EP 132: The Origins of AMBER Alert

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the origins of the AMBER Alert system. We here in the United States (as well as a number of other countries) have a system known as the AMBER Alert. I’m sure all of our American listeners (and maybe some of our international listeners too) are nodding their heads along right now, thinking back to a time when they saw an Amber Alert scroll across the bottom of their TVs, saw it on a billboard along the freeway, or were terrified when it loudly came across as an alert on their phone.

Essentially, what an AMBER Alert is is an emergency alert message that goes out via television, radio stations, text message, and more, in the event of a child abduction. The alert will include information such as the possible name and description of the potential abductor as well as a description of their vehicle, including the license plate number, if this information is known. All of this is in an attempt to get help from the public in returning the child to their home as quickly as possible. If you happen to be driving along the freeway and see the wanted vehicle, you can call it into your local police station and help make an arrest much sooner than the police could do on their own.

Now, again, this is a system that most - if not, all - of us in the United States are familiar with. It is a system that has been in place nearly my entire life, having been established in 1996. But what many people don’t know are the origins of Amber Alert and what led to such a system being put in place.

That is what we will be discussing this week on the podcast.

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- Rachel and Leah