AmberView considered for schools

MILLSTONE — The school district may become part of a pilot program in New Jersey to aid authorities in finding missing children.

Representatives of the AmberView program, which is already in use in West Virginia and parts of Virginia, gave a presentation at the June 8 Board of Education meeting.

When a child is abducted or reported missing, getting his/her picture to law enforcement, the news media and the public quickly is essential to a safe return, according to Robert Chico, of the West Virginia High Technology Foundation in Fairmount, W.Va. He said that AmberView mass broadcasts a digital picture of a missing or abducted child within minutes of an official Amber Alert, putting thousands of people across an entire region on alert.

The system works in conjunction with the national Amber Alert program, he said. AmberView is used in West Virginia for children ages 3-17, but New Jersey statute permits its use for young people up to age 18, he said.

With parental consent, a child's digital picture is stored with biographical information in a secure database, Chico said. Photos and information in the database are updated yearly. Currently, there are 137,000 children enrolled in the database, according to Chico.

Chico said 10 children are abducted and murdered each month in the United States. He said that 74 percent of children murdered by their captors are killed within three hours of the abduction, meaning time is of the essence. Chico told the board that when a child goes missing stressed parents often can't provide a photo or describe the child accurately to law enforcement.

Funded by the National Institute for Justice, AmberView currently has no enrollment fee. When asked if there would be a fee in the future, he estimated a cost of $4- $5 per child annually.

For more information on AmberView, visit www.amberview.org