Thursday, February 17, 2000
Police, media mobilize for kids
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — An unprecedented network of law-enforcement and media stands ready to mobilize in a new way the next time a local child is kidnapped.
When investigators determine a child's disappearance to be critical, they can now immediately notify every television and radio station in Greater Cincinnati.
Each station will broadcast an alert with crucial information, such as any suspect's description and vehicle. Detectives hope the added eyes and ears of people, particularly those in their ve hicles, will lead to fast sightings.
More than 60 officers and deputies from Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio turned out Wednesday morning to help unveil the Tristate Abduction Alert Program.
“It's not really a matter of if we want to cooperate,” said Dearborn County Sheriff Dave Wismann. “We must work together to protect our children.”
The idea is modeled after similar programs across the country. The first, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is called the Amber Plan and named after a 9-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed there in 1996. A radio listener suggested it.
Here, the idea came from Edgewood Police Chief Steve Vollmar. He got support from the Northern Kentucky Police Chiefs Association, then from counterparts in Hamilton County and beyond.
“This is no simple matter,” Chief Vollmar said. “These are very special cases that have twists in them that we don't see that often.”
The chiefs also found support in a grieving mother — Peggy Garrett, whose daughter, Amber, was abducted in Harrison and killed in 1991.
She praised police investigators who worked to find her daughter but said more help could only have been better. Harrison Police Chief Chuck Lindsey agreed.
“I believe that the media is a very powerful tool,” Ms. Garrett said. “If only one child, one child, can be found, it's well worth the effort.”
Alerts elsewhere have helped find kids children alive, — not many, unfortunately, said Pete Banks of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. One in Texas led a kidnapper to put the child out of his truck along an interstate. He heard his description on the radio.
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