By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com
February 11, 2007
The job of airport security screeners just became more complicated: they've been asked to keep their eyes open for missing children.
Most of those children figure to be escorted by parents involved in bitter divorce cases where custody is enveloped in controversy. Such parents often use planes to whisk children out of familiar environments.
So-called Amber alerts, named for a 9-year-old girl kidnapped and murdered near Dallas in 1996, have been sent to federal air marshals for years. But they've never been extended to the nation's 43,000 airport security screeners before.
According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), screeners see more than two million people per day at 450 commercial airports.
Screeners will receive notices, photos, and written descriptions of each child for whom an Amber alert is posted.
Such information will be dispatched not only to screeners but to airport and airline personnel. And it will be posted minutes after authorities receive it.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children works with law enforcement authorities and local media outlets in distributing the data on each case. Most search efforts are concentrated in and around the child's home community.
Alerts are issued after authorities are convinced that a child is in danger of being injured or killed. Descriptions and photographs of the victim and the kidnapper are included.
The Amber alert system stopped more than 200 attempted abductions in the last 10 years.
