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Amber Alert Complaints

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So, 10h ago in Toronto, an amber alert was heard from everyone's phones about a girl being abducted by her father. That's a very loud sound to hear in the middle of the night, and it would definitely wake up everyone in the area who hears it. Luckily, thanks to the amber alert, it was easy for the police to find the suspect and his vehicle (but the girl is dead :()!

Amber Alerts, which go to cellphones as well as to media broadcasts, are issued when officials believe a missing child is in serious danger and they have sufficient information to launch a public search.

But the surprising thing is the amount of people that complained from the noise.

Peel police won't release exact numbers of how many people phoned to complain but said that since 6:30 a.m. Friday there have been well over 30 calls. Some of those calls are complaints about being woken up while others are upset the emergency alert was able to bypass the do not disturb setting on their phone and some are angry that they have not stopped receiving the alert to their phone.

Police said that from the time of the alert on Thursday night until 9 a.m. on Friday, 383 calls were made to 9-1-1, with a large influx of 124 calls within the first hour of the alert.

Both York regional police and Toronto police reported people calling 9-1-1 to complain, even on Friday.

People being extremely apathetic that a call of help is an annoyance to them. I personally don't think it's justified, but with around 300+ calls to complain, I could be wrong.
Are amber alerts really that annoying for people to call 911 just to complain about them? If you were one of the annoyed ones, what would you suggest?

Sources -
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/02/15/ontario-amber-alert-complaints_a_23670568/
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/02/14/abducted-11-year-old-girl-found-dead-father-arrested/
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/02/15/9-1-1-calls-amber-alert-complaints/
 
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371
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In any large enough group, there will always be complaints. The only valid ones are the ones where the alert kept being issued.
 

Nah

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tbh I'm not really surprised. Ignoring for a moment I'm just not easily surprised by anything anymore, humans often tend to not give a shit about anything unless it directly affects them or those closest to them. Not saying that it's ok, just an explanation for why.
 

Venia Silente

Inspectious. Good for napping.
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To be fair, these things tend to be issued provincewide or even regionwide. if I'm at one side of a region, sleeping at 6 AM which means preparing for a work day, it won't make any difference that I know or not this early that some child was kidnapped on the other end of wherever: unless they specifically take a charter flight to my city and take a bus to my neighbourhood, I won't be able to impact any agency on the matter at 6 AM, only at like 8 AM will I have the mood to watch the news and care.

Which does bring up another issue: why was this alert able to bypass Do Not Disturb mode? That facility should only be bypassable by alerts that do actually require mass attention because of population-wide impact: earthquakes, hurricanes, industrial poison clouds, mishappen military launch on a civil population center, that kind of stuff. A local problem like "a child was kidnapped" really doesn't affect enough people immediately that merits this kind of attention until, again, 8 AM news when people could at least reasonably be expected to be awaken and going out of their homes so they pay eye - and when they do, you'll also have to consider you are training lynching mobs on your hands. It's just literally "think of the children" being abused.

Now, certainly one could make the case than then DND could / should be bypassed if I am in the same city / commune / neighbourhood / street that the events that are in, but do I want to have to wake up at 6 AM knowing that the Government is tracking my activity? Not the best idea to wake up to if what they want (somehow) is my help. Best to just inform on the local radio / news.

Are amber alerts really that annoying for people to call 911 just to complain about them? If you were one of the annoyed ones, what would you suggest?
Two very simple QoL improvements:

* Do not bypass DND mode. It just doesn't merit it. Simple, effective, cheap.
* Queue normal news / SMS notifications. Reminding people that there's An Issue™ every hour is not bad when people can choose when to catch up.
 
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tumblr_pn1sfvMCxK1v2dtn4_540.jpg


Humanity continues to disappoint me.
 

Kai

Wayfarer
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Calling 911 to complain about an amber alert is disrespectful, especially during the time of said alert.

If someone doesn't want their sleep interrupted by their phone than they can turn if off at night.
 

Maedar

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We have entered the Age of Greed.

Nobody cares about anyone or anything but themselves.

The fact this would happen is downright scary.
 
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I remember hearing about this on CTV the other night, actually. Very sad story. I should perhaps break down a couple things I see here as it'll address my position on this at the same time.

Firstly, the mobile emergency alerts system is still fairly new in Canada, they're still working out a lot of bugs and kinks in the system. We had a flood warning in the city last summer and I didn't receive a single alert to my S7, nor did I receive the first test alert that was used to test the system. A subsequent test did work though, so they're fixing it. That being said, I'm going to take a few points from Venia's post to explain a few things.

Which does bring up another issue: why was this alert able to bypass Do Not Disturb mode? That facility should only be bypassable by alerts that do actually require mass attention because of population-wide impact: earthquakes, hurricanes, industrial poison clouds, mishappen military launch on a civil population center, that kind of stuff.
Alerts are sent as a special type of message on devices and are then saved as SMS afterwards. Depending on your device you can actually adjust these settings, but not everyone does, so they're left on defaults. They're designed to all be under the same type of category it seems, but they really shouldn't be. That being said however, some devices, such as my aforementioned S7, needed a software update for that to work properly. Not everyone updated their phones so it could also have been just a fallback. As for DND mode, there's probably settings to change that, but since not everyone did change that, they're just getting the default behavior that the alert was sent out with, hence the bypass. The people that complained probably had someone shit in their cornflakes the day prior. I'm sorry you didn't get your beauty sleep, want the body of the girl that was involved in this incident as an apology for you losing a few minutes of rest? I'd rather take comfort in knowing my phone receives those alerts despite DND being on, and if it's not concerning me, it's good to have in the back of my head.

Now, certainly one could make the case than then DND could / should be bypassed if I am in the same city / commune / neighbourhood / street that the events that are in, but do I want to have to wake up at 6 AM knowing that the Government is tracking my activity? Not the best idea to wake up to if what they want (somehow) is my help. Best to just inform on the local radio / news.
I can see a bit of tinfoil hat brigade coming here so let's address this. Yes, the way the system works here is that it's supposed to only send alerts to the area where and when it's relevant. I wouldn't leave that kind of stuff to local media because not everyone uses that. I rarely listen to the radio or watch TV so if something was happening in my city, I'd probably be the last to know. However, how this system targets people isn't the government tracking people ffs. In Canada (and probably other parts of the world) all cellular devices are able to call emergency services, regardless of whether they have service or not, as long as it's not blacklisted. Because they have service, it also means they can still receive things, which this comes into play. When an alert is issued here, they only push the alerts to the specific cell towers in the affected area, and (as per the design, which didn't seem to work at first...) any cell phone within range of that tower will get the alert, whether or not it has service. However, with this incident that somehow failed - a small town in Manitoba got this alert as well for some reason, which also had people there calling 911, although for different reasons.

My take? Be thankful that system woke you up, even if it inconveniences you. If it were a tornado or a chemical attack or a bomb threatnor something that had occurred instead, you could be dead instead of sleeping. A life was lost here that shouldn't have been, stop being so self-centered and think about it for a minute.
 
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So it's a newer system people are still getting used to? Amber alerts are time sensitive. And with as fast as people travel these days, a wider net is a good idea. Again, any large group will have gripers in it. People were calling a news station to complain about the emergency weather alerts interrupting their show.
 
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Pretty amazing anyone trusts Amber Alerts at all, given the distrust they show towards the entire FBI.

That.... I just....... 🤦*♂️

Amber Alerts aren't restricted to the FBI. The DOJ runs the program but local law enforcement enters the data and makes the determination.

https://www.amberalert.gov/faqs.htm

Plus this topic is based on a Canadian Amber Alert so no FBI (which is US) involved.
 
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Maedar

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LDSMan, you just claimed on the other thread that it was justified to arrest an 11 year old child.

Your comments only confirm my suspicion of how greedy and selfish Americans have become.
 
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Well, you haven't changed one bit.

I did consider replying to these but they're a bit off topic and not relevant to an AAmber Alert issued in CANADA!

LDSMan, you just claimed on the other thread that it was justified to arrest an 11 year old child.

Your comments only confirm my suspicion of how greedy and selfish Americans have become.

1. I didn't say that. I didn't express an opinion on the arrest. Just a correction as to why he got arrested.
2. You really haven't changed.
3. Let's try to keep the threads separate. No crossing the streams.
 
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Maedar

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1. You claimed the child in question was "pouting propaganda about being "brought here against his will"." As if he knew better.

2. Why is that a bad thing?

3. My point was, if you condone arresting children for such a frivolous "crime" you have no right to criticize a system designed to protect children. Period.
 
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3. My point was, if you condone arresting children for such a frivolous "crime" you have no right to criticize a system designed to protect children. Period.

1 and 2 have nothing to do with Amber Alerts. I'm not criticizing the Amber Alert system. I support it. Please read my posts.
 
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Funny that all of these feature Trump, when he has literally nothing to contribute towards this topic. Mind connecting the dots between the AMBER Alert system, which originated in Texas in 1996, with Trump, the FBI, and the fact that this happened in Canada? I'm failing to see it. Especially when in the USA the AMBER Alert system is more managed by the DoJ?
 

Trev

[span="font-size: 8px; color: white;"][font="Monts
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Call me a horrible person but I turned Amber Alerts off on my phone. They're never in my area and I wouldn't be any help anyway. The only identifying info they ever give is make and model of a car, and I have no idea how to identify cars. Plus, hearing them makes me think there's a serious emergency that's about to end my life, and I don't recover well from that kind of stress.

I'd never call to complain about them if I kept them on though. That's really unnecessary.
 
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