TERRE HAUTE — Like other law enforcement agents involved that day, Terre Haute Police Chief George Ralston will discuss few of the details of the June 13, 2006, abduction of Collin and Monte Walker. But Ralston is adamant that his department was aware of the gravity of the situation as soon as it issued an all-points bulletin that morning for police to look out for Katron Walker and his two young sons.
“The Amber Alert process in that case was begun very early with the help of the state police,” Ralston said. “But it did not come to culmination until about 5:30 that evening.”
Asked if that meant the delay in issuing the alert lay in Indianapolis with the Indiana Missing Children Clearinghouse, Ralston repeated, “We started the process very early, and it was issued around 5:30.”
No single cause can be cited for the delay in the Amber broadcast for the Walker children, but a number of factors appears to have created a maze of frustration and confusion for local law enforcement agents and a nightmare for Teresa Walker, the boys’ mother. Among the factors:
• Language in the state’s 2006 Amber guidelines — since changed — seemed to prohibit the alerts for any case involving “children taken in custody disputes.”
In an Associated Press story the day after the abduction and killing of 4-year-old Collin, allegedly by his father, Deanna Martin wrote that Indiana’s law “does not allow Amber Alerts in child custody cases — a provision that slowed the notice in the Walker case, police said.”
• Law enforcement tradition and experience lead police to expect all “family abductions” to end as most do, non-violently.
• Local city and state police were unfamiliar with the complexities of Amber Alert procedures because they’d never had to ask for one.
According to Capt. Brent Johnson of the state police in Indianapolis, the Terre Haute P.D. called his then-post in Vigo County sometime after 10 a.m. to say the department might have a possible Amber Alert situation. Both agencies worked to get the appropriate information to Indianapolis “in a timely manner,” Johnson said.
Because the authorizing agency for an Amber Alert — the Indiana Missing Children Clearinghouse — is under the auspices of the state police, Terre Haute cops believed for several hours that they were supposed to funnel all information through the local ISP post.
Johnson said he faxed two Amber Alert information templates to Indianapolis that day. The first, describing the abduction and the children, was sent at 10:46 a.m., he said. The second, with more detailed information about Katron Walker, was faxed at 12:55 p.m.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Johnson said, his agency stepped back into a supporting role and the THPD began to communicate “one-on-one” with the clearinghouse in Indianapolis.
“I know there was a question, repeatedly, ‘Is there any reason to suspect the children are in danger?’” Johnson said. “… We could never articulate, was there a genuine threat to the children?”
Because an emergency protective order against Katron Walker had been signed only that morning, as far as available records could show, “he had never been served” with such a stay-away order, said Johnson.
Neither did the father specifically and directly threaten his children when he took them, which made even the presence of a knife inconclusive under Amber guidelines about family abductions.
“My interpretation is that, at no point in time [in the early hours of the investigation], anybody could confidently say the children were in danger,” Johnson said.
Andre Clark, coordinator of the Indiana Missing Children Clearinghouse in Indianapolis, said his office would never have heard “all the minutiae” of the Walker case at the time it was considering Terre Haute’s request.
For example, the protective order against Katron Walker may eventually have helped convince local police of a threat to the children. But on Clark’s end of the process, “the restraining order didn’t play into the Amber Alert at all.”
Indeed, the template for an Amber Alert asks for a surprisingly sparse amount of information, nearly all of it descriptive: places, times, distinguishing marks, police case number, direction of travel, whether a weapon was used to abduct the child.
Judgment calls about why an Amber Alert is requested are the responsibility of the local law enforcement agency recommending it.
“We’re only interested in, does it meet the criteria?” said Clark. In most cases, “custody child abductions don’t fit the criteria,” he said.
The state’s goal for an Amber Alert is within an hour of a proper request, Johnson said, although his office’s “internal goal” is 30 minutes. Most of the time leading up to an alert “is eaten up by the [local] agency trying to get enough information,” he said.
Multiple investigators and agencies usually are involved in a request, Clark said, “Until they have a meeting, they don’t know what they’ve got.”
After every Amber Alert, all involved parties — law enforcement agencies, the clearinghouse and the Indiana Broadcasters Association — get that meeting and a review of the case by Clark’s office.
“We ask, ‘What did we do right? What did we do wrong?’ And ‘Do we need to change our procedures?’” he said.
Since the Walker case, Clark said, the state guidelines no longer say that “children taken in custody disputes do NOT qualify for Amber Alert activation.” The 2007 version “doesn’t include that statement,” he said.
Johnson, of the state police, said the Walker case “was a terrible, terrible tragedy” and “not a single police officer would not lay down his life” for a child in such circumstances. Because of the “gray areas” in Amber Alert policy at the time, though, he said, “There are no easy answers on this one.”
Johnson added, however, “I’m sure, from this point in time, they will look at custodial abductions differently.” The Walker case, he said, “will shape policy in the future.”
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