20 million Texans got a five a.m. wakeup call this morning

[RobDownSouth]

Alerts are a fact of life in the smart-phone era.

Texas has alerts for hurricanes, tornados, floods, exploding oil refineries, abducted children and senile drivers on the road.
They also have something called "blue alerts" which trigger when a law enforcement is shot and is injured or killed.
This morning at 5 a.m. a "blue alert" triggered statewide.
A cop got shot up in Amarillo and was hospitalized. Bad guy got away.

Twenty million phones were estimated to have received this alert.
Amarillo is almost 700 miles from my place.
This was unnecessary.

BTW, shooter was described as "a white male over 6 feet, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans'...there are five people in my neighborhood that fit that description..

 

[RoryN]

The first ever smart-phone AMBER Alert of similar type in California happened after I moved here.

A guy was infatuated with this family's daughter, and ended up kidnapping her after inviting them all over to his house. The alert went out late one evening for the daughter, her mom, and her brother. I remember being in a public place when it did, and could hear everyone's phone going off.

What wasn't known at the time was that the perpetrator had already killed mom & the brother and their dog; they were eventually found in his burnt-out house. Evidence says mom was definitely tortured first; the brother may have been, too.

Police found him and the girl in the Idaho wilderness about a week later, and blew his head off. She was rescued.

It was such a gruesome crime for the first instance that everyone's nerves are always on edge when one goes off now.

 

[Chernosoth]

After that happened once, I disabled that feature on my phone. Turning the phone off when I don't plan to use it also works.

 

[deckardB26354]

After that happened once, I disabled that feature on my phone. Turning the phone off when I don't plan to use it also works.

Yeah, because why would you want to help anyone that’s in danger?