grocery store
outside of which Amber had been
kidnapped. They collected signatures in
hope of forcing the Texas Legislature to
pass more stringent laws to protect
children. God's Place International
Church donated space for the
organization after seeing its humble
beginnings on a television newscast. As
P.A.S.O. continued the search for
Amber's killer, they received
almost-daily news coverage.
In July of 1996, Richard Hagerman and Bruce Seybert
attended a media symposium in Arlington.
Although Hagerman had prepared remarks,
event organizers requested that Seybert
speak instead. Seybert subsequently gave
a 20-minute speech, in which he made
suggestions about what local police
could do to quickly find missing
children and how the media could help. A
helicopter news and traffic reporter
with Dallas radio station KRLD caught
wind of the ideas Seybert had presented
and approached the Dallas Police Chief.
Within two months, KRLD was the first
station to test the Amber Alert system,
and by 1997, a group of several
Dallas/Fort Worth radio and television
stations began testing the system on a
larger scale, calling it The Dallas
Amber Plan.
For the next two years, alerts were made manually to
participating radio stations, and in
1998, the Child Alert Foundation created
the first fully automated Amber Alert
Notification System to notify
surrounding communities when a child was
reported missing or abducted. Alerts
were sent to radio stations as
originally requested, but alerts were
now also sent to television stations,
surrounding law enforcement agencies,
newspapers and local support
organizations. These alerts were sent
all at once via pagers, faxes, e-mail
and text messages with the information
immediately posted on the Internet for
the general public to view.
Following the automation of the Amber Alert, the
National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children in 2002 expanded its
role to promote the system and has
worked aggressively to see alerts
distributed using the nation's existing
emergency radio and TV response network
as well as cell phones via text
messaging and over the Internet.
Although the Amber Alert is named after Amber Hagerman,
the national program is dedicated to all
children nationwide who've been
abducted. According to the U.S.
Department of Justice, up to 4600
children are abducted by strangers every
year (about 12 children nationwide every
day).
The Michigan Amber Alert system was launched in on June
19, 2001.
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Amber Hagerman,
for whom the Amber Alert system is named.
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(Information obtained from
amberalertmichigan.org,
wikipedia.org and
amberalertcreator.com.)
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IN AN EMERGENCY
DIAL 911
FOR NON-EMERGENCY CALLS
(517) 437-7317
FAX (517) 437-0822
HILLSDALE COUNTY
SHERIFF'S OFFICE
165 W. FAYETTE STREET
HILLSDALE, MI 49242
(800) 437-7317 |
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