Millions of Texans were jolted awake Friday when a state police alert blared through their phones around 5 a.m.
The message, known as a Blue Alert, warned residents of an at-large gunman who'd shot the police chief of Memphis, Texas. It was a rude awakening for folks in Austin, and left plenty wondering why the state solicited their help in tracking down a suspect in a small Panhandle town six hours away.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, in a statement to KUT, said the criteria for sending an alert was established by the Texas Legislature. DPS says once a law enforcement agency requests an alert, DPS will verify whether the criteria is met and, if it is, immediately activate the alert.
"The Wireless Emergency Alert activation radius is determined by the requesting law enforcement agency ... in this case the Hall County Sheriff’s Office," DPS said, referring questions about the alert to that smaller agency.
Established in 2008, the Blue Alert system is similar to the Texas AMBER Alert, which warns residents of a child abduction. Unless you've opted out, the system sends statewide notifications to your phone in the event a law enforcement officer is killed or injured.
Martin Ritchey, head of homeland security for the Capital Area Council of Governments, helps coordinate emergency communications in the 10-county area in Central Texas — including emergency text notifications. He said the statewide system is effective, but the barrage of alerts in far-flung corners of the state could lead to "message fatigue."
"There's certainly an issue ... when communications take place anywhere where the receivers don't feel that the message was really necessary, and you're not going to find that in Rhode Island when they send out a statewide message," he said. "You will find that in in Texas."
But Ritchey said it's important to not opt-out altogether. Local entities like CAPCOG regularly send out alerts for everything from flooding to boil-water notices to SWAT standoffs, and those notifications could be live-saving. He doesn't want this Blue Alert to be "the boy who cried wolf."
"We've seen firsthand what it looks like when folks don't get messaged when, you know, folks are in harm's way," Ritchey said, "and we want to do whatever we can do to mitigate that."
Just last year, the Blue Alert system failed to send out a notification when a gunman went on a rampage in Austin, shooting and injuring an Austin ISD officer and an APD officer. During the gunman's hourslong shooting spree, neighbors in the area were dismayed they had to look to social media for updates.
That's because the alert system requires confirmation of a suspect's identity, which local police didn't have at the time. If they don't have the ID, they can't tell DPS and no alert goes out.
Friday morning's Blue Alert was also delivered outside the timeframe DPS normally sends alerts. The agency's guidelines say the alerts are to be sent only between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. It's unclear why DPS chose to send out the alert when it did.
The suspect, Seth Altman, was last seen just 4 minutes after that cutoff Thursday night. He was reportedly fleeing officers serving him an arrest warrant when he shot Memphis Police Chief Rex Plant.
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