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SOUTH SALT LAKE — The Utah Department of Public Safety announced Sunday that it will pause sending future Amber Alerts to Utahns' cellphones through the Wireless Emergency Alert system.
This comes after an early-morning Amber Alert regarding 4-year-old Arilyn Crow did not contain complete information.
Arilyn was abducted from her home early Sunday morning; Salt Lake police located her mother, Courtney Crow, who did not have custody, driving a silver 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix and returned Arilyn to safety. The Amber Alert was canceled just after 6 a.m.
Courtney Crow was booked into jail later Sunday morning, according to South Salt Lake Sgt. Matthew Oehler.
"We understand, waking people up in the middle of the night should be done for the most serious circumstances," said Joe Dougherty, spokesman for the Utah Division of Emergency Management.
In a news release, the department acknowledged it has had similar issues in the past with the Wireless Emergency Alert system and had been working to fix the problem. Amber Alerts sent in September and November 2019 also did not have useful information, the department said.
"One only included a vehicle, color and make," Dougherty said. "Another one just said call 511, and this one just said Amber Alert."
I’m sorry for those that were awakened early this morning. An empty Amber Alert at 3:30 am in a non-custodial interference case should never happen. We’ve instructed Public Safety to pause alerts to investigate and make changes necessary to prevent it from happening again. https://t.co/XjadFhW4m8
— Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) April 19, 2020
"When the information was sent, the software didn’t include the WEA message, just a message header," the news release says. "Because we can’t test WEAs in a demonstration mode, we didn’t see this issue until now."
Although the department will not be sending wireless alerts for now, information about Amber Alerts will still be available through law enforcement, news media, social media and at alert.utah.gov.
Utah Public Safety said some phones may still receive the AMBER alert; that is due to an issue with the phone itself or the carrier.
"The Department of Public Safety will continue to review policies and procedures. We will work to complete more offline testing of the system until we can have perfect confidence in the system," the release says.
Contributing: Jen Riess, KSL.com
