I, for one, cannot believe that people are so unbelievably selfish.
A child is missing when the amber alert is broadcast. People moan and bitch, “my sleep was interrupted, my life was interrupted.”
Stop your damn whining for a moment and have a single empathetic thought. Imagine what the child may be experiencing, what their loved ones might be experiencing, what the first responders are experiencing.
The possible outcomes are the child is safely returned to their family, but what if that amber alert hadn't sounded? If that clerk working in the 24-hour corner store hadn't got that alert because a few selfish people whined? What if that late-night transit driver wasn't alerted of an abducted child? What if the taxi driver that takes a adult and child to an airport hadn't been alerted?
And you have the audacity to call 911 and scream at the operator, preventing them from answering a life-or-death call for help.
"OMG, it's 3 a.m. What are the chances that I will see them. It's three hours away."
I pray they bring in fines for those that tie up 911 lines to complain. I also pray you never have to experience a missing child and have to read the countless messages of people annoyed because your missing child caused their sleep or activity to be put on hold long enough for them acknowledge the alert.
What you didn't know is that for three hours before the alert was broadcast, police and family were frantically chasing down all possible leads. The authorities have carefully calculated all the reasonable possibilities when determining how wide the amber alert is broadcast. Because of that “annoying” amber alert, leads flow in — leads that bring that child home safe to the loving arms of their family instead of recovering a body or bodies.
Now do you really think your impacted sleep/activity is a price too steep?
Barb Dupuis
Sudbury