by Tom Parsons, Associated Press
The safe return of abducted children has two enemies, “the monster who did it, and ... time,” Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday.
“Just a two-hour delay can make a difference between finding and not finding a child,” Huckabee said in remarks opening a two-day, multi-state Summit on Missing Child Alerts.
Those at the conference included officials and broadcasters from all the states surrounding Arkansas _ Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana _ plus Kansas and Kentucky.
Huckabee stressed the importance of getting out the word of an abduction quickly, as Arkansas now does with its Morgan Nick Alert system. Many states have such systems, he said, and a major need now is to pass the word of an abduction quickly to police and news media in nearby states.
Colleen Nick, the mother of the still-missing girl abducted at Alma nine years ago for whom Arkansas’ alert system is named, was also at the conference. She said local and Arkansas officials worked quickly to spread the word of her 6-year-old daughter’s abduction in 1995.
But Nick said she was dismayed to discover that, days and even weeks later, people in surrounding states were unaware of the search for her daughter.
“The first two or three hours, that window of opportunity, is the most important” in the safe recovery of an abducted child, she said.
Nick helped provide the impetus for setting up Arkansas’ alert system.
“I truly believe that, if such a system had been in place (when her daughter was abducted), it would have made it much more likely that she would have been returned to her home,” Nick said.
Lt. Col. Steve Dozier, deputy commander of the Arkansas State Police, said the conference grew out of a call from the Texas governor’s office about the need to coordinate missing-children alerts in the Texarkana area straddling the two state lines.
Many states have their own Amber Alert systems, named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl abducted and later found murdered in Arlington, Texas. They include bulletins distributed through radio and television broadcasts, as well as electronic highway signs, on kidnapped children and their abductors.
An effort is under way to get Congress to approve a national system. Huckabee said federal Justice Department and Transportation Department officials are already providing $10 million nationwide to help states coordinate missing-children alerts.
The importance of such systems has already been demonstrated, he said.
“In Arkansas, we’ve seen 14 children returned safely because of the establishment of the Morgan Nick Alert,” the governor said. “What I hope is that something happens at this conference that makes this state a safer state, this country a safer country.”