A Wisconsin family is mourning the loss of their 5-year-old son, Prince McCree, found murdered in a dumpster a day after disappearing from their Milwaukee home last month.
Despite the parents’ plea for help from authorities, a state elected official is saying their request for an Amber Alert — a localized SMS notification system for missing children — was denied on a technicality.
In the state, there are very specific markers for Amber Alerts to be activated. First and foremost, the child has to be believed to be in serious physical danger or facing a life-threatening situation, contingent upon the availability of sufficient descriptive information about the child, the suspect, and/or the suspect vehicle, according to the state Justice Department’s website.
At the time, the family could not provide authorities with the name of a suspect or vehicle that might have been connected to Prince’s disappearance.
The Wisconsin Justice Department’s refusal to issue an Amber Alert has sparked debate with some politicians and activists, like state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, contending that the state’s stringent alert criteria hinder the search for missing endangered children, especially Black children who are often underreported by the media and met with apparent police indifference.
“I found out that one would not be issued because he didn’t qualify. That pissed me off. Something is wrong when a 5-year-old does not qualify for an Amber Alert,” said the senator to NBC News.
“If this was a little white boy, more would be done,” she told NBC she heard the family say.
Since its state’s implementation of the alarm over two decades ago, Wisconsin has only issued 57 Amber Alerts. The system has a 50/50 rate of recovering children 17 years and under.
Prince’s family initially believed his race had something to do with them not issuing the alert, according to the senator. But Johnson explained that the issue is the system. Some…
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