Calling it the "SWAT team for child abductions," Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff Tuesday unveiled the latest tool to complement the Amber Alert for finding abducted children.
"This is the biggest deal since the Amber Alert was announced," he said.
Holding a pair of garden hedge clippers, Shurtleff used the theaters at The Gateway mall to introduce what he called the newest two-prong attack on child kidnappers.
The first was the introduction of the Child Abduction Response Team (CART). Whereas in the past, police agencies might slowly include state and federal experts hours and days after a child is reported missing, the CART team comes in running with experts from the start.
"We have got the best of the best. We hand selected these people based on reputation," said Lt. Jessica Eldredge with the AG's office and head of the new CART team. "Everyone has a specialty."
The 50-member team includes people from several federal, state and city agencies. Each member specializes in some aspect of finding a child such as grid searches, computers, forensics and agents who will pinpoint the known locations of sex offenders in the area and immediately pay them a visit.
The second part of the two-prong attack is a new public service announcement that will be broadcast on TV, radio and on all of the Larry Miller Group's 70 movie screens across the Wasatch Front before the scheduled feature presentation.
Shurtleff used words like "powerful" to describe the PSA, which showed a young girl being abducted while riding her bike down a sidewalk, thrown into the trunk of a car and eventually into a closet where she cries for her mother. The actors were reportedly so convincing during filming that several neighbors thought an actual kidnapping was happening in front of their homes, Shurtleff said. At the end of the commercial, the young girl is reunited with her family thanks to the Amber Alert.
"It just made me think of all the kids who had gone through it," was young Hadley Gordon's reaction who played the kidnapped girl.
Ed Smart, who has given talks worldwide about the Amber Alert after his daughter Elizabeth was kidnapped in 2002 but found alive nine months later, attended the press conference to show his support.
"This program is the best," Smart said, referencing the formation of CART.
The concept for the team was taken from a similar group formed in Florida, which has become a model across the country for investigative response to child abductions.
Both Smart and Elaine Runyan-Simmons have agreed to lead fund-raising efforts to help buy equipment for CART. Simmons' 3-year-old daughter Rachael Runyan was kidnapped 25 years ago Sunday. Utah's first Amber Alert system was named the Rachael Alert after the little girl but later changed to be in sync with other Amber Alerts across the nation.
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