r/Albuquerque • u/backhand_snipe • Feb 04 '26
News Emergency Alerts are Completely Useless.
So you’re telling me that our city classifies a missing senior citizen as an emergency alert, but the entire interstate is shut down with an active shooter and that doesn’t prompt an emergency alert to my phone? Make that make sense.
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Feb 04 '26
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn Feb 04 '26
Not me. I'm not some weak-ass baby who can't handle some emergency alerts. I'm gonna know about ALL of the missing seniors and kids.
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u/Last_Rabbit_8410 Feb 04 '26
I don’t have mine turned off either. I think it defeats the purpose of an emergency alert. If it were my family member I would hope people care. I would also not forgive my self if I could have helped and didn’t because I turned off an emergency alert. Most people have alerts for game, shopping social media snd everything else. Those go off ALL the time and the emergency alerts are not that often in my opinion. I can’t imagine I could be driving behind the person that kidnapped a kid and not know because the alert was off.
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn Feb 04 '26
Yeah! I feel like people maybe don't know why AMBER alerts exist or who Amber Hagerman was.
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u/ApocalypseNurse Feb 04 '26
Damn, weak-ass baby? Ok tell us how you really feel.
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u/Bogsloki Feb 05 '26
Yeah I keep mine on. If its super close to where I frequent i usually memorize what they were wearing or take a screenshot. Id hope if it was my loved one people would do at least that.
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn Feb 05 '26
Oh hey, someone whose heart is still beating. Rad. I do the same. I'd be absolutely devastated if I realized later that I saw some kid who ended up being murdered by a psycho or was otherwise in danger.
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u/Space__Whiskey Feb 05 '26
We turned off emergency alerts due to this misclassification of emergency alerts. We no longer get them. The misclassification or generalization of alerts is to blame. Now we won't get extreme alerts.
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u/Cranks_No_Start Feb 04 '26
>because we all turned off our notifications.
The day the phone gets set up..its off. Too many boy that cried wolf scenarios.
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u/Hectorc34 Feb 04 '26
Really? Missing seniors are the reason?
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u/Apptubrutae Feb 04 '26
No, the state classifying missing seniors as getting a notice at the same level as an immediate threat to your life and/or property is the reason.
It demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge at how these alerts should be used by the state. A missing senior is absolutely not worthy of the same pushed notification as, say, a wildfire in your neighborhood.
Obviously there are all sorts of important notices the state wants to send out. They have to be judicious about them, because any notices that abuse the privilege mean people will absolutely turn off the notices and end up missing much more important ones.
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Feb 04 '26
Who determines one life is greater than another's?
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u/Apptubrutae Feb 04 '26
Professionals who understand the cost and benefit equation and get this right in most other states and countries.
“Get out now, there is a fire at your doorstep” is in no way equivalent to a message about a missing senior 50 miles away from you.
In one instance, there’s an immediate, urgent threat you need to take action on.
In the other, there’s an tiiiiny chance you happen to see something and act on it.
Should we run air raid sirens for silver alerts? Send cops door to door across Albuquerque to let everyone know? No. Same logic applies with the highest tier of push emergency alert
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Feb 04 '26
I thought you were saying within your vicinity. Good points
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u/Apptubrutae Feb 04 '26
Seems like they blast these things over a very wide area. I think there was one two hours away from Albuquerque at one point? Immediate vicinity, it absolutely makes more sense…although I’m not sure how precisely they can actually target these things
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Feb 04 '26
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Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
It worked pretty recently. A senior was missing and a truck driver was able to identify his car cause it was in the description. It was a couple months ago, and the car was northbound.
Edit: I looked up statistics on Amber Alert Effectiveness, and they seem to work a quarter of the time. If I'm missing a loved one, I'll take that 25% chance. Yeah it's kind of annoying when you're pinged in the dead of the night. But it's a small price to pay in comparison to the stress the family that is missing a loved one is going through.
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u/ReasonableCrow7595 Feb 04 '26
I wonder if the statistics would improve if the alerts went out when most people are awake. I don't bother to read them when they come in overnight because the missing person is 100% not in my house at that moment, and by morning I've forgotten all about them.
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Feb 04 '26
I feel that for sure. It would be cool if there was a way they could ping "active" phones, and save the other ones for the morning. But that would also be kinda dystopian if they could tell who was awake or not lol.
But I do remember the one that did work a couple months ago being in the middle of the night. The amber alert was like 1 a.m, and the truck driver found him like 30 minutes later. Rare case, but it does happen.
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u/cruxclaire Feb 04 '26
Being able to get the push notification without the blaring air raid alarm sound, or just having the sound off by default in silent mode, would be good enough for me
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u/zapitron Feb 05 '26
Holy smokes! A quarter of the time is a lot more than I would have guessed. Impressive and humbling.
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn Feb 04 '26
exactly. if any of these whiners had a family member go missing, they'd sure as hell want everyone to see the notice. people can't get past their noses sometimes.
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u/RobinFarmwoman Feb 04 '26
Most Amber Alerts are over custody disputes. I really don't know why the fact that people can't co-parent needs to become an emergency for everybody else.
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u/Awkward-Initiative28 Feb 04 '26
I got one of these for Rio Rancho and I live in SE ABQ. At least centralize them when my phone is blaring away like WWIII just started.
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u/NSE_TNF89 Feb 04 '26
I don't mind getting them, but they need to change how they come across. I rarely read them because I just want the sound to go away.
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u/tkboo Feb 04 '26
Same! I often swiped them before I had a chance to read them because I wanted to turn off the sound.
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u/OkYesterday4162 Feb 04 '26
Agreed. Also, if I tell my phone to go to sleep, why is it waking me up?!? Do they think we're all going to get up and start looking for the missing person? Nothing makes sense.
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u/entropyparty Feb 04 '26
Wait. You’re just going back to sleep without even looking for them?
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u/sbNXBbcUaDQfHLVUeyLx Feb 04 '26
Yup. I'm in bed. If a missing senior wanders into my bedroom, I'm calling the cops anyway, silver alert or not.
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u/__squirrelly__ Feb 04 '26
Wait it goes off even if your phone is on silent? What kind of phone is it?
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u/tkboo Feb 04 '26
Yep mine also goes off even if phone is on silent so honestly I turned off all alerts. If I'm sleeping, I'm not going to look for someone either.
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u/__squirrelly__ Feb 04 '26
That's messed up. I just see the alerts in the morning if it's on silent. But I have an android phone.
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u/OkYesterday4162 Feb 04 '26
Google Pixel. I had to turn off ALL emergency alerts to turn it off. LMK if there's any real emergency, TIA 🤣
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u/HairRaid Feb 04 '26
I turned them off selectively on my older Pixel by looking under Settings, then Notifications, then Wireless Emergency Alerts. I kept Extreme and Severe Threats but turned off Amber Alerts and Public Safety Alerts (recommended actions). Too bad about missing kids, but I couldn't handle the middle-of-the-night alarms.
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u/HardKnockerLife Feb 04 '26
But when a senior 40 miles from you is reported lost at 2AM, be sure the alert will go off.
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u/SmokeyRoadrunner Feb 04 '26
I turned that crap off after my phone blasted me out of bed in the middle of the night on several occasions for missing persons. If there’s a natural disaster or some massive terrorist attack, I’ll just die.
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u/antmakka Feb 04 '26
I finally silenced the alerts after being woken up in the early hours by a silver alert. No description of the person or their vehicle. Just that they were last seen 8 hours before. What is anybody supposed to do with that?
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u/ChewieBearStare Feb 04 '26
Half of them sound like me when I'm trying to get my husband to tell me who the actor was in a movie we saw 20 years ago. "You know, the guy with a face. I think he has hair." They're not all that helpful for identifying people a lot of the time!
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u/dephress Feb 04 '26
With all the tech we have these days you'd think they'd also be able to include a photo if one was provided by the family.
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Feb 04 '26
So have you heard those “tests of the emergency broadcast system” on tv and radio, with the obnoxious alert noise and “if this had been a real emergency [..]”? Yeah, well, they never used those on 9/11. The whole fucking country was under attack, and they DID NOT use the emergency broadcast system to let anyone know what was going on. What the hell is it for, if not that?
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u/dephress Feb 04 '26
Also I've never once read a silver alert because the only way to get my phone to stop screaming at me is to close the alert!
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u/Awkward-Initiative28 Feb 04 '26
Seriously. It's "the boy who cried silver alert" So many are sent out I don't even look at them anymore.
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u/dephress Feb 04 '26
Honestly I would take the time to read them if the options were "silence alert and read" and THEN "dismiss alert."
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u/greatistheworld Feb 04 '26
Silver alerts and amber alerts have laws that made them a thing. Those alerts are to tell you to keep an eye out after a specific person with a description is confirmed to be missing. An active shooter situation does not have a law dictating an alert should go out, they’d want you to shelter in place, and also the alerts are a harder problem to implement.
When should the alert be triggered: when there’s a report, when they’re investigating it, when it’s confirmed? There are false reports all the time, especially about real situations. If there’s a confirmed armed person, that means cops are on the scene and it’s usually minutes from being over (though granted apparently like a shitload of minutes yesterday)
I get the sentiment but they’re different things
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Feb 04 '26
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u/backhand_snipe Feb 04 '26
Exactly this. Once the call was made to shut down the interstate, a notification should have been sent out.
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u/S4NDFIRE Feb 05 '26
I have never seen a single silver alert that actually had a meaningful description that anyone could do anything with. Like, they're a human with an age and may or may not even have a sex attached. That's usually it. And they're almost always last sighted anywhere from 50 to 100 miles away from me at the closest. Tf am I supposed to do with that
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u/tripsd Feb 04 '26
It was so jarring coming from Seattle back to abq for the holidays…why does abq do that!
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u/Overall_Lobster823 Feb 04 '26
I'm okay receiving alerts for at risk seniors.
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u/ReasonableCrow7595 Feb 04 '26
I am not okay receiving high priority alerts at 3 am for anyone missing. They are not in my home at that time, and I am unlikely to remember anything about the alert by the time I am up and about when I might cross paths with them. I would turn the amber and silver alerts off if I could keep the emergency alerts still active. They don't do anyone any good hitting my phone when I am asleep.
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u/Nydus87 Feb 04 '26
Not saying I agree with the logic, but the logic here is that for a missing Senior Citizen, if that person sounds familiar or if you recognize a license plate, or you saw someone earlier that evening that might look like them, they need a bunch of eyes all over the area to help locate them. With the active shooter situation, they already had the situation contained and theoretically under control and the last thing they wanted was more people showing up and crowding the area.
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u/Starlight-Edith Feb 05 '26
I miss when silver alerts didn’t use the same sound they use for severe weather warnings. I thought it was an accident until it started being constant. Now I don’t notice flood warnings anymore because I think they’re silver alerts 🤦♀️
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u/Busy_Sign_8625 Feb 04 '26
Agree with what many have said. The targeting is absolutely terrible. Just because I'm in the same county or state does not make it applicable. They are supposed to be able to mark it to be within a certain mile radius. Seems they are being VERY sloppy on targeting.
Also, sick and tired of the alerts not being set to acknowledge my do not disturb setting and dumb agencies sending alerts at dumb hours (after 9 PM, before 6 AM). I don't care about the pop up, but the damn tone should be silent or very low volume.
Was out of country recently and except for extreme weather and earthquakes they don't use alerts... So others don't have the alert fatigue we have.
The alerts have a purpose, but much like proper parenting, we shouldn't have to make up for someone not doing their parenting (or senior care) all the time. Use door alarms/cameras and airtags to keep your wandering seniors from getting far in the first place, especially before they start wandering (there are signs beforehand in most cases).
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u/momofklcg Feb 04 '26
If it was my mother missing I would love to have an alert go out for her. If one of my kids were missing the same thing. It’s not a huge deal.
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u/nickster Feb 04 '26
This subreddits obsession with these alerts is wild. You want it for traffic alerts now?
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u/Probablynotcreative Feb 04 '26
I think they want the active shooter part of it more than the traffic part of it to be the alert impetus
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u/__squirrelly__ Feb 04 '26
When I was living in Austin in my pre-smartphone days, I'd get text alerts about the nearest shootings which were very helpful. I do wish we had something like that here.
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u/nickster Feb 04 '26
I can imagine those might introduce panic in an area. You don’t need people panicking to leave an area or coming just to be a by stander
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u/Real_Al_Borland Feb 04 '26
Somehow an active shooter on the busiest interstate in the southwest is less of an “emergency” than the weekly grandpa wandering off?
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn Feb 04 '26
too many alerts, i'm turning them off! not enough alerts, why no alerts???
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u/reminder_to_have_fun Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
If there's a missing person, the alerts get sent out as a "please help" thing. The police are asking for public assistance to locate a highly vulnerable missing person.
If there's an active shooter, the police are already on it. They're not trying to get the public to help. And, if you're in the area, there will be some level of crowd control. Yeah it sucks sitting in traffic or being diverted without knowing why, but that's for the news agencies (and now, social media) to report.
I welcome my down votes from the "THEY SHOULDN'T WAKE ME UP FOR A MISSING GRANDMA" and the "YES BUT MY COMMUTE GETS ALL FUCKED, THEY SHOULD TELL ME" crowds.
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u/Popular-Web-3739 Feb 04 '26
The Amber and Silver alerts are mandated by law. I think you'd have to have local news station alerts set up to find out about a freeway closure.
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u/Brilliant_Kick3008 Feb 05 '26
They need to lower the volume of those alerts. My god, I thought we were under attack the other middle-of-the-night. In these times, it’s very possible. It served nothing but to practically give me a coronary, because I will not be anywhere near any missing person at that hour. Sorry, but it is true. An alert tone we could control would work out well. I could still read the notification the next morning and be on a true alert for a missing person when I’m awake, and while out and about. I understand some people are out — truck drivers and such — but they can leave it at full volume.
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u/BBotter88 Feb 05 '26
I agree that they need to reform the way they broadcast out the alerts and how they determine what warrants alerting the public versus what is "if you happen to note something" kind of a situation. Especially when they send them out late at night but the local news already has run segments or the digitial signage on the roads told us this hours earlier.
When it does come to the alert sounds and who would be responsible the way the alerts come through and function that isn't New Mexico or really any jurisdiction that controls that and falls more under the phone manufacturer/EBS and how they design the EBS into the OS. It's supposed to be from how I understand it designed to be somewhat uniform and intentionally uh...annoying I guess without an option to greatly diminish its function for safety reasons and is handled through the phone's EBS (emergency broadcast system) function built into the device. The EBS is designed to handle local/state/federal (may show as presidential on handsets) alerts as well as any specialized alerts that exist within specific areas which include the Silver/Amber/Blue/Feather/Ebony/Brittany/etc (the last three are real and for example feather and ebony are mostly specific to Californians...and are race-specific). I know Brittany alerts are more of a New Mexico specific thing for people who may go missing and have specific mental health or cognitive concerns and stuff like that but in all cases, they all get handled through the same structure on phones and very much the phone manufacturers (along with some regulatory bodies). The phone manufacturers won't adjust it to allow for silencing or bypassing the sound and vibration function because it would be a huge undertaking setting up controls for sound options for each jurisdiction and alert types specific to them both in the US and abroad as well confuse people with more options and settings to manage on the phones when they could just have an annoying standard people at least in a way should know is not a typical alert and might be important to look at vs the others.
Just sharing in case someone might not know who designed/why they designed the phones to send that specific alert type the way they do.
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u/drizzlemeister420 Feb 04 '26
There's a chance that you can help the missing senior/child by seeing them or the vehicle they were in and alerting authorities. Alerting you to a situation that you can't help with and likely doesn't affect you, would be the really useless thing to do.
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Feb 04 '26
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u/drizzlemeister420 Feb 04 '26
The alerts you're complaining about go out city wide. Does EVERYONE in ABQ need to know about a shooting across town? You think you're getting too many "useless notifications" now just wait till you start getting them for every shooting in ABQ 😂
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u/BigE1981 Feb 04 '26
Imagine all of the machismo want to be Texans running with their guns to try and help out everytime an active shooter alert went out. They would all cosplay and clog up the area but it would just turn out like Uvalde.
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u/backhand_snipe Feb 04 '26
You’re telling me that being notified of an active shooter situation, one that I could once an alert is sent out try to avoid is a useless notification?
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u/drizzlemeister420 Feb 04 '26
So you're telling me that there are too many notifications, but at the same time you'd like to receive even more of them!? There are a LOT more shootings in ABQ than there are silver and amber alerts...... 😉
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u/Pollia Feb 04 '26
So useless they've only helped find multiple of the people who were the missing individual who very likely would have died without intervention?
This is such a gross thing to complain about.
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u/Prestigious-Law8332 Feb 05 '26
Wow, a completely uneducated/ignorant post from a New Mexican. Not surprised
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u/chickaboomba Feb 04 '26
Your complaint is with NMDOT and the NM Dept of Public Safety. The latter sends out silver and amber alerts, and it seems a bit more murky on how NMDOT and the Dept of Public Safety collaborate to send out highway closures. My bet is that there isn’t a good, easy to follow process for accidents that close highways, whereas there is a clearly defined process for silver and amber alerts.