Multimedia Infographic: Amber Alerts

On Sept. 24, 2011, an Amber Alert was issued for an eight-year-old girl in Fort McLeod, Alta.

Less than an hour after the Amber Alert was issued, the young girl was found safe and sound in Calgary.

Cpl. Peter Nobles, Alberta RCMP Amber Alert provincial co-ordinator, says “Issuing the Amber Alert definitely did assist in the recovery and the return of the child."

Across Canada, the Amber Alert program has been credited with locating a number of abducted children, although every province has its own specific set of criteria, including different notification systems.

In order to improve the Amber Alert program when multiple provinces are involved, police across Canada have been meeting to create standard criteria for issuing an alert.

When an Amber Alert is activated in Alberta, media are interrupted instantly after the send button is pressed on the province’s web-based Amber Alert notification system called Alberta Emergency Alert.

In 2004, Nobles pressed the send button to issue an Amber Alert, immediately interrupting American Idol.

This system is a partnership with broadcasters that allows Amber Alerts to be disseminated through radio, TV, the Internet, RSS feeds, road signage and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

When an Amber Alert is issued, highway signs, like the one featured here, offer details about the abduction.

For Alberta's most recent Amber Alert, Nobles says the information from the police investigation and tips from the public came in quickly, which meant the police were able to locate the girl swiftly, but he cautions not all cases are the same.

Once the child is found, Nobles says the police will cancel the Amber Alert using the Alberta Emergency Alert system and the media relations officers will be in touch with the local media.

However, in a case where a child is not found and police believe the child may have been taken to another province, as in the recent case of three-year-old Kienan Hebert who was abducted from his home in Sparwood, B.C. near the Alberta border, an Amber Alert can be extended across multiple provinces.

Using interprovincial protocol, Nobles says police use a detailed list of contact numbers and names of key people and agencies in different provinces.

“If I want to ask British Columbia to activate their Amber Alert system for an Amber Alert that we are having in Alberta, I would have to call a number in British Columbia and speak to a person and give the person the details of the case,” he says.

“The information I give them would have to meet their criteria because the criteria do differ a little province to province,” he says.

Nobles says that having standard criteria across the country would make for a “simpler Amber Alert system.”

“We are working in co-operation to bring the Amber Alert to the same standard everywhere, which will make it better and less confusing,” says Staff Sgt. Monique Perras, the RCMP officer in charge of National Missing Children Services.

A standardized program is necessary “because it becomes confusing if you have a certain set of criteria in one province and then you launch an Amber Alert and it does not meet the criteria of the next province,” says Perras.

As chair of the National Amber Alert Working Group, Perras is working with provincial officers across Canada, with the support of broadcasters and other organizations, to create this common framework. They have been meeting since 2010 to pin down exactly what the criteria should be.

“The ultimate goal is always the same and that is to protect and save our children,” says Perras."The ultimate goal is always the same and that is to protect and save our children."

Since the Amber Alert program was adopted from the United States in 2003, there have been 58 Amber Alert activations in Canada, two of which occured within the last week. Twenty-two of these alerts have been issued in Ontario, she says.

Of the total 58 activations in Canada, three children have been found dead, Perras says.

British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec all have similar criteria for issuing Amber Alerts. A law enforcement agency must believe a child under the age of 18 has been abducted and is in danger of death or bodily harm. A law enforcement agency must also have descriptive information about one or all of the following: the child, the abductor or the vehicle. Finally, they also must believe an immediate broadcast alert will help in locating the child.

However, Perras says some provinces simply require a law enforcement agency to believe an abduction may have taken place, while others need confirmation from a law enforcement agency that an abduction has in fact taken place.

Complicating matters further, some provinces issue Amber Alerts for adults with a mental or physical disability who may have been abducted, as well as for abducted children.

Christy Dzikowicz, the director of MissingKids.ca, says, “There seems to be a general interest in standardizing it, and I definitely think are some benefits to doing so, but I also know that is going to take some time … It’s going to take some time for everybody to work through the barriers to a [set of] consistent criteria.”

Perras says she is not sure when the provinces will agree upon a standard framework, but she hopes it resembles the criteria that came out of the abduction and murder of Amber Hagerman in Texas in 1996, which sparked the Amber Alert system in the United States.

“At the end of the day, we will no doubt reach a decision where everyone will be in acceptance of what the ideal criteria is,” she says.

Roll over the Amber Alert graphic to get important facts and details about the life-saving program

Graphic Illustration by: Candice Campbell