In 2018, when Amber Alerts started appearing on mobile devices across the province, Ontarians were divided. For some, the messages provided important information about recent child abductions that could assist in child-saving efforts—potentially meaning the difference between life and death. Others were irritated by their phones blaring in the middle of the night, baffled as to how they could possibly help recovery efforts in, say, North Bay, if they were nearly 700 kilometres away in Windsor.
Staff sergeant Stacey Whaley, who manages Ontario’s Amber Alerts, says the publicly broadcasted messages are a crucial tool for law enforcement officers. But for associate professor of criminology Skip Griffin, who has studied Amber Alerts in the United States for more than a decade, the notifications are actually far less effective in helping to recover abducted children than we’d like to believe. We put them on a phone call—Whaley in Orillia, Griffin in Nevada—and let them duke it out.
How does the Amber Alert system work in the province of Ontario?
Whaley: The OPP facilitates the program. There are 50 police services in Ontario. When an abduction occurs, the local police will check to see if it meets certain criteria. In Ontario, the criteria is met when law enforcement believes that a child under 18 years of age has been abducted, the child is in danger, and there’s descriptive information about either the child, the abductor or the vehicle. The municipality would then contact the OPP, who are the conduit to an agency called Alert Ready, which operates out of the Weather Network building in Oakville. Alert Ready sends out the alert over TV, radio and mobile devices across the province. If there’s an abduction in the northwest part of the province, we don’t isolate it to that area. Everyone gets the alert. Amber Alerts also show up on electronic highway signs, social media and lottery terminals.
Griffin: I’ve been looking at the issue for 12 or 13 years now. Most of the conclusions I’ve drawn have been based on cases in the United States. Though I fully commend the work of people like Sgt. Whaley who issue Amber Alerts with the best of intentions, I’ve come to the conclusion that the system is being oversold. It’s really not quite the child protection mechanism we would all like to think it is. There are two main reasons. First, the people involved in these abductions don’t often meet the criteria of a deadly predator. It’s far more likely you’re going to see some sort of familial abduction—something involving a non-custodial parent, another relative, a wayward babysitter, an ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend. Where Amber Alerts appear to be working is in cases where there’s not a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that these abductors posed a threat. Second, most Amber Alert recovery times are slow. In the United States, the research shows that if there’s going to be a murder, it’s going to happen pretty quickly. So, generally, there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest an Amber Alert is effective at saving children from imminent peril, harm or death.
Whaley: Well, once we’ve successfully recovered a child, we obviously can’t know whether the situation would have ended in tragedy had we not acted. All we know at that point is that the kid is safe, which is good enough. I can tell you that in 2019, eight Amber Alerts were issued in Ontario. All of them were familial abductions, and one of them did result in a homicide, when the biological father of an 11-year-old girl murdered her. So I don’t agree that there’s no risk of murder if the child gets abducted by a family member.
CONTINUE READING AT: Are Amber Alerts effective? An OPP officer and a professor debate
