Question: What’s the difference between an AMBER Alert and a Silver Alert? — Whitey Harwood
Answer: Nona Best, supervisor at the N.C. Center for Missing Persons, helped shed some light on what distinguishes the two types of alerts.
AMBER stands for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”
An AMBER Alert goes out if law enforcement determines a child, 17 years old or younger, has been abducted.
The acronym was derived in honor of Amber Hagerman, a third-grader from Arlington, Texas, who was abducted and whose body was found four days later in a creek.
The child could not have been taken by a parent, unless the child is in danger.
The child also must not be deemed to have run away or gone missing voluntarily.
A Silver Alert is issued for people of all ages who are missing and deemed to be “cognitively impaired,” Best said.
The missing person has been deemed to be suffering from a mental issue like dementia, or he or she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hasn’t taken his or her medication.
Best said the Silver Alerts are defined on a case-by-case basis, and law enforcement officials evaluate if the individual is a danger to themselves.
In a Silver Alert, a custodian of the missing person has to have submitted a missing person’s report to the local law enforcement agency where the person went missing.
While Silver Alerts are issued regionally to media outlets via a “web portal,” Best said, AMBER Alerts are issued statewide through the emergency alert system.
Have an Ask Us question? Send it to reporter Jim Holt at jholt@salisburypost.com