[T]he state has made more than half a dozen changes to the Amber Alert system following a review by the Department of Public Safety.
The changes come weeks after the state’s Amber Alert system was activated for the third time in its history.
State officials issued the alert early on the morning of Sept. 5 after Dawn Hutchinson and Joel Rosenthal of Fayston allegedly fled with Hutchinson’s granddaughter. According to police, the abduction occurred hours after the Department for Children and Families attempted to take the 4-year-old into custody.
State police decided to initiate the alert system at 12:47 a.m. The message should have gone out through seven channels, but two of those notifications failed, the review found.
“This is a very complex system with lots of partners,” Capt. Rick Hopkins, commander of special investigations for the state police, said in an interview Wednesday.
A notification that was intended to be broadcast over the radio and television never made it to the airwaves, according to the review. The message should have been transmitted by the Emergency Alert System, which is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“A message was sent to FEMA, but that message did not process and return to Vermont the way that it should have,” Hopkins said.
Another alert, sent directly to cellphones via a wireless system overseen by FEMA, was “not comprehensive,” according to a statement.
As a result of the review, the Vermont State Police have implemented more than half a dozen changes to the AMBER Alert system, and expect to tweak the system further as the investigation into the communication breakdown with FEMA continues.
The changes include measures to streamline the communication process.
The system is tested a few times each year, Hopkins said, and the recent changes will be given a test run Oct. 28.
The statement from the state police issued Wednesday found that “the NY AMBER Alert system worked exactly as it should have.”
A timeline details the process that unfolded between the initiation of the Amber Alert at 12:47 a.m. Saturday morning and to just shy of two hours later, when the Vermont State Police confirmed that New York law enforcement had located Hutchinson and Rosenthal.
The review credits a broadcast on a New York highway sign with the swift resolution of the alert; a driver saw the sign, spotted the vehicle carrying Hutchinson and Rosenthal and notified police.
By 3:29 a.m., the message to cancel the Amber Alert had gone out on all formats.
Hopkins emphasized that he regards the use of the Amber Alert system on Sept. 5 as a success.
“The whole goal of this is not to have a system to perform any way,” Hopkins said. “Our goal is to throw our effort into getting a child back.”
