Complainers miss the point of Amber Alerts By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2019 (2138 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No one likes to be woken up in the middle of the night without a good reason, but it seems a large number of people won’t tolerate it even if there is one.

Late on Feb. 14, Ontario police seeking the whereabouts of an 11-year-old girl, Riya Rajkumar, last seen with her father, authorized an Amber Alert that reached cellphones across the province at 11:30 p.m. The alert also sounded on many cellphones outside of Ontario, including in Manitoba.

At 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 15, cellphones received the cancellation notice of the Amber Alert when Riya Rajkumar was found. Unfortunately, it was too late; police discovered her body in the Brampton home of her father

Though police had been conducting an investigation after the child’s mother came to them earlier in the evening, it was a response to the Amber Alert that led to the arrest of the girl’s father, Roopesh Rajkumar. A motorist near Oro-Medonte, Ont., recognized Mr. Rajkumar’s vehicle based on the alert and contacted police.

At 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 15, cellphones received the cancellation notice of the Amber Alert when Riya Rajkumar was found. Unfortunately, it was too late; police discovered her body in the Brampton home of her father.

Mr. Rajkumar was arrested, suffering from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, and charged with first-degree murder.

He later died in hospital.

What makes the story — incredibly — even worse is that many who received the alert were so annoyed by it that they called police. Not to provide information in a search that was ongoing, but to make their grievance known. Many even called 911 to do so.

Let that sink in.

In the midst of an actual emergency, in which a child’s life was at stake, people actually tied up the emergency line with complaints about the alert.

A spokesperson for the Peel Regional Police told media that within the first hour after the alert, 911 operators received 174 calls, the vast majority of which were complaints about the alert. Many people also called the non-emergency line to complain about being woken up, and at least 100 emailed to do so as well.

The 911 call centre in Winnipeg also received numerous complaints about the alert.

It’s an example of setting one’s entitlement to a night’s rest above the possibility of saving a life. And as the police have since pointed out, while the Amber Alert came too late to save Riya Rajkumar, it did work. Police located her shortly after it was issued, and the alert led them directly to the last known person to have seen her.

Did the hundreds who complained make their decision to respond as carefully?

It ended tragically, but it worked.

We trust that authorities will only issue a disruptive warning or alert if it’s a matter of life or death — if there is some hope, by making the public aware on a large scale, that harm can be forestalled or reduced. So we expect a decision to issue an Amber Alert won’t be made lightly.

While there are legitimate questions raised about the scope and geographic range necessary for alerts to be effective, and discussions to be had about how to target such warnings more precisely, the principle that drives their use remains urgent and sound.

In this case, the police took seriously the mother’s concern, and when evidence indicated the girl’s father was likely to do harm, they issued the alert.

They had weighed the potential inconvenience of the alert to people against the potential harm to the person they were looking for.

They made the right call.

Did the hundreds who complained make their decision to respond as carefully?

That’s doubtful, since they made the wrong call.