Texans jolted awake Friday with news of a Blue Alert
the alert was triggered in Hall County, 4 and a half hours northwest of Dallas. We’re told a deputy there was injured by a 33-year-old white man, 6-foot-2, 220-pounds.
Completely incompetent police woke up the entire state.
My phone has the ability to disable Amber alerts separately from most other emergency alerts, but this one went out as an "Extreme threat" alert, and it feels unwise to disable those.
Maybe the fact that a potentially dangerous person exists 7 hours away from me shouldn't be classified as an extreme threat?
Aside from blocking everything, is there something we can do to get these reclassified, or at least make them regional?
Apply political pressure. Though of course there are downsides of that too.
The first amber alert I got woke me up at 2am. Next morning the kid was discovered - with the parent who had legal custody the whole time. Because of that situation my state almost never issues amber alerts and when they do a lot more time is wasted verifying that it is a real problem (wasted because it is a real problem when time counts - I have no idea how often it isn't wasted because the investigation discovered it wasn't a real issue)
It would appear when filling out a request for a BLUE Alert (pdf) and submitting it to the DPS[1], there are no fields present allowing the submitter to specify how large of an area/region should be included. This leads me to believe the TX DPS in Austin is at fault for setting the area to way, way larger than reasonably required.
The above "7 hours away" is not an exaggeration, this alert was upper NW TX and anyone who lives in Southern TX is 7+ hrs away driving really fast with the wind at your back and no traffic.
[1] https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/intelligence-counterterrorism/request-alert-activation
A Blue Alert is a public bulletin that informs the media, law enforcement, and the public about the search for a person who is suspected of harming or killing a law enforcement officer.
Sounds pointless even then not a false alarm. Just use a regular shelter-in-place alert or whatever. No need to also specify cops are in harm’s way. That should be obvious.
And what the hell are we supposed to do? Break out my pistol and head north?
Or maybe I’m wrong. What if we had colors for all occupations that frequently get shot?
Gold for teachers
Silver for military
White for postal worker
Green for retail sales workers
Yellow for taxi drivers
Brown for waiters
The BLUE Alert Act[1] was passed by the House 406 to 2 under the Obama Administration, with a very low percentage of non-votes.[2]
They really do render these emergency systems useless by using them in such sn annoying and ineffective way.
If an alert actually meant the risk was immediate and near by based on cell tower proximity or something i would check them every time, note license numbers, etc
But 90% of the time it's some shit out in Bumblefuck, TX and the car would have travelling straight to me by air to be within my vicinity any time soon.
This is how we will get the community on our side!
Yeah I haven’t gotten back to sleep since.
One of the main things I don’t miss since I left Texas is overbearing police
I debated with myself for an hour or so this AM, as this alert system SHOULD be a good thing, but in the end, I'm turning them off. There are tornado sirens for bad weather, and the odds of me actually having actionable notice from alerts like this are astronomically low.
I feel like I am the only person in Texas who didn't get this alert, and yes I do have my alerts turned on because I normally get every amber alert and panic dismiss them without reading just to make the annoying noise go away.
Thankfully I had already disabled the blue alerts