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American Morning
Praise for California's New Amber Alert System
Aired August 02, 2002 - 09:15 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: There is a lot of praise this morning, and rightfully so, for California's new Amber Alert system, after those teenagers were found and rescued yesterday. Still, the girls endured a terrible 12-hour ordeal. Police say they were sexually assaulted by kidnapper Roy Ratliff, who was already wanted on rape charges back in Las Vegas. Police shot and killed him when he brandished a gun. Even more terrifying, police say that Ratliff was just minutes away from killing his captives.
From San Francisco this morning, Marc Klaas knows all too well the pain of losing a child. His daughter, Polly, kidnapped and murdered back in 1993.
Marc, good morning. Good to see you again.
MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Hi, Bill.
HEMMER: Do you think these girl are found within 12 hours without the Amber Alert?
KLAAS: No, and I've got to say that yesterday kind of day that I live for -- systems worked, protocols worked, children were saved and a piece of human garbage was flushed into the bowels of Hell.
HEMMER: Wow.
KLAAS: Well, it's true. And it wouldn't have happened without this Amber Alert, which incidentally is only an ad hoc system at this point. We will be working to create the comprehensive Amber Alert over the course of the next few months.
HEMMER: Tell me this, Marc, why is with this system in place statewide in California -- and we were led to believe when Samantha Runnion was taken a couple of weeks ago that there was an Amber Alert that was activated in California. We're now told that this is the first time it's ever been used statewide. I don't know it's fine point or not, but maybe you can address that, number one, and also address why you think this system was effective in this case?
KLAAS: Sure, both of those points are very well taken. There was a variation on the Amber Alert called the Care Alert, which was created by the attorney general in 1999, the attorney general of California, Mr. Lockler (ph), and it was a pilot program that was put in place in Orange County, and in fact, that was implemented two weeks ago. The problem, though, was that there wasn't enough media partners.
The whole concept of the Amber Alert is that law enforcement notifies the media as soon as they are able to establish that a child of a certain age has been abducted, and that that's child's life is endangered. The media then breaks into their regularly scheduled programming, using the emergency alert system, to notify the public that, in fact, this has occurred. That gives then everybody what a couple of million more eyes and ears looking for a child or looking for children in a suspect and a vehicle in this instance.
HEMMER: I find fascinating that the electronic message was flashed on the interstates throughout the freeway system throughout California, with a license plate number, the tag number. All of that just fascinates me. But I'm also of the understanding that yesterday, there was another alert that went out, that turned out to be a false alert. As we work the kinks through the system, how do you avoid that? And how do you prevent the possibility of crying wolf at some point?
KLAAS: Well, that's very well -- that, again, is a very good point. What you need is, as I said, you need a very particular criteria and, in fact, in the false alarm, there was no criteria met. It was somebody saw something, an drew a conclusion, and that resulted in an Amber Alert being activated, when in fact, it may have been some kind of a domestic dispute. You have to be very, very clear as to what you're doing. You have to be able to fulfill your criteria and you really need somebody from the top, somebody that is in a position of responsibility and an agency to be able to activate the alert itself.
But I think you have to understand that in a state like California, where you have city like Crescent City, which is closer to Vancouver, British Columbia than it is to San Diego, you have to be very, very careful about who you notify when a child goes down. If you start notifying -- if you start having Amber alerts every time somebody suspects something, you will create "cry wolf" situation and you will undermine the integrity of the system, and it won't serve children, and it won't serve society.
HEMMER: All good points, and some people talk about taking it nationwide, possibly. I think we're a long way from that.
KLAAS: Not really, no.
HEMMER: That can happen.
KLAAS: You think so.
HEMMER: That can easily happen.
KLAAS: And I know how to do it, quite frankly. I mean, really, I've got a program we'll be introducing to the governor's people today called "beyond missing," and it's really very simple. What you have to do, is you have create regions around each law enforcement agency in the state or in the country. And if do that, you can then sound the alarms within a geographic area, say a 200-mile radius, of any law enforcement agency. That then can cross state lines and certainly better serve everybody.
HEMMER: Interesting stuff. Hey, good luck with that, OK. Come back and we'll talk about that a little more in-depth, and we're running out of time here, but I know you, just like so many others, despite the rape that we found out about these two teenaged girls, they are alive today, and we've been so trained to think about the converse of that in stories like these.
Marc, thanks.
Marc Klaas in San Francisco.
Sure.
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