[EAS] BLU Alert Comments.

[Ed Czarnecki]

Personally, I tend to agree with this as well - the Blue Alert should apply
to "public safety" defined broadly.  However, the fact of the matter is that
the legislation (the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act of
2015) specifies "law enforcement officer" - which directs a narrow
application.   The Act specifically ties the definition of a LEO to 42 U.S.
Code § 3796(b) which defines “law enforcement officer” as "an individual
involved in crime and juvenile delinquency control or reduction, or
enforcement of the criminal laws (including juvenile delinquency),
including, but not limited to, police, corrections, probation, parole, and
judicial officers".  

The FCC's NPRM follows the legislation in defining the proposed Blue Alert
code for law enforcement.  The disconnect is that several jurisdictions
(like NYC) are saying they want to apply this all public safety personnel
(including fire, EMT...).

And this is a bit of a disconnect for me - the FCC is considering a Blue
Alert code while several jurisdictions are already saying they're going to
go beyond what is authorized.  NYC is lobbying hard for expansive authority
to issue Blue Alerts.  However NY does not even have a Blue Alert plan yet.
NY is still circulating legislation in the assembly and senate to authorize
a Blue Alert system.  However, even here, the legislature is defining Blue
Alerts narrowly for LE personnel (as stated in the assembly version of a
bill, "Law Enforcement Officer"  means any public servant having both the
power and duty to make arrests for violations of the laws of the State of
New York, and Federal Law Enforcement Officers authorized to carry firearms
and to make arrests for violations of the laws of the United States."  So
(as usual in NY) there seems to be a disconnect between NYC and NYS.

So what happens with the Blue Alert concept?  Does the National Blue Alert
Act need to be amended to add other categories of public safety personnel?
 

On Fri, August 4, 2017, Mike McCarthy wrote:
>Otherwise, I agree that no first responder officer (fire department members
are also sworn) should be excluded from a balanced multi-discipline wide 
>dispersion bulletin. And if there is to be a BLU (or any) code, it should
apply universally to law enforcement, fire, paramedics, and EMT's (latter
are two 
>different professions here in IL.)