Idea - you're opinions please!!

[monkeytrousers]

I had an idea about the sequence of events that occurs when a child gets lots/goes missing/

The police are called and the local news announces it on their bulletins.

Why not have a public emergency address system, attached to each telegraph pole say?

Pros

It's immediate

It enables the community directly and

asks people to be directly responsible

Thousands of eyes are better than a few dozen policemen

It might have saved Jamie Bulger

It will be an immediate deterrant to abducters.

Cons

It might panic the abducter

It may put a lost child at risk from an opportunist abductor (but the majority of people are not abductors and will still be looking also, thedeterrent is still in place)

Anyone think of anymore pros and cons?

'i thought they were going to do this anyway, don't they do it in the US? signs on motorways etc '

yes, it's called an 'amber alert' after a young girl who was abducted and murdered.

it has saved a number of lives, including two 17-year-old girls whose abductor pushed them out of the car after seeing an amber alert on the motorway w/his license number. unfortunately, he had raped them both, but he had informed both he was driving them out to the desert to kill them.

why should we treat parent abductions any differently from stranger ones? i think most parents whose child's been abducted by a non-custodial parent are just as gutted at losing their child.

'Amber Alerts' are also used when a child is abducted by a parent. Makes no difference, really.

Is that like Amber Alert that they have in America?

The UK already has a Child Rescue Alert System in place, launched nationwide in March this year.

I really hope that in 40 years, my grandchildren are saying to me "Nana! Nana! Tell us again about the old days, when people were afraid of strangers!"

NQC

and the rest

I'm afraid of many strangers. There are a lot of people out there who smell awful. Especially on Lothian buses.

The thing about it being an emergency service and not commercial doesn't wash with me, either. Schools are an essential public service and there is plenty of advertising and commercial activity going on in them

There are aren't there Expat - I don't recall that many people who truly stank when I was a child... Global warming increasing sweat????

I think not, F&Z. :-P

DS1's class (Year 6) has recently been patrolling the streets with the local Community Rangers. He's been given a sweatshirt, a baseball cap and a fridge magnet inscribed with

Seen a stranger?
Tell your Community Ranger!

I think that's going a little far...

A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet.

That would make me very , Hallgerda. WTF! Grrr.

God, I must be angry if I'm cracking out the aphorisms and the emoticons. Time for a long therapeutic bike ride, to go pick up DS2 from the co-op, I think.

I agree with mp and nqc and anyone else that's said it's a bad idea. We really have to get away from this whole stranger danger paranoya. Yes children are abducted by strangers, but how often? James Bulger, sarah Payne, can anyone name any others that were abducted by strangers in the past .. say 10 years? And yet compared to that how many young children have been murdered by people they knew. Instead of creating a nation of panic, we need t be educating our children as to what is, and what isn't acceptable in terms of behavior both by strangers and also by people we know.

If we look back, most of the more well-known serial killers operated 25/35 years ago, myra hindley, fred/rosemary West, the yorkshire Ripper, so imo that just goes to show that there's no more danger now than there was 30 years ago.

you've left your ds in the supermarket?

Yes, of course, CD, so the strangers can take care of him.

(He goes to a co-op nursery. Parents do shifts. Great place.)

agree with others..

more worried about the crap the media sells to kids, pollution etc.

There have always been dodgy child abductors.

I would spend the money on really improving warning systems in social services, to stop the Victoria Climbie type of case, where kids being abused by their own families (the vast, vast majority) slip through the net.

"He's been given a sweatshirt, a baseball cap and a fridge magnet"

I read this three times because I was shocked that he'd been given a baseball bat

Then I realised my error

i am surprised this thread has fizzled away i thought it was a good idea

Thanks for that link MP. It's good to know something is in place. I'd never heard of amber alert Expat. Sound like a good idea too.

It's such an awful thing to think about, and I quite honestly cannot stay rational when I do. I think I was excited by the idea of getting people and communities to work together. (I'm a bit community obsessed at the mo, thinking up schemes)

MP, that child rescue alert system has beed adopted by all police forces in England and Wales now