"Will you help if you can?" Amber Alert goes live today; Jurić for B92.net: I'm proud
"Will you help if you know you can?" Under the auspices of this slogan, the "Find Me" system for finding missing children comes into effect today.
Source: B92, Teodora Adamović
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Foto: ATA Images
This system, which is called Amber Alert in the USA, will facilitate the search for missing children in Serbia.
Igor Jurić, founder of the "Tijana Jurić" Foundation, told B92.net how important this system is for our society and explained how "Find me" will work in stages.
"This system informs the public when a child goes missing and is of vital importance. In such moments, efficiency and speed are especially important. With this system, in addition to the police, citizens, the media and others will be involved in the search. Security will be much higher", says Jurić for our portal.
Today, as he states, the first phase comes into force, in which the media, but also mobile operators, highways and airports will play the most important role. "On the order of the police, the media will publish information about a missing person every 30 minutes for the first eight hours, and then for an hour after the expiration, until the police say otherwise. When a person goes missing, operators are obliged to send a message about the disappearance, while at airports and highways, information about the missing appears on LED screens. When it is established that a child or a person is in danger, the system will be activated," explains Jurić.
When asked when we can expect the start of the second phase and who participates in it, our interlocutor answers: "We can expect the second phase in about a year and it will include shopping centers, which, when a child goes missing, will have the obligation to display on their LED screens publish information about the disappearance within shopping centers. Gas stations will also have the same obligation. In the second phase, social networks will also be included."
Juric says that he is proud of the introduction of the system he fought for for such a long time.
"I feel proud. This was achieved through the joint action of citizens. We are the first in the region to introduce something like this. We expect that other countries in the region will emulate us and launch the same system. This would mean that, if a child goes missing in In Slovenia, for example, we from Belgrade and people from North Macedonia and other countries in the region can look for the child and be informed of the disappearance," concludes our interlocutor.
What is an Amber Alert?
Foto: Rix Pix Photography/Shutterstock
Amber Alert represents a model of spreading and releasing information to the public in specific cases of missing children.
Announcements through various media - television and radio broadcasts, Internet, SMS messages, screens on ATMs, highways, etc., can reach citizens who will remember the child's face and potentially spot the child or have valid information that can help the police in their search.
The Amber Alert system is a mechanism that officially functions in the USA, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Ireland, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom. It was created in the United States of America in 1996. It was named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl from Texas, who was abducted and killed, according to the Amber Alert Serbia website.
