Blue Alert Code May Duplicate Existing Codes, EAS Officials Say

Tom Berry, founder of the Blue Alert nonprofit group behind the proposal, said the notifications will help protect the public from extremely dangerous criminals. “If someone is willing to kill a police officer, they’re willing to harm anyone,” he said in an interview. An NPRM seeking comment on blue alerts is set for a vote at FCC commissioners’ meeting Thursday, and it's widely expected to be approved, industry officials said. The FCC didn't comment.

Blue Alerts would function like Amber Alerts, similarly designed to quickly notify the public of the presence and identifying characteristics of a dangerous criminal and encourage the public to alert police of any sightings, Berry said. Like Amber Alerts, Blue Alerts would be voluntary, and confronting the subject of a Blue Alert would be discouraged. Such notifications would be issued only in situations where a police officer was killed, injured or missing, a warrant for arrest was issued for a suspect whose identifying information is known to police and can be communicated to the public, and there’s a continuing threat, Berry said. The precise conditions are intended to prevent alert fatigue, Berry said.

Dedicating an alert to police officers isn't a political ploy because the concept has enjoyed broad bipartisan support since it was introduced in 2008, Berry said. Twenty-seven states have such programs, and in 2015 President Barack Obama signed the Blue Alert bill to create the system.

The system already has codes for police-related alerts and local emergencies, EAS officials said. The LEW code, Law Enforcement Warning, is already used in Florida for the state’s blue alerts, said Berry. Czarnecki, and National Alliance of State Broadcaster Associations EAS Committee Chief Suzanne Goucher suggested it already performs a similar function. “There is a lack of urgency associated with existing event codes, which do not ‘suggest immediate action on the part of broadcasters,’” the draft NPRM said. Broadcasters already don't pass through all the EAS warnings they receive, Czarnecki said. Numerous less severe weather notifications aren’t issued by broadcasters because they would fatigue viewers, and a new dedicated code could add to the issue, broadcast officials said. There have never been more than five blue warnings in a year since the idea originated, Berry said.

Most Blue Alerts would likely be passed along to broadcaster’s news departments rather than issued as EAS alerts, Goucher said. Most local news stations would have active and comprehensive coverage of a police-involved shooting that would provide much more in-depth information than an EAS alert, said Mark Manuelian, WBZ AM/FM Boston engineering manager and Massachusetts EAS chair. An EAS alert on a police shooting could interrupt the more information-rich news coverage to offer fewer details, Manuelian said. If viewers are watching their local stations via cable, they could even be pre-empted to a cable EAS station where they will no longer receive the broadcast news information, he said. Berry said the alert code is needed primarily for wireless emergency alerts, so people not using a station will get the information. A dedicated alert code isn’t needed to trigger a WEA, said the NPRM, but the dedicated code could increase urgency of the message.

If the FCC moves forward with the Blue Alert, it should take steps suggested by Monroe to make the more information-rich Common Alerting Protocol the main method for sending alerts out (see 1701090043), Czarnecki said. A CAP alert can include detailed text information, while alerts sent using the current basic EAS are much more limited. Notice that a blue warning has been declared for a specific county is of little use to viewers without more detail, he said.