Which Missing Persons Alerts Exist Besides AMBER? Inside America’s Alert Network

Born in the wake of the 1996 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, AMBER Alerts (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) became the best-known public safety tool for locating abducted children. Today the network spans radio and TV broadcasts, highway signs and cell phones. And it works. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, at least 1,268 children have been recovered because of AMBER Alerts as of December 31, 2024.

But AMBER Alerts aren’t the only tool law enforcement and government agencies use to help those in need. Federal, state and logical agencies can deploy a series of specialized systems to mobilize public assistance.

As the United States’s aging population continues to grow, programs to protect vulnerable senior citizens have become increasingly necessary. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, six out of 10 of those with the disease will wander or lose their ability to find their way home or to safety at least once.

Designed to work similar to AMBER alerts, Silver Alerts are limited to individuals over the age of 60 and include physical descriptions of the missing person and their last known whereabouts and their home location. 

The first state to enact what would later be known as Silver Alerts was Colorado in 2006, followed by, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia, with Georgia’s legislation coming in the wake of the 2004 death of Atlanta resident Mattie Moore. While legislation to create a federal level Silver Alert has failed in Congress, 36 states have Silver Alert programs or similar missing senior systems in place.

Blue Alerts provide information to law enforcement agencies, media and the public about criminals who have killed, injured or pose a serious threat to law enforcement. Florida created the first law enforcement alert system in 2008, followed by Texas the same year. Today, 37 states currently have Blue Alert programs. 

In 2015, Congress passed the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act, named in honor of two New York City Police officers killed in the line of duty when they were ambushed in their patrol car in Brooklyn in December 2014. While the bill didn’t create a federal-level Blue Alert system, its goal is to improve coordination and dispense information between state and local governments to apprehend criminals involved in crimes against law enforcement, help find an officer who is missing in connection with their official duties and provide notification of serious threats threat to a law enforcement official.

While AMBER Alerts have proved remarkably effective, there are many cases where a missing person may not meet the strict criteria required to issue an AMBER Alert (confirmed abduction that places a child in imminent danger). To bridge that gap, the Department of Justice developed the Endangered Missing Advisory (EMA) model: a flexible template that states and agencies can use to quickly publicize missing-person cases that do not meet AMBER thresholds but appear dangerous

In August 2022, 16-year-old Kiely Rodni went missing after attending a party in Truckee, Calif. Because law enforcement had no evidence she was abducted, they were unable to issue an AMBER Alert. Instead, police issued an EMA for Rodni in hopes of locating her. This alert proved unsuccessful when Rodni’s body was later recovered from a reservoir where she had died inside of her car. Still, EMAs have proven to be effective as an additional tool for non-AMBER Alert cases. 

Taken together, AMBER, Silver, Blue and EMAs form the backbone of the nation’s alert network. To reach people who fall outside those criteria, state and local agencies also deploy several specialized systems.

Named after Ashanti Billie, a 19-year-old woman abducted and murdered in Norfolk, Va., in 2017, the Ashanti Alert is designed to locate adults between the ages of 18 and 64. The law creates a voluntary nationwide communication network to aid in the search and recovery of adults for alerts issued at the stale and local level.

Several Western states have passed legislation to create alert systems for Native Americans who have gone missing, including New Mexico’s Turquoise Alert and Arizona’s Emily Law, passed in response to the disappearance and death of 14-year-old Emily Pike. 

Created in 2019, Texas’s Camo Alert is designed to help law enforcement locate missing current or former members of the U.S. armed forces, specifying whether the individual has mental health issues or poses a danger to themselves or others. 

AMBER, Silver, Blue, EMAs and other programs all serve the same goal. Turn the public into partners by releasing reliable details to help bring people home and stop further harm. When minutes matter, speed and clear information can make the difference between a missing person and a safe return.