Work begins on missing-person alerts

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Organizers took their first steps toward a system for public alerts about missing people Friday at a meeting hosted by Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.

The system would be similar to the national Amber Alert program for missing children.

"My vision is we have what I call an Announcement of Missing Persons, AMP Alert, which is a way to remind people once they become endangered how do we get that announcement out there, keep people on the lookout?" Denish said.

Denish said she was moved to act by the recent discovery of 13 sets of human remains buried on Albuquerque's southwest Mesa. The five identified so far have been four young women who disappeared in 2004 and the unborn fetus one was carrying.

The four were on a list of 16 women who disappeared in the city between 2001 and 2006. Some of their families complained police and the media could have done more when the women were reported missing.

Denish said she doesn't want people go missing for years without anyone knowing about it and no one looking for them.

So she brought together law enforcement, victim advocates, the news media and government agencies Friday to work toward a better system for searching for missing persons.

The AMP system is still a work in progress, and Denish said they're still trying to figure out all the details. It also can be harder to deal with missing adults because of federal laws protecting medical information and privacy, she said.

Friday's meeting ended with the participants planning to meet again in two months.

Albuquerque Police Department Chief Ray Schultz said he would like a standard missing-persons report for all agencies in the future to include a statewide database for medical and dental records. Those records were used to identify the four women buried on the west mesa, and the lack of such records is reportedly hampering identification of the other victims.