Morgan Nick
Minutes after the alert, we were on the air showing you missing 2-month-old Jametria Dickerson and her alleged abductor, Domonique Brown.
Arkansas State Police issued a level one alert. There's also a level two alert, and we want to explain the difference and how we handle them.
Level one means police believe the missing child may be facing imminent harm or death. Today's THV immediately cuts into programming with information and airs a continuous crawl at the bottom of our screen during the first half hour. We also post it on our Web site immediately.
In a level two alert, police don't believe the missing child to be in imminent danger. In that case, we post it on our Web site immediately and run a crawl at the bottom of the screen every 15 minutes for the first hour the child is missing.
A few quick notes about our THV policy: we take Morgan Nick Amber Alerts very seriously. In fact, the most critical time in any abduction is the first two hours.
We will help any way we can by first following state police's lead. This means we don't report missing or abducted children based on phone calls from friends and family. We must first hear from police, and they have a very detailed system outlined in a manual on their website.
A little background - Arkansas's alert system is named for 6-year old Morgan Nick. You'll recall, she was abducted from an Alma, Arkansas, ballfield June 9, 1995.
Only state police can implement a Morgan Nick Amber Alert. No other law enforcement in the state has the power to do this.
Arkansas was one of the first states to model a statewide notification system based on the local amber alerts used in many large U.S. cities.
Today's THV was a lead sponsor.