Amber Alerts for missing Native youth a work in progress | Guest commentary

At 12:36 a.m. on Aug. 6, an Amber Alert blasted from every cell phone in Sedgwick County and neighboring communities, jarring us awake with the message that two small children were missing. A father had abducted both children during a domestic incident earlier that night and made threats indicating the children were in imminent danger. Law enforcement sprung into action in the middle of the night with all the manpower and resources available.

Local police dispatchers announced suspicious character alerts through the public channel, keyed to the Amber Alert. Local residents posted on social media that they were driving the streets, looking for the subject vehicle. Then at 1:24 a.m., less than an hour after the alert was issued, the good news came in: Both children had been recovered safely by the Wichita Police Department near Pawnee and Rock Road, and the suspect was in custody. At 7:41 a.m., the suspect was booked into the Sedgwick County Adult Detention Center on a host of charges including attempted aggravated battery, domestic battery, criminal threat and violation of a PFA order.

These are the types of success stories we expect to see when children are in danger, given the vast resources available to our local law enforcement, the staggering power of the internet and the recent integration of license plate recognition technology into our policing. As of April 1, 2019, 957 children nationwide had been successfully recovered through the Amber Alert program. Without this technology, and without these resources, imagine what would happen to abducted children.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine this, really. One need not travel far or wide to find communities with at risk children who are not protected by Amber Alerts. Our tribal communities are a good place to start.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an arm of the Department of Justice, reports that of nearly 73 million children in the United States, one million are Native. There were 465,676 children reported missing in 2016, and 7,700 were Native. Analyzed together, this data reflects that 1 in 157 non-Native children are likely to go missing each year, while 1 in 130 Native children are at risk.

Make no mistake, this data does not prove that Native children in our tribal communities are almost as safe as the rest of our children. It reflects a lack of reporting. The OJJDP reports that cases of missing Native youth are severely underreported because historically there has been no centralized reporting system available. Meanwhile, 5% of the 179 Amber Alerts issued for 231 children in 2016 were identified as Native youth. Imagine how many more Native youth vanished in this period with no one to come look for them. And consider the implications with trafficking: The National Congress of American Indians reported in 2015 that an estimated 40% of women who are victims of sex trafficking identify as American Indian, Alaska Native or First Nations.

Congress deserves credit for devoting resources and attention to this problem through passage of the Ashlynne Mike Amber Alert in Indian Country Act in 2018. Data taken from statewide Amber Alert Coordinators and federally-recognized tribes suggests that while many obstacles and challenges to implementation still exist, tribes are gradually signing on to local Amber Alert plans and receiving appropriate training.

The OJJDP must continue to educate and support tribal leaders on a state-by-state basis with the full support of Congress, and our Kansas delegation should seize the chance to make a difference by leading on this issue.