MILWAUKEE – A new bill being circulated in the Wisconsin state legislature is aiming to fill in the gaps of the state’s Amber Alert system. State Senator LaTonya Johnson is one of the bill’s sponsors, and she joined Wisconsin’s Afternoon News to discuss the bill.
“There are a whole slew of children out there who won’t qualify for an Amber Alert,” Johnson said.
The new bill would adapt Wisconsin’s existing Silver Alert infrastructure, which is used for missing seniors, to be used for kids who don’t qualify for an Amber Alert. Johnson said the Amber system is primarily to deal with child abductions specifically.
“This bill would basically unify the standards and the resources to meet the same qualifications throughout the entire state,” Johnson said.
Under Wisconsin’s current Amber Alert criteria, the statewide alert is only sent if a child is in danger of serious bodily harm or death and there is a description of a suspect or suspect vehicle in addition to basic descriptive information about the child.
An Amber Alert was not sent, even though Milwaukee Police tried to request one from the state Department of Justice, in the case of Prince McCree. The five-year-old McCree was the subject of a missing persons investigation that ended up with McCree being found dead a day later.
Johnson, who lives five houses down the street from McCree’s family, said the new alert would be called the “Prince alert” in his memory.
“There were individuals on our own block who went to bed that night that didn’t even know that he was missing that woke up that morning to find out that he was dead,” she said.
Since 2003, there have only been 54 AMBER Alerts issued. According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, 76 children aged 8 or younger go missing in the state every year.
“That shows just how significant it is for a need for something else to help to complement the Amber Alert,” Johnson said.
The bill has yet to be assigned to committees, and it is not clear yet whether its bipartisan backing will translate into broader support in the legislature. Johnson said that the legislators behind the bill are working to fast-track it to success.
“We’re trying to make sure that we get it enacted this year because we know summer is coming, kids are going to be out of school, and so we want to make sure that we have every precaution available,” Johnson said.
