[EAS] Blue Alerts Are Back

[Tim Stoffel]

What I am wondering from reading this thread, and reading the story Adrienne shared is, is there any real point to a special 'blue' alert that can't be handled in a more normal way, with a simple LEW alert?

Depicted here was a gruesome crime against a police officer. Forgetting for a moment (and with all due respect) the crime was against a police officer, we have a rather dangerous murderer on the loose who had just committed a random act of violence against another person. This kind of person needs to be stopped quickly, regardless of who it is they murdered. Use of the LEW code would allow an alert to be quickly disseminated to the public that a dangerous criminal, intent on killing, was on the loose. Of course, it could be mentioned the victim was a police officer, which I am sure triggers a stronger response in many people.

Crimes like this against police officers are (as far as I know) quite a bit less common than AMBER alerts. It seems strange to me that a special protocol is needed at all in a case like this. The criminal needs to be stopped ASAP regardless of who they murdered. Giving this sort of crime a special name or code does not really help matters IMHO. It also, as someone noted, opens the door for a lot more similar alerts. Imagine a 'chartreuse alert' for a hit-and-run incident involving pepper spray. Or a 'puce alert' for armed robbery at a paint store ;)

Alerting the public in a time-critical, dangerous situation like this should be as simple and prompt as possible. Trying to categorize a crime like this, heinous as it was, as something special, serves no purpose at all when minutes and lives matter. Use the LEW code, tell it like it is, and hope someone who gets the message knows something about where the perp is, or what they are doing.

Tim Tim Stoffel

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-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Adrienne Abbott

Call it a "Blue Alert", call it a "Cop Killer Alert", call it whatever you want, the same public which has absorbed the intricacies of Smartphones, HDTV, and terms like "OMG", "IDK" and "ELI5" can handle "Blue Alert". 

A case in point: 
Once upon a cold winter morning, just after midnight, a veteran police officer who is patrolling a college campus, stops at a kiosk to write a report. A man with a white-hot hate for cops and who has been stalking the officer for several days, sees his opportunity, sneaks up on the officer and hacks his head off with a hatchet, newly purchased from Wal-Mart. He takes the officer's pistol and leaves the area. A short time later a student finds the gruesome, bloody remains of the officer and calls 9-1-1. A cop killer is on the loose in a normally quiet college neighborhood.