Oklahoma To Launch Telephone Alert System Statewide
Oklahoma has joined seven other states in implementing A Child Is Missing, a telephone system for alerting communities that a person in missing. The telephone alert system is able to place 1,000 calls in 60 seconds to warn residents and businesses in a targeted area that a missing person might be in the surrounding area.
Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz, who learned about A Child Is Missing while attending a conference in Florida several years ago, played a key role in bringing the technology to the state.
“Police are just flocking to it,” says Sherry Friedlander, who founded A Child Is Missing seven years ago and is scheduled to train law enforcement officers from Tulsa, Creek, Okmulgee, Payne, Rogers, Washington, and Wagoner counties on the technology.
After receiving a missing person report, police can activate the A Child Is Missing program by calling a toll-free number and providing a description of the person, the last known whereabouts, and whether foul play is likely to be involved. The program then records a message to send out to the community.
Faster than reverse 911 systems, A Child Is Missing makes use of satellite mapping technology to create pictures of areas that help in the assessments of the terrain of an area, such as the risk that a body of water or perilous ditch might present to the missing person.
Law enforcement agencies have placed more than 6,000 calls for assistance to A Child Is Missing thus far, and the telephone alert system has had a role in 54 successful recoveries over the past two years.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Tulsa World (02/17/04) P. A1; Marshall, Nicole.