Michael Morris – In Focus

The recent false Amber Alert in Alamogordo adorning the front page of the Alamogordo Daily News is a rather fine example of mis-understanding the Amber Alert system by law enforcement and an even greater lack of attention by the brain dead press. So, what is the problem? First off what was reported is not in any way the kind of “abduction” contemplated by the system. Misusing the Amber Alert system in this way dilutes the usefulness of the system by not only clogging the system, but also by desensitizing the public by polluting the stranger abductee system with what amounts to nothing more than a case of custodial interference.

The facts of this case, as presented both in the Amber Alert and the ADN describe what amounts to, if the reporting party is to be believed, a matter of “Unlawful interference with custody” and perhaps not even that given the fact that the child’s mother is in jail. The one thing this case does not represent is a stranger abduction where the police had information that “the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death” as the statute requires:

NMSA 29-152-2
C. The authorized requester may declare an AMBER alert when the requester has reason to believe that:
(1) a child under the age of eighteen has been abducted by an unrelated person;
(2) the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death; and
(3) there is specific information available about the child or the child's abductor that may assist in an expedient and successful end to the abduction.

The “news” reporting of this event was even more shameful with the ADN’s ever lazy Managing Editor Michael Becker using for his source the highly inaccurate KOB-TV report on the matter. What else should we expect from this shabby excuse for a newsman? Even Becker’s ridiculous story headline “Boy home safe following kidnapping” was misleading intended solely to sensationalize this non-story.

Let us have a look at the facts in the light most favorable to the persons asserting these facts. The “suspect” is reportedly in some sort of relationship with the mother of the child to the extent that the maternal grandmother, apparently standing in loco parentis (for one reason or another acting as the parent), gave the child and her car to the “suspect”. We are not told whether there was an actual time set for the return of either or both. After the time had passed that the grandmother who gave the child and car to the “suspect” decided that it was too long police were called. This is just not the kind of case the Amber Alert system was designed to contend with. The requirement that the child be in imminent danger was never met here. If it was then this was known to the grandmother before freely giving the child and the car to the accused.

Of all of the things that this case was it was not a kidnapping:

NMSA 30-4-1. Kidnapping.
A. Kidnapping is the unlawful taking, restraining, transporting or confining of a person, by force, intimidation or deception, with intent:
(1) that the victim be held for ransom;
(2) that the victim be held as a hostage or shield and confined against his will;
(3) that the victim be held to service against the victim’s will; or
(4) to inflict death, physical injury or a sexual offense on the victim.

In fact, according to the rag press the only charges filed so far have been for “Unlawful taking of a motor vehicle” which may even be in doubt since the owner of the vehicle admits to loaning the vehicle the accused. This, again, is just a she said he said case as the theory is that at some time after she loaned him the vehicle the permission expired. Typically we do not see convictions for being less than a day late returning a borrowed car, but what the heck? We do need to make something into nothing so we can have faux excitement.

Here is another instance of Mr. Becker’s “anything but news” style of laziness. Again parroting the KOB-TV fantasy version of events Becker reports that the accused here has “served time in prison for violent felonies”. Again this is a lie. According to court records the only felony conviction for this accused was for the unlawful transferring of a stolen motor vehicle in 1999 when the accused was 21. Not exactly the kind of “violent felony” you had in mind was it? Or maybe they were talking about the time he spent in pre-trial detention for a rape charge that was eventually dropped after the DA failed to win yet another delay after the accused had been sitting in jail for over a year with a “victim” who never had any intention of testifying to what the police had accused him of. Oh yeah this is the kind of sensational nonsense used by disinformation merchants in order to sell their less than stellar offerings.

The bottom line is that Undersheriff Norbert Sanchez had no authority to issue an Amber Alert based on the facts he had. This was nothing more than the failure to return within a time limit claimed by the grandmother the lawfully borrowed car and lawfully entrusted child, if the grandmother had that authority which she claimed by doing so. Clearly there was no way to establish that the child was in imminent danger as the law requires. It is that simple. It is reports like this one that devalue the Amber Alert system, meant to react to actual abductions by strangers. This was nothing more than a domestic disagreement over the time of scheduled return, not an abduction. What is unfortunate was that the State Police, charged under the arrangement with screening the reports, let this one through in the first place.

Add to all of this all of the misreported information by KOB-TV then parroted by Michael Becker who was apparently too damned lazy to even get a first hand report from Sanchez and you have a farce manufactured into a headline. The headline should have been something like “Police make false Amber Alert”. Instead we got a bunch of lies about all of the prison time the accused served for “violent felonies” none of which even remotely resembled the truth. But what do you expect from the same media that has given a pass to governmental misconduct and that of other public figures from the cover-up of the Manny Aragon corruption case to the suppression of the hit and run and high speed chase arrest of Chris Carr here in Otero County in July?

The real danger in these false alerts is the danger that comes with them. With every lottery terminal and much media publicly calling the “suspect” a kidnapper intent on harming a child the level of response engendered by this Amber status can only place the child in danger. This makes sense if the child is already in danger, but when there is no inherent danger in the situation making such a false alert can indeed create a life threatening danger for the child by changing the guy who is late returning the child into a hunted kidnapper expected by every police officer in the state to be a violent kidnapper intent on doing serious harm, as the law requires for the alert, to the child. I am thinking that engagement of an Amber Alert suspect is handled a bit more aggressively than a fail to return child on time report.

This is the kind of action that makes Otero County look stupid. It also endangers every child actually abducted by a stranger. The fact that actual stranger abduction of the kind contemplated by the Amber Alert system is a truly violent act more often than not resulting in rape and/or death is the reason the system is designed to deal only with stranger abductions where the police have actual reason to believe the child is in immediate danger and have some decent description of the perpetrator. The system was meant to save the lives of those children, not cast a dragnet statewide for a guy who returned a child late from a visit. Transforming it into that not only cheapens the value of each following alert, but also endangers not only the children it is intended to aid, but also endangers every person not served due to the mis-direction of such large scale resources.

Norbert Sanchez owes this community an apology. Fictitious reports such as his recent one erode the credibility of the system just like those awful cheap car alarms that people now see as an annoyance rather than an alert of a car burglary. Non-conforming reports like this one have the potential to do the same thing to the Amber Alert system. When people begin to see the Amber Alert reports as annoyances and a way to settle such situations as a child returned late from a visit the real abductees are placed in an additional danger since no one will be paying any more attention to these alerts than to that annoying alarm in the parking lot. Lying reporters attempting to demonize the accused in an attempt to rehabilitate the false report are simply accomplices. Good work Mr. Becker.