Critical Amber Alert

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Locke

Is there such a thing as a 'Non-Critical' Amber Alert?

In Alberta, no, as one of the 4 criteria that must be met before an Amber Alert is allowed is: The child must be at risk of serious harm or death

[Locke]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

In Alberta, no, as one of the 4 criteria that must be met before an Amber Alert is allowed is: The child must be at risk of serious harm or death

So this morning was more of a Beige Alert?

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Locke

So this morning was more of a Beige Alert?

No, but we don't know what the threat of harm was. As hard as this may be to believe for some folks, kids are frequently used as pawns when couples fight.

Here's a somewhat fictional scenario I can see playing out from my experiences with child custody/separation issues:

Mom goes to drop kids off for the weekend. She and dad argue. Mom refuses to leave kids with dad, and as she's leaving in her car she screams out "You're never going to see me or the kids again!"

That could reasonably be interpreted as a murder/suicide threat by the dad. Because police don't know how she's going to act on (or if she is) what was said, they have to act as though she intends to hurt the kids then/and/or herself. It's unlikely that she meant it that way...but law enforcement can't assume intent in a case like that, and have to act on the information given.

Police try but can't get ahold of mom to ask her to clarify her statements and/or justify what she's done.

All 4 of the criteria for an Amber Alert would be present and met in the above scenario, thus one may be issued.

[Smartcar]

I get that it's important to put out amber alerts when a child's life is in danger but I don't see how waking thousands of soundly sleeping people (who have been asleep prior to 1:30am and therefore couldn't have seen anything to report) is that productive.

There has to be a better way. I set my phone on DND at night so if the alarm company is calling I get the call (the alarm co is in my favourites so it still rings). I freaked out when the amber alert came on at 5am. I guess if it had been the alarm co the result would have been the same, at least I didn't have to get up and jump in the car.

I think turning off cellular data at night will work, it's on the same screen as DND. Of course then I won't get notification of incoming nuclear strikes either.

[corporatejay]

Everyone in this thread who's complaining is a ####ing idiot. Parents who steal their kids in the.middle of the night are at high risk of hurting them etc. (murder suicide) so suck it up Sally, it went off. Woke us up. I clicked it off. The end. JFC

[CaptainYooh]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Everyone in this thread who's complaining is a ####ing idiot. Parents who steal their kids in the.middle of the night are at high risk of hurting them etc. (murder suicide) so suck it up Sally, it went off. Woke us up. I clicked it off. The end. JFC

Awww, you're so resolute and determined cowboy, sweetheart. If it's OK for you to call everyone that questions the alert criteria "f..ng idiots", then it is OK for everyone else to call you the same. You are a "f...ng idiot", if you don't see a difference between complaining and questioning the validity and degrees of it. See how well it goes from here.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Everyone in this thread who's complaining is a ####ing idiot. Parents who steal their kids in the.middle of the night are at high risk of hurting them etc. (murder suicide) so suck it up Sally, it went off. Woke us up. I clicked it off. The end. JFC

Actually, the part I was complaining about was that it didnt give me any immediate information in the Alert itself.

It made me go through a link for information.

First of all, I'll admit, I'm not a lot of help at 5am anyways, so you gotta help me out here.

Name. Location. Description of Kid and Parent.

You can do this. I know you can.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Everyone in this thread who's complaining is a ####ing idiot. Parents who steal their kids in the.middle of the night are at high risk of hurting them etc. (murder suicide) so suck it up Sally, it went off. Woke us up. I clicked it off. The end. JFC

Oh good we’ve come full circle since the last time this came up except now we’ve devolved into personal insults.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Everyone in this thread who's complaining is a ####ing idiot. Parents who steal their kids in the.middle of the night are at high risk of hurting them etc. (murder suicide) so suck it up Sally, it went off. Woke us up. I clicked it off. The end. JFC

Oh get off your high horse you tool. The current system has been implemented terribly, and it shouldn't be taboo to suggest they can improve it. When I got woken up at 5am and saw it was an amber alert instead of a real emergency, I turned my phone off and went to bed, and I'm sure there are many others that do the same. There needs to be multiple levels of alerts for different events, like what the US uses. Keep the current klaxon warning for stuff like "Forest fire imminent, evacuate immediately", and put the amber alerts to regular text notifications

[GGG]

Why isn’t an Amber alert a real emergency?

What I would like to know is if they track Canada wide the number of tips that come in as a result of the alert system and if those tips helped to lead to the rescue of the children in the alert.

If let’s say there is a 10% success rate of a tip received as a result of the alert then we should all suck it up.

So hopefully they are collecting data and after about a year of the current system evaluate the locations successful tips are coming from and if the program is effective at generating useful information. Then you tweak based on the data.

Right now this debate it two groups of people without the key information to make the decision. So for now the prudent thing is to let the law enforcement agencies operate this how they believe is best than evaluate once data is available.

[TheScorpion]

I also got the alert very early this morning. Phone just buzzed once, no doomsday sound or anything else. Weird stuff, every time I'd get one in Ontario my phone would go nuts.

[btimbit]

I don't think complaining about the alert should be such a taboo thing, I wouldn't mind it being like a text message where people awake will get it but people asleep will see it when they wake up. I didn't care this morning because I was already up anyway, and really even otherwise I wouldn't care much as I'd just roll over, clear the alert and go back to bed. But seeing people jump over anyone that didn't like the wake-up call makes me roll my eyes, it seems like a legitimate complaint to me.


Interestingly, It only made the noise on one of my phones. On the other it was silent

[Fuzz]

Responding to GGG, an Amber Alert is a real emergency, but it isn't really an actionable emergency for the general population, particularly at 3am. A flash flood, fire, nuclear attack etc are immediate actionable emergencies where the person getting an alert will need to do something. A missing kid isn't going to get found any quicker by a person sleeping. I think there is a real danger that these things going off every 2 weeks at 2 am is going to cause people to 100% ignore all emergency alerts, which obviously could have ill effects.


Just so I don't get howled at for my opining, I didn't get woken up, and I haven't ever been bothered by them, so I am not complaining, I'm just trying to be logical here.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Responding to GGG, an Amber Alert is a real emergency, but it isn't really an actionable emergency for the general population, particularly at 3am. A flash flood, fire, nuclear attack etc are immediate actionable emergencies where the person getting an alert will need to do something. A missing kid isn't going to get found any quicker by a person sleeping. I think there is a real danger that these things going off every 2 weeks at 2 am is going to cause people to 100% ignore all emergency alerts, which obviously could have ill effects.


Just so I don't get howled at for my opining, I didn't get woken up, and I haven't ever been bothered by them, so I am not complaining, I'm just trying to be logical here.

You insensitive JERKFACE!!

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by GGG

Why isn’t an Amber alert a real emergency?

What I would like to know is if they track Canada wide the number of tips that come in as a result of the alert system and if those tips helped to lead to the rescue of the children in the alert.

If let’s say there is a 10% success rate of a tip received as a result of the alert then we should all suck it up.

So hopefully they are collecting data and after about a year of the current system evaluate the locations successful tips are coming from and if the program is effective at generating useful information. Then you tweak based on the data.

Right now this debate it two groups of people without the key information to make the decision. So for now the prudent thing is to let the law enforcement agencies operate this how they believe is best than evaluate once data is available.

Well for a select few people it definitely is. The problem is for the rest of the population of Alberta there is absolutely nothing they can do about it, and treating all alerts the same will eventually get people to stop caring about them entirely if the amber alerts continue to be so common. A regular text alert for these would inform everyone already awake and out of their homes, so they can keep an eye out and report anything suspicious. For everyone asleep they see the notification when they wake up, instead of being pissed off that they were woken up and shut their phone off completely as a result

Unless the expectation really is that we need to wake everyone up so they can all immediately start searching the area, the current system needs to change

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Responding to GGG, an Amber Alert is a real emergency, but it isn't really an actionable emergency for the general population, particularly at 3am. A flash flood, fire, nuclear attack etc are immediate actionable emergencies where the person getting an alert will need to do something. A missing kid isn't going to get found any quicker by a person sleeping. I think there is a real danger that these things going off every 2 weeks at 2 am is going to cause people to 100% ignore all emergency alerts, which obviously could have ill effects.


Just so I don't get howled at for my opining, I didn't get woken up, and I haven't ever been bothered by them, so I am not complaining, I'm just trying to be logical here.

I think the statement that it isn’t an actionable emergency is what needs testing. If as a result of these alerts good tips are being generated leading to successfully finding these kids then for some people this information is actionable and to reach those people involved inconveniencing them. If no good tips are generated or the people generating the tips can be separated from the people not able to action becuase they are sleeping then it would be good to adjust the system but if they can’t then the blanket approach is reasonable.

Would people (not just fuzz) have a different opinion on this story if it ended by saying as a result of the amber alert we received a tip that led to the recovery of the child? If it works, and the swath of people it goes to is required, would you still be against it?

[Joborule]

How often are amber alerts both in this province and nationally? If they are more frequent than other critical alerts - that require a immediate action from those who get it - then I'm changing my tune from nothing should be done to it, to perhaps some tweaking should be considered.

If a high portion of the population can't really do anything about it, then it isn't worth waking them up in the middle of the night if their phone settings is set to silent/DND. Getting these alerts multiple times a year is just going to tune people out if they become annoyed with getting woken up unexpectedly for something they can't act upon.

It's important that the importance of these alerts don't get diminished. Amber alerts are very important, and I'm not saying the current system isn't the best way of going about it, but I think it's fair to say that these type of alerts are different from life threatening events to an entire population. So they may need to be treated differently. It's important though that the effectiveness isn't negated by doing this though. Ideally changes or not, the results should be the same as it is now. (Or better)

It is worth discussing. It's brand new, so make adjustments as needed if necessary.

[Reggie Dunlop]

I keep my phone on my nightstand and I vaguely recall the alarm going off. I went back to sleep immediately.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop

I keep my phone on my nightstand and I vaguely recall the alarm going off.

I don't recommend wearing headphones when the alert goes off.

[Smartcar]

Originally Posted by GGG

Would people (not just fuzz) have a different opinion on this story if it ended by saying as a result of the amber alert we received a tip that led to the recovery of the child? If it works, and the swath of people it goes to is required, would you still be against it?

According to the news there were about 15 tips and the kids were found unharmed in Sylvan Lake so that’s great. But I’d expect the tips all came from people who were awake at 5am. If not then maybe it’s ok to wake ppl up.