A rant on amber alerts

Sorry for this sort of meaningless post, I just had to vent. I was getting into my car today and basically had a heart attack. I don't think I scare easily, I don't believe in ghosts, etc. but what really kills me are unexpected noises. Even if I know I am in a relatively safe place- my car in my driveway in a somewhat out of the way neighborhood- I will jump out of my skin if a noise catches me off guard. So I checked my phone and what is it? Not a tornado warning, or anything I care about, but an amber alert. I have a heart attack because some 2 year old in a part of Fl I haven't even heard of went missing. A 2 year old.

That a 2 year old went missing really is bad parenting. And yes, I say went missing and not 'was abducted,' because in recent times most amber alerts aren't abductions by strangers. Bad parenting aside, what REALLY boils my blood is that these alerts don't exist for adults. I could straight up get murdered and the only people that would give a damn would be the people that know me. Meanwhile if a child even goes missing, the whole United States needs to know about it.

How is that just? Now, I won't try to judge my own life as a whole. An unbiased third party would be a better judge. But at the VERY LEAST I have contributed tax dollars to society. Switching from the particular to the general, I would have to ask what children contribute? Nothing. Yet if they disappear, everyone is supposed to be out looking for them. IMO, society should give resources to those that contribute to it. If an adult goes missing or is killed, society loses their tax dollars, and everything else they have to offer. Their family, friends, and coworkers will feel their loss. If a kid goes missing, society loses nothing and only their immediate nuclear family feels their loss. It makes no sense. Amber alerts, to me, are a waste of resources. It would be like spending your rent money on lollipops and allowing yourself to get evicted. Someone should start a petition to have (silent) alerts for missing adults AND to silence amber alerts by default.

After my heart attack I disabled them, but they should be silent by default. Sorry for the long winded rant. I just had to vent and I can't to anyone IRL because how dare I not care about the chyllldrun.

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.

Makes me glad I have a shitty pre-paid flip phone and don't get these stupid fucking things. I don't give a good goddamn about someone's brat on the other side of the country that wandered away in WalMart or who stayed 15 minutes longer than normal at their non-custodial parent's house. This does not qualify as a nationwide alert - it's a personal/domestic problem and nothing else. If it's determined the kid hasn't just flounced off somewhere and it's genuinely lost, get the police involved. Once their efforts have failed, then issue an alert and there's no fucking reason to issue it anywhere other than the area it happened in as well as maybe a couple surrounding counties. If a toddler goes missing in Arizona, what the fuck is someone in Maine gonna do about it?

Meanwhile, missing adult alerts might be on the local news or passed around on Facebook. They don't reach the far ends of the continent like Amber alerts. But then, why would they? Adults don't matter. Unless, of course, they're mommies. Then everybody cares.

I'd say probably 95 percent of the time (at least), Amber alerts are bullshit. The "missing/abducted" kids usually just wandered away from Mommy because she was glued to her phone for 45 straight minutes and didn't notice her kid scamper off to the toy aisle, or it's a tard that managed to unlock the door and took a nap in the neighbor's dog house. Maybe if parents could actually be bothered to do their damn jobs, there wouldn't be so many Amber alerts. Imagine that! Watching your kids means they won't run off and you won't have to waste everyone's else's time looking for your fucking kid!

There have been at least 400 Amber Alerts in this state, and only 2 were not custody battles or stupid teens running away because they didn't get the latest iPhone. Both were teens (good kids), stranger abductions, and both found murdered. Only one custody battle I would say the kid was in danger (infant, mother and new BF found shot to death by father.) Most are stupid custody battles where one did not return on schedule.

No one could blame me for turning off the alert in the phone.

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From a bottle cap message on a Magic Hat #9 beer: Condoms Prevent Minivans
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I want to pick up a bus full of unruly kids and feed them gummi bears and crack, then turn them loose in Hobby Lobby to ransack the place. They will all be wearing T shirts that say "You Could Have Prevented This."

I've often said, what would law enforcement do with all the extra time if there were no domestic problems?

That's why I have such a problem with assholes who believe people without kyds should "pay more" for Da Future. Uh no, about getting payment from all these assholes who are USING police services and clogging up Fambilee Court with their marital problems and custody dramas. And their womb products are sucking up services in the schools and juvenile systems, mostly due to shitty parenting.

Can't blame people for being desensitized and turning off their alerts. 99% of these issues are due to people breeding with unsuitable partners and being shitty parents.

I agree with all of the above.

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contemplativeintrovert

After my heart attack I disabled them, but they should be silent by default. Sorry for the long winded rant. I just had to vent and I can't to anyone IRL because how dare I not care about the chyllldrun.

I too disabled my Amber freak outs. Outa the blue noises startle me, so it is best the fuckers are silenced.

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Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

Thought we had discussed it here, but I can't find it using the search feature. Maybe it was on the other forum we used for a while when this one was unavailable.

Several years ago in a city not far from me, a reverse Amber Alert went out in the middle of the night—I mean around 2 am—in which household land lines were called with a recorded message about a missing child. Long story short, it turned out to be a spoiled teen girl who had had a history of running away from home and had done it again. She was later recovered unharmed. Her family had some kind of connections with the city that led to the alert being sent in the first place.

But as the media there mentioned, the stink over waking people in the wee hours over a runaway was intense, and that hasn't happened in that area since. The question arose, what was waking everyone supposed to accomplish? Did the authorities think everyone was going to form some posse to look for the girl?

One of the first settings that I created for my new smartphone a year ago was to shut down any Amber Alerts.

For all of my life, I have been a supporter of social justice, spent decades in social work and running emergency preparation courses.
Amber Alerts have been so pervasively useless that they have pissed off a person who would have been so supportive.

Ours are disabled too. So many people are cutting the things off or ignoring them.... What good are they? I still get them on my cable TV but, for some reason, not as many as we got on the phone. Every time I see one I tell dh.... "somebody had a fight with their live in BF again" or "Teen bratleigh ran away again because moomie or duhdy took her phone away" We laugh... turn it off... and never give it another thought.

It's bad enough having them spam your SMS messages with this garbage, but to have them CALL YOU AT 2am to bleat about some tantruming brat running away because daddy didn't buy them a hot pink Mercedes for their 16th is bullshit.

Amber alerts are the current version of the DARE anti-drug program...something that law enforcement is doing that's proven ineffective, but they're afraid to stop because then it looks like they don't give a shit. There's been number-crunching on it (too lazy to get the links right now), and amber alerts really don't make a difference and/or save kids' lives. "They work! Look at the kids who were found!"--those are kids who would have been found using conventional, pre-amber alert methods because their lives weren't seriously endangered, and they were kidnapped by someone who wasn't going to kill and/or assault them--generally the kid wandered off, or was taken by a non-custodial parent. The most that alerts do in those circumstances is maybe allow the child to be found a little faster. Thus, the alerts are a waste of resources. . If the child is taken by a person with intent to harm, that person is much, much harder to find and his/her actions are harder to predict. Those are the times when a kid's life is in danger, and amber alerts aren't worth shit during those times and thus are still a waste of resources.

No one wants to admit that amber alerts are a waste, though, just like police departments clung to those failed anti-drug campaigns. Both are cases of "well, at least we're doing something!".

I held on to my old flip phone until I had to upgrade when my provider upgraded their network. One of the first things I did with my smartphone was turn off amber alerts.

Oh, and I have seen a couple of "silver alerts" in my state...they're for alzheimer's patients and other vulnerable seniors. Not sure if there's data on them yet.

Here are the criteria for Amber ALerts in Texas:

Is this child 17 years of age or younger, whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose disappearance law enforcement has determined to be unwilling which poses a credible threat to the child's safety and health; and if abducted by a parent or legal guardian, was the abduction in the course of an attempted murder or murder?

OR

Is this child 13 years of age or younger, who was taken (willingly or unwillingly) without permission from the care and custody of a parent or legal guardian by:

someone unrelated and more than three years older,

or

another parent or legal guardian who attempted or committed murder at the time of the abduction?

Is this child in immediate danger of sexual assault, death or serious bodily injury?

Has a preliminary investigation verified the abduction and eliminated alternative explanations for the child's disappearance?

Is sufficient information available to disseminate to the public to help locate the child, a suspect, or the vehicle used in the abduction

I would like to point out that almost none of the recent Amber Alerts meet this criteria. Fucking stop it.

No stats on silver alerts, but this site shows the success stories. Because they have cars, they wander a lot farther away.

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From a bottle cap message on a Magic Hat #9 beer: Condoms Prevent Minivans
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I want to pick up a bus full of unruly kids and feed them gummi bears and crack, then turn them loose in Hobby Lobby to ransack the place. They will all be wearing T shirts that say "You Could Have Prevented This."

There was one today that scared the shit out of me. I disabled them on my old phone, but forgot after I got a new one. It originated in Staten Island, which might as well be another state to those of us in the other boroughs. What do they expect us to do, drive around the city and look?

That loud, obnoxious noise came through to about 20 phones at the same time when I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office today. Scared the shit out of everyone. I heard a lot of annoyed murmuring from people, yet I was the only one who disabled the amber alerts as soon as that came in.

Amber Alerts are basically the same as car alarms now: a vast majority of the time, they're false alarms or bullshit, and since you hear them so often, you just don't even give a shit when you hear yet another one. Nobody leaps up at the sound of a car alarm to see who's potentially breaking into said car because odds are someone just set it off by breathing on it wrong. Amber Alerts anymore are the result of kids that wandered off in stores or bratty teens who ran away to "teach their parents a lesson," so nobody really bats an eye when yet another Amber Alert comes up.

Aside from the immediate family of the "missing" kid, no one really cares.

The original purpose of an Amber Alert was to give the public information that would help locate the kid. THEREFORE, the criteria was it had to be an ABDUCTION, a highly suspected based on evidence abduction or a witnessed by a reliable source abduction. In addition to that the information had to include things like a description of the abductor or their mode of transportation, and/or the place from whence the brat was taken, etc...Now though, they call an Amber Alert if a kid doesn't get home from school on time, a 17 year old runs away for the tenth time, or duddy keeps it longer than he's supposed to for his visitation. This is a COMPLETE waste of time, energy, and money. If the non custodial Duddy or Moo Dearest has the kid it should NOT be considered an abduction for the public to worry about, period. It is occasionally a police matter, but more often than not it's something that needs to be sorted out in famblee court. These breeders have ruined an otherwise valuable service for many who could actually benefit from it, AS USUAL.

HOW, pray tell, can I help spot an "abducted" kid if I don't know the location or what the alleged perpetrator even looks like? The old, "He's three feet tall and has blonde hair and green eyes..." is lost completely on me as it describes every Dennis the Menace in town.

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If YOU are the "exception" to what I am saying, then why does my commentary bother you so much?
I don't hate your kids, I HATE YOU!

I forgot to mention, even the fucking Weather Channel website posts alerts. The weather channel is intended to warn you if a severe thunderstorm, tornado warning or watch, & other significant weather advisories, not missing brat alerts, especially since its likely a cry wolf involving the aforementioned non custodial breeder having the brat for six seconds longer than arranged, runaway attention whores, & negligent cunts in the supermarket spazzing out when her undisciplined brat inevitably wanders off, because she wasn't watching the parasite.

@Nobodylikesyourkidsbutyou

Exactly! It's like they expect you to throw off the sheets, slip into some boots by your bed, grab a shotgun, and go hunting the kidnapper in the dark on foot. {I don't Know if that is a scene in a movie or what, but that is the image that comes to mind when amber alerts come up}.

Amber alerts are just so nonsensical it isn't even funny. A) they aren't localized enough to be practical B ) They give no description of the child and C) They falsely assume that strangers are going to go to the ends of the earth to stop a kidnapping. No offense to lurking moos, but I am only going to get involved in violence if I am defending myself, or my immediate family or friends. And that's another thing, how are people supposed to know who is genuinely being kidnapped, and who has bratty kids falsely crying stranger danger? Haven't there been Instances where kids lied to the general public about being abducted by their custodial parent? What then? Are people to go up to random adults with screaming kids and punch them in the face in the hope they are saving a child? The whole thing is just

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.

Kind of related though not the same: In Pittsburgh, we are now having a serious leak in one of the reservoirs and could run out of water (we have not yet). I tune into the news to find out the latest on the leak but now there is Breaking News!: The Catholic diocese has decided to close one catholic school and combine some others, and they spent nearly 5 minutes on this one story. Who the F cares?! Sometimes there is breaking news about sports, but it is hardly breaking news that a kid's catholic school might be different next year.

When I hear Breaking News! I think of weather alerts, traffic issues, serious crimes, something Donald is up to or maybe we won the Super Bowl but catholic schools? What is wrong with the media that this is on all 3 Pittsburgh stations?

Oh, and it took almost 20 minutes to find out about the leak and where there might be a water buffalo if they don't fix it.

I got a new phone and saw it had a fucking amber alerts thing, turned on by default. I don't even live in the US! Naturally that shit got turned right off. The only alerts I want are ones about things which might affect me, like dangerous weather or terrorist attacks.

As for things affecting other people, of course I'll be a responsible citizen and call the relevant authorities if I observe something, but seeing as I am not an emergency response worker, there is no reason for me to need to urgently know about things which don't affect me.

Oh, I got that Amber Alert the same time as you did - Florida is known as "The Amber Alert State" for a reason.

I get one of those stupid things on my cell phone at least once every goddamn week.

Mr S and I plan on leaving this Hell-Hole later on this year.

I hate FloriTard (The whole state smells fishy!)

When I get a new phone I plow through the settings and turn off every thing that would disturb me during my sleep. The first thing to go is Amber Alerts, second is the Facebook App. If I wanna Facebook on my phone I open it in the web browser.

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Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!