Perkins pushes abduction-alert system

Thursday, Aug. 15, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins wants to set up a statewide system using highway reader boards, radio broadcasters and emergency alert messages across the bottom of television screens to help find children who have been kidnapped.

Perkins, D-Henderson, said this system could also be used in homeland security.

Law enforcement officers in Clark County are already working with broadcasters to start some type of a system to use in these cases, said Perkins, deputy police chief in Henderson.

Perkins wants to make sure there is a coordinated effort statewide and said the state may have to supply some money for the project.

He has asked for a bill to be introduced in the 2003 Legislature. Perkins would use the coordinated system of radio, television and highway signs only in child abduction cases.

Perkins said he was reluctant to allow other messages such as bank robberies or murders to be flashed on these highway boards or on emergency alerts on a television set. He said people would tend to ignore a continual message of law enforcement announcements.

The alert issue was raised this month when law enforcement flashed a child abduction message on highway signs in California when two teenage girls were abducted near Lancaster, Calif.

Called Amber Alert, the message in California displayed a description of the suspect's car, but the vehicle was found by a person who monitored a police scanner.

The state Transportation Department is going to study the feasibility of putting the messages on highway reader boards in Las Vegas and Reno.

But it may require approval of the Legislature, said Scott Magruder, public information officer for the department.

The reader boards flash warning messages about road conditions and caution signs. Magruder said they would have to be re-programmed and that could cost some money.

He said the department has discussed it with Gov. Kenny Guinn and that a task force is being created to look into the situation. The department has nine reader signs in Clark County and seven in Washoe County.