child abduction alerts (amber alerts) in Switzerland?

Family, Education, Health and Pets
41
If he's driving slowly around Blonay, it's gonna take him a while to get to Basel...

42
Thank you aluska - very useful. Whilst I agree that these things should not be hyped up, this is neither baloney nor an urban myth, & the police are involved. Perhaps those that wish to trivialise the concerns of others could, in future, do so with a subject that is not so concerning.

43
I can only trivialise posts coming from blonay. Do you have some links to some reports somewhere?

44
Back it up then.

45
Just to clarify and apologies if my post was not clear in the first place, I tried to reply to the original question posed: Is there something similar to an Amber alert in the US?

After three pages with many posts with dismissive comments, the person who had asked this still has not been responded to. So my post was intended to do exactly that: Yes, there seems to be a very similar alert system in Switzerland, and I provided a link to it.

This was followed by my request for people who have no interest in this topic to please ignore this, for those of us who are parents I personally consider this a good initiative.

I am really surprised about the amount of negative comments, some of them perhaps intended to be funny, some of them clearly not, why waste your time here if you don't want to contribute? Of course we all don't have to agree but opinions can be expressed in a civilized, not dismissive, way.BTW some of us do have children, who may be still small to even contemplate any "fending off" a potential attacker..

46
It wasn't your post that was being criticised. It was the one from PDC which could provoke fear and worry but with no evidence to back it up as a fact.

47
I am a parent, I think it's a great initiative.

However, I think badly worded, unsubstantiated posts - i.e. PDC's - that constitute fearmongering, are counter-productive.

48
As a parent of a small child in a country where I am far from fluent in the native language(s), I personally welcome any information on here, regardless of whether it's "through the grapevine" or via translated news items regarding reports of abductions.

Someone tried to persuade our neighbours' 5yr old girl into his car on her 100m walk back from Kindergarten towards the end of last year (may have been this Child "Kidnapper" hovering around schools in the Baden area ) but she screamed at him and ran home before he managed to grab her. The police were involved but I couldn't find any "evidence" in the news about it at the time. Not everything makes it to an official news report.

If teachers are warning kids and parents that there's a higher than normal risk of abduction then presumably they're not just doing it for shits and giggles. Personally I'd always prefer to know about something like that in the area I live in, even without the supporting news report.

49
Two years ago, a rumour went round our local school that a man was trying to abduct children. However, it proved to be a totally unsubstantiated rumour amongst the kids and the local police sent a letter to all the parents to allay any fears. They also visited the school to give the good old personal safety lecture to the kids.

50
I don't think a single person here would be against an Amber Alert system. What we or at least I am against is unsubstanciated scaremongering. If you are going to say there is a potential kidnapper on the loose have something to back it up, a link to the local police or school web site or quote from the letter sent home from the school. Don't just say bad man on the loose, the helps no-one & only brings about a climate of fear for no reason.

Size is irrelevant when "fending off" an attacker, plenty full grown adults have been kidnapped. Children should be taught the skills to recognise a bad situation, who they can trust, where to run to for help, to scream at the top of their lungs etc. Most of all it is important for us parents to keep things in perspective.

51
I think the problem with these American police initiatives (amber alert, megans law... etc) is that they lead to a public participation in crime fighting, which is understandable in the wild west when a sheriff would deputize people, but the vigilantly culture that ensues is generally much more than the police themselves can actually handle.

Quite often with these abduction cases the perpetrator in most cases is quite a simple individual/ psychologically confused and actually means the child no harm at all, and the police often find these vulnerable adults aimless walking around town with a bemused child.

If armed vigilantes were to track down a person in a situation described above what do you think the result would be? Not a pretty or appropriate result.

In conclusion The police do the job of finding the kid, and the parents should be vigilant, anything more inevitably leads to uncontrolled mayhem and in general more heinous crimes.

52
Apparently it was in the news this morning...

http://www.lematin.ch/actu/pervers-c...riviera-399496

Also I registered for the sms child abduction alert, 2 weeks later the little Swiss twins went missing who incidently lived in the next building to me and I received nothing!

53
Well, maybe my French isn't up to speed anymore, but reading the article, it's basically a rumour?!?

54
Well, you wouldn't have received anything. There is not normally notification if the child has been taken by a parent or guardian. This is because these things normally work out okay and it's not exactly illegal to take your kids anywhere.

The notification should work if there is a confirmed or strong evidence of a child abduction. Those in the immediate area of the abduction get warned first.

55
But all that you describe isn't the case with the Swiss warning system:

1. Parents get warned individually by SMS. There's not exactly a critical mass to form a vigilante mob such as that could happen, for example, after loud-speaker recordings from vans driving around the neighbourhood warning people to watch out for a bloke with a long ginger beard and a raincoat.

2. Schools will get warned as part of the system so teachers and other staff can be on there guard.

This is surely better than a constant state of fear.

56
Considering the Police were notified immediately after the Mother became suspicious it would have been considered an abduction, Parent or not. Like I said I live nearby and would have thought we would have been informed by the alert. Considering the Police then spent a week searching the area it probably would have been helpful.

57
@ PDC - nothing to back up your rumour, then?

@ Aluska - I think the confusion is that PDC's new thread from earlier in the week was merged into an old thread from 2007 - you responded with (probably the first) solid answer to the 2007 question, but everyone else is responding to PDC's rather generic rumour.

58
The police was notified, didn't mean that they had a suspition the father would be actually going after any more children. I think while it could raise allert and awareness, they were preoccupied with trying to find the kids (well, actually, as per Hebdo, local police is under huge criticism for not doing much), not with protecting more children from further abductions.

59
Hindsight's a wonderful thing

However, an alert system is not going to be of any benefit if it gets over-used and goes off everyday because a parent has taken the children off for the day which apparently is usually the case, even when the Police have been informed.

Laws and preventative measures against crime must not be based on a single case.

60
Its no rumour, police have been swarming blonay. They are tight lipped but did tell us not to let our kids walk alone. Something certainly happened, just that we will never know exactly what.