SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 NEWS)- Police issued an Amber Alert on Thursday with very limited information to go on. They did believe a girl may have been in danger, but there is no doubt that the criteria set forth by National guidelines to issue an amber alert.
The activation of the Amber Alert is predicated on the situation meeting five different criteria.
Sherriff Jim Winder with the Unified Police said, “We do not have a confirmed abduction.”
A child must be in risk of serious bodily injury or death. There must be sufficient descriptive information, and in this case, all the police knew is the girl may have been 8 years-old, she had blonde hair and she was wearing a blue dress.
“Really what we were trying to do is identify this 8 year-old girl,” Lt. Don Hutson said, “We really tried to put out as much description about the girl in hopes somebody would call out and say that's my daughter… and we never really got that.”
The child must be under the age of 18 to qualify for an Amber Alert. A law enforcement agency should know the name of the child so it can be entered into the National Crime Information Center’s system so the search can be expanded.
With such limited information, why did the Unified Police Department issue an Amber Alert?
'Maybe this is something that we need to talk about. We will debrief this and see if this is something we can do better in the future,” Hutson said.
The Department said they erred on the side of caution.
“Of course we hope this is an innocent circumstance, but if it was my kid, I'd want this spun up as well,” Winder said.
The feds feared relying on limited information and emotion would lead to overuse of the alert, creating a “cry wolf” situation that the public may no longer take seriously, and thus weaken its effectiveness.
“Right now we are in the situation where we don't have anyone missing.. or an explanation of what occurred,” Hutson said.
The police did do a background check on the witness, and they say they had several people come forward saying they did see a young girl in a blue dress walking on the sidewalk in the area where only the witness says she saw her snatched.
Detectives say the only way they could get the word out quickly to get more help is by issuing the Amber Alert, but whether it was the right call is obviously up for debate.
