howeenterprise.com
Monday, April 3, 2017
Page #10
Texas History Minute: grief. Congressman Martin Frost of Dallas introduced the Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act that summer, which created a national registry of sex offenders and provided new resources for law enforcement. President Bill Clinton signed the act into law that year. Locally, North Texas radio stations began organizing a new Dr. Ken Bridges warning system through law Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, enforcement to alert area residents writer, and history professor. He of an abduction or a lost child. In can be reached at such situations, time is essential. drkenbridges@gmail.com. As a result, the Amber Alert system was in place by October What can be worse for any parent 1996, named in memory of young than to lose a child? People across Amber Hagerman. Texas and the nation today may hear the warning of a lost or By the year 2000, Congress passed abducted child by radio, television, new legislation encouraging all Internet, or text, commonly called states and communities to create a an Amber Alert. But an Amber similar warning system. By 2005, Alert does not refer to a color. It is every state had its own local the painful reminder of a little girl system in place. Within a few and a horrible tragedy. years afterward, similar warning systems were in place in Canada Amber Hagerman was nine years and in many parts of Europe. old in January 1996. She was described as a delightful and The National Center for Missing protective young girl. On January and Exploited Children has been 13, she and her younger brother helping police in missing children were visiting her grandparents in cases since 1984. They reported east Arlington. that in 2016 alone, they assisted in 20,500 cases nationwide. Of It was a Saturday that started with those, 90 percent were considered all the excitement and joy that any runaways. The next highest weekend offers for a young child. category was abduction by family The two youngsters decided to ride members, in six percent of the their bikes in the empty parking lot cases, or more than 1,200. In of a nearby, closed grocery store. other words, the children knew It was daylight, and there were their abductor. One percent were other people around. And what children who were simply lost or nine-year-old could resist the injured. Abductions by predators chance to ride a bike on a free accounted for one percent of the afternoon? cases, but that still represents more than 200 cases per year. As the two rode, a man in a black pickup truck suddenly appeared, However, the Amber Alerts do not grabbed Amber Hagerman, and always end happily. The monsters drove off. One witness stepped that torment families and the sick forward and told what she had delight they have in torturing seen, but the details were sketchy. children physically and mentally Police leaped into action and and the unspeakable acts done to conducted a relentless search. But them have long haunted four days later, her lifeless body communities. New found less than five miles from the communications tools and a public abduction site. willing to assist have proven an effective new tool for protecting The heartbroken family, with the children. No society that prides support of the community, decided itself in morality or faith ever has to help others in the midst of their to tolerate such atrocities.
Years later, leads trickle in to the Arlington Police Department in the Hagerman case, but it remains unsolved. The maniac responsible was never brought to justice.
their loving families unharmed. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that 868 children have been saved through the program. But for one Texas family, it will always be too Because of the Amber Alert system late, and they will always be in place across the nation, many haunted by the sight of an empty lives have been saved and hundreds chair at the table and the memories of children have been returned to of what might have been.
