NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A pair of lawmakers want to bring a new type of Amber Alert to Tennessee. It aims help find missing children and teens who disappear under suspicious circumstances.
Representative Raumesh Akbari and Harold Love, Jr say the bill targets runaways you may see on MNPD social media pages that don't get a lot of media attention. The lawmakers sponsoring this bill want to call it Amber+ Alerts.
They say it would send rapid information and alerts for youth between 12 years old and 25 years old who are reported missing under unexplained circumstances, reported missing and at risk of harm, or reported missing and developmentally disabled or cognitively impaired.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, approximately 600,000 people go missing every year in the U.S. Youth eighteen years of age and under account for about 35% of these reported cases.
Lawmakers want to cut down those numbers in Tennessee. This bill encourages radio, television, cable, satellite, and social media systems to highlight more of those cases you normally wouldn't hear about.
When Amber+ Alert is activated, this bill would also allow the TBI to help investigate and get the word out.
Lawmakers say there is a priority in protecting those who may be endangered or subject to sex trafficking. This comes after data from the TBI showed an increase in child sex trafficking over the past couple of years. Their hotline has jumped more than 400% and more than 600 reports of child sex trafficking were reported in 2022.
This billis set to be heard tomorrow.
Fostering Hope provides Christmas for kids in foster care. I'm delighted to see Fostering Hope expand this year to expand their reach to now include kids in Foster care in metro AND foster kids in East TN hard hit by Helene.
-Bree Smith
