Nationwide Amber Alert Bill Approved

The Senate approved without dissent Tuesday a bipartisan bill that would create a national system to help locate abducted children whose kidnappers may have crossed state lines.

The bill, which sailed through the Senate legislative process in a week, would spend up to $25 million to help states, cities and communities nationwide set up Amber alert systems, which distribute alerts when a child has been abducted.

Seventeen states already have Amber alerts. They have been credited with helping in the highly publicized rescues of several children this summer, including two teenagers found in a remote stretch of California desert and an infant snatched from a store parking lot in Texas.

The money also would pay for a national coordinator to issue alerts in states bordering the state where a kidnapping occurred. Standards would be set for triggering an alert.

Amber alerts began in Arlington, Texas, after the 1996 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman. Law enforcement agencies send the alerts to radio and television stations with descriptions of the missing children, their abductors and other information. They also are broadcast on electronic highway signs.

"The numbers of child abductions through the summer were not any more than previous years, but they seemed so much more because we knew about them and were able to do something about them," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the bill's chief author.

Hutchison, R-Texas, joined with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce the legislation last Tuesday. It was approved in committee two days later.

"If yours is a state that doesn't have an Amber alert, let's get one," Feinstein said. "Seventy-four percent of the children who are abducted are lost within the first day; therefore, if you can identify the abductor, if you can identify a license plate, you may well save the life of a child."

Similar legislation is being offered in the House by Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, and Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., has filed separate legislation that would provide $99.5 million for the program.

According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, about 725,000 children nationwide were reported missing to police last year, or about 2,000 children per day.