Amber Alert delay:
The Arizona Department of Public Safety is looking at what can be done to avoid what happened last week, when an Amber Alert took as long as eight hours to reach some cellphone users. The problem stemmed from a temporary license plate, DPS officials say.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety will meet with other public-safety agencies involved in Arizona’s Amber Alert system to discuss potential improvements, after an alert notification was delayed last week.
The DPS, which is responsible for activating the system, wants to discuss steps that would prevent a delay like the one that occurred July 10, when authorities issued an Amber Alert for three missing children out of Marana, said DPS Trooper Crystal Moore, a department spokeswoman.
Alerts that normally transmit to cellphones did not go out, she said, adding that other notifications in the system went out immediately to Arizona Department of Transportation signs and emails.
“When the required information is submitted, the system automatically sends an emergency notification to cellphones,” Moore said, noting that the system partners with cellphone carriers.
Moore said in last week’s alert, the temporary license plate on Bedajii Harnesberry’s car prevented the system from automatically sending the Amber Alert through all systems, such as cellphones.
Harnesberry was suspected of taking her three children, ages 11, 14 and 16, whom she was not authorized to have.
Authorities said they were at the scene of the reported abduction in Marana, north of Tucson, about 11:30 a.m. and had information put into the system before noon, which should have then triggered the Amber Alert system. Some people never got a notification; others got one after a delay of five to eight hours.
“In this particular case, not enough information was available to trigger that automatic notification,” Moore said, citing the temporary license plate.
The DPS was not aware it could enter “0000,” in lieu of a regular license-plate number, to trigger the automatic notification to cellphone carriers and push the Amber Alerts out on phones.
“This is the first time we have ran into this,” said Art Brooks, Arizona Amber Alert chairman.
The children eventually were found safe in a back room of a house in Globe about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. They were more than 100 miles from their home, where they live with their grandmother.
Harnesberry was arrested for investigation of three counts of custodial interference, said Ryan Inglett, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.
Moore said a date for the Amber Alert partners to meet is pending as schedules are worked out. Those partners include Alert Sense, the Arizona Lottery, the Arizona Broadcasters Association, ADOT and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.