[EAS] BLU Alert Comments.

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2017, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> Yes and no Sean,
>
> The BLU alert as I read it is for the dissemination of an alert for a law
> enforcement officer whose well being is unknown at significant and
> imminent risk of harm or death by criminal activity without aid and
> assistance.

That is what makes it difficult. Deciding on the motivation at the time of 
an incident can be extremely emotional when you know or are the victim of 
criminal activity. Its very difficult to tell the parents of a missing 
child - no amber alert for you.  Its going to be difficult to tell a 
police chief of a dead or seriously injured officer - no blue alert 
for you.

I list the state and date of all nineteen blue alerts in my ECFS filing. 
You can google the details of each case.

If you rank the blue alerts issued since 2008, I think most reasonable 
people would agree out of 19 blue alerts at least the top three incidents 
justified some type of public warning (blue alert or other warning). On 
the other hand, I also think a resonable person would conclude the bottom 
three didn't meet the blue alert criteria and didn't justify a publc 
warning using only the information available at the time (no 20/20 
hindsight).

I would prefer different guidelines for

1. Internal law enforcement blue alerts
2. Public blue alerts

The threshold for sharing warnings through internal DOJ law-enforcement to 
law-enforcement systems should be lower.  The threshold for using FCC 
public alerting and warning systems should be higher.