Toronto police say they have again received calls from people complaining about an Amber Alert, this one issued on Tuesday evening to help find five missing children.
Officer Alex Li took to Twitter appealing to the public to show “compassion and understanding” rather than frustration over the alerts.
“The Toronto Police and Toronto Police Service Operations have been receiving calls from the public complaining about the Amber Alert,” he wrote.
“Please do not call police to complain, instead find compassion and have the understanding to help locate these children! Amber Alerts are issued for a reason.”
The alert was issued by the Niagara Regional Police Service shortly before 5 p.m. for five children allegedly abducted by their father sometime between Sept. 19 and Sept. 25. It expired later that evening, but police said the children were still missing.
Evalyn, 5, Mattias, 10, Sovereign MacDermid, 11, Eska, 13, and Magnus, 14, were last seen in Jordan in the town of Lincoln, Ont., around 50 kilometres east of Hamilton.
The children’s father Ian MacDermid is described as being six feet tall and 280 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair and facial hair, and was last seen driving a gold or beige pickup truck.
“Requesting an Amber Alert is not something we take lightly,” Niagara police media relations office Const. Phil Gavin told CTV News Channel.
“We recognize that we’ve impacted thousands of people around this province but we wouldn’t do that if we didn’t believe it to be important.
“We know that the Amber Alerts … in the past year, (show that) people don’t remain in the community where it (the abduction) occurred — they travel,” he said.
“So just because you live a distance away from Niagara doesn’t mean they couldn’t be in your neighbourhood.”
The five previous Amber Alerts issued this year in Ontario, some of which have taken place in the middle of the night, have all attracted complaints from the public.
A Toronto woman has called on the Ontario government to fine those who waste emergency dispatcher’s time with complaints.
— With files from The Canadian Press
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-police-receive-complaints-about-amber-alert-issued-for-5-missing-children-1.4619793
