The nation's 43,000 airport security screeners will get notices and photos of abducted children as part of the AMBER Alert network's quest to find missing people, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday.
Screeners will be looking to stop abductors from taking children on planes. AMBER Alerts are abduction notices sent to authorities and to media outlets, asking for help in locating a missing child. Airports are going to start receiving the bulletins starting today.
"This can be tremendously effective," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which helps disseminate the alerts. "You're talking about 43,000 TSA officers around the country."
TSA screeners check 2 million people a day at about 450 commercial airports around the USA.
"The goal is to get that (alert) to TSA officers within minutes," said Gale Rossides, a TSA associate administrator. Screeners "meet so many children every day, they may actually notice something that's out of character with a child."
The Justice Department says the AMBER Alert system has helped save more than 200 children since it began in 1996 after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped near Dallas and murdered.
Many abductors are non-custodial parents who try to get children out of their home neighborhood quickly and often use commercial airplanes, Allen said. "Time is the enemy in these cases," he said. Search efforts are typically focused in the child's home community.
The TSA effort is the first time AMBER Alerts will go directly to airports, Allen said.
TSA airport security directors will receive the notices and distribute photos and written descriptions of the child and potential abductor to airport and airline officials, as well as to the airport's screeners.
"The entire airport community will be on the lookout for the child and the abductor," Allen said.
Don Thomas, a screener at Orlando International Airport, said the alerts could help security overall by encouraging screeners to look more closely at passengers. "Sometimes we get complacent," said Thomas, who is president of a small screeners' union. "This will put us more on alert."
Federal air marshals have been receiving AMBER Alerts for a couple of years on their personal digital assistants, or PDAs.
The alerts are issued when authorities believe a child is in danger of being seriously hurt or killed and when the victim and abductor can be described.
