Amber Alert delay exposes ‘glitches’ in system

When officials in Skagit County put out the call for an Amber Alert Wednesday evening after an estranged father kidnapped his 2-year-old son, a statewide alert should have gone out soon after. But a delay of nearly 30 minutes exposed some continuing flaws in the system.

The Washington State Patrol oversees the system for law enforcement agencies statewide. When a local agency determines an alert is needed, it contacts the WSP in Olympia. The WSP then approves the alert and activates the Law Enforcement Alerting Portal (LEAP), a system operated by a privately-held company in Utah that partners with states to provide the service.

Wednesday afternoon, Skagit County requested an Amber Alert after Ryan Thomas Hall took 2-year-old Don Byron after forcing his way into an Anacortes home. It took nearly 30 minutes before the system was activated and alerts were posted online and sent out.

So what took so long? The Washington State Patrol says some “glitches” in the portal following a recent upgrade by the company that runs amberalert.com slowed the alert from going through.

“Even Apple has trouble sometimes when they do an upgrade. We get how important this is and will continue to work through it,” spokesperson Bob Calkins says.

Calkins says the company has been very good about working with the state and fixing issues that have come up over time.

One of the glitches comes if a busy WSP dispatcher who enters the information into the system switches out of Internet Explorer before the alert has actually been processed on the other end, Calkins says.

But the head of the LEAP program says human error was actually to blame for the delay.

Sue Collins, the Amber Alert LEAP Coordinator for amberalert.com, says a lack of training and operator error led to the dispatcher improperly entering the information, delaying the alert from being processed in the system.

“The system is actually working pretty flawlessly as of late,” Collins says.

She admits there has been “some confusion” between the company and the state at times, but the company provides training and support 24/7 and will continue working to identify potential problems and improve the system.

Once the system is activated, it sends information via E-mail, Fax, Text Messages and RSS feeds to supporting law enforcement agencies, broadcasters, state agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, federal agencies and other alerting systems – such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and individual AMBER Alert subscribers.

The company isn’t the only one responsible for spreading Amber Alerts. Wireless carriers, for example, each have their own system for sending the alerts to subscribers. That can delay notification by some time. In Wednesday’s alert, notifications didn’t reach AT&T customers for 15 more minutes after the alert went active.

Still, despite the glitches and potential delays, Calkins says overall the system is working well.

“Last night we saved a child,” he says. “So while we have some room for improvement and some glitches to hunt down and resolve, the fact is the system is doing what it intended.”