Published: February 24, 2007 12:21 am      

One big step further

AmberView testing involves 54 state counties

FAIRMONT — An Amber Alert did not play a big part in the recovery of a girl who was kidnapped in Wheeling earlier this week, but the incident was not lost on a group of law enforcement officials who gathered Friday to learn how to take the program one step further.

“I don’t know if this would have helped, but things like this do happen here,” said Sgt. Matt Moore of the Ohio County Sheriff’s Department, where the incident took place.

The girl was assaulted and then released in nearby Ohio by her abductor after 45 minutes, another atypical occurrence. In 74 percent of all kidnappings, the children are dead within three hours, noted Becky Robey.

Robey serves as project associate on AmberView, an initiative of the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation. AmberView will add in a three-dimensional photograph upon the issuance of an Amber Alert, a notification system that — as of now — uses merely text sent by the National Weather Service to law enforcement officials and the media to alert them to a child’s disappearance.

On Friday, Robey, AmberView project manager Bob Chico, and law enforcement officials from eight departments around the state met at the I-79 Technology Park Research Center (the former Institute of Scientific Research building) to begin training for the six- to eight-week pilot program in which the officers will receive random fake AmberView alerts. U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., who helped secure funds for the $4 million project, stopped by and greeted the officers at lunchtime.

“This is a test,” Chico said. “We want to know, does it get to them and how would they react?”

Robey estimated that 40 percent to 50 percent of the state’s 275,000 schoolchildren will be participating in the program, which takes their school pictures and stores them into a database. The photographs then can be made into a 3-D image and issued as an AmberView alert.

“We haven’t received them from every school yet, but we’re getting forms daily,” she said.

Of the state’s 55 counties, only Mercer County did not agree to participate in the program. Of participating counties and of the state’s 33 Catholic schools, the photos of students who return signed permission slips will be used. The plan is for the system eventually to go nationwide.

Friday’s session served as training time so the officers could familiarize themselves with the cell phones and personal digital assistants that will be used to receive the visual AmberView alerts when they are working out in the field.

“When you get an Amber Alert now, unless you happen to be close to the Internet or be listening to the radio, you can’t get it,” said Patrolman Glen Stealey of the Fairmont City Police Department, who also serves as computer network administrator.

The idea of getting a fake AmberView alert as part of the training did not bother him.

“We’re used to getting alarm calls all the time that aren’t real,” he said. “Otherwise, you can’t test the system.”

This testing session essentially will allow AmberView staff and law enforcement officials to find out if the images sent into the field are received and readable. By late summer, Robey expects to be testing the portion of AmberView that will allow officers to take a photograph of a child who has been found to tell by a high degree whether or not the image matches up with the photo in the database.

“The Amber Alert was great, but with AmberView, when you can get images of a child who’s lost or has been abducted, that’s going to help us immensely because of the changes the children go through over a period of time,” said Chief Deputy Al Kisner of the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department. “At different intervals of their school, they’ll update their pictures, which will make it great for us.”

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.