Jacquelinemcneal1 PA260 Unit 9 Final Project Essay

Making the Amber Alert Jacqueline McNealy Kaplan University Authors Note: This paper was prepared for Criminal Law, Section 2, Instructed by Stacey Callaway. In 1996, a 9 year old girl, Amber Hagerman was riding her bike around the neighborhood when a neighbor heard her scream. The neighbor witnessed the little girl being pulled off her bike, by a man, and thrown into a pickup truck. The neighbor called the police, and Amber’s brother went home and notified their parents. After contacting a man who had a similar event happen to his daughter, the family began contacting the media and the FBI. Neighbors, friends and family began searching for Amber, and after the media aired information about her case, most in Arlington, Texas†¦show more content†¦Amber Hagerman’s case is unsolved, to date. In February 2011 the police was lead into a child pornography and trafficking network resulting in the police questioning a man, Bill Fry. In 1996 Fry, who has been living in Arizona, had an apartment in Texas not far from the location Amber was abducted. By August the police raided Fry’s home. While the police found child pornography, Fry was dismissed by the police from being a suspect in the Hagerman’s case (The Tarrant County Observer, 2011). Because there has been no arrest, no trial, and the case is still open and being investigated, the case information is unattainable. While the court may not have made a decision which began the legislative process changing a law, the Amber Hagerman case is still a landmark case because it is responsible for The Amber Alert system. Because the idea to quickly find Amber via the media and broadcast agencies was successful, the idea of using the media to locate a child became more routine. It is designed to locate and retrieve a child who has been kidnapped and or missing and in possible danger. The word Amber became an acronym for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response. After Texas began using the Amber Alert system more routinely, more states began adopting the Amber Alert as well. 3 years later, the White House held a conference to discuss Missing and Exploited and runaway children, with the result of the President appointing the first ever