California’s Race-Based Amber Alert System Is Crazy, and Possibly Unconstitutional
California…where we drown under atmospheric rivers of ludicrous race-based legislation.
The trouble with covering California is that there is so much crazy coming from Sacramento, it is like one of our dams.
There are hundreds of potential items of poor policy and ridiculous rule-making leaking from the state capital that is flooded with unintended consequences and richly deserved mockery.
Take, for example, what happened last October when California created the “Ebony Alert” system, an analog of the AMBER Alert system used to locate missing children, on Sunday. The system prioritizes recovering missing black children who do not qualify for an AMBER Alert. As we noted at the time:
“The AMBER Alert system must fulfill strict criteria for the message to be broadcast,” according to the enacting legislation’s factual findings. “If these criteria are not met, an AMBER Alert cannot be issued, and the child is labeled as a runaway.”
Missing children classified as “runaways” are not eligible for an AMBER Alert.
In other words, some children are getting prioritized based solely on their race. Attention to this new law came last week when the California Highway Patrol issued an “Ebony Alert” that has received 35 million X-views.
EBONY ALERT – Los Angeles County
Last seen: West 102nd Street and Figueroa Street, Los Angeles@LAPDHQIF SEEN, CALL 9-1-1 pic.twitter.com/yBdCwBy4R7
— CHP – Alerts (@CHPAlerts) February 16, 2024
Now there is increasing scrutiny on the implementation of the law. Attorney Aaron Walker took a look at the state law and asserts that it is unconstitutional.
…[B]luntly, no law enforcement agency has to do any of this, and we think they should refuse to do it because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is nothing in the Amber Alert system that excludes black people, even if they also qualify for Ebony Alerts, so they should stick to the Amber Alert system.
But more insidiously, all those factors mentioned in the Ebony Alert laws like disability status, age and so on are optional, too (‘The law enforcement agency may consider the following factors’). The only criteria that must be present is 1) that the law enforcement agency determines that would be an effective tool the in the investigation and 2) that the person be a black youth—whatever that means.
Further, as the title to this article promised, they don’t just have an Ebony Alert for young black people who are missing. Nope, they also have one for Native Americans in Cal. Gov. Code § 8594.13. And it uses a heck of a term: Feather Alert.
No, we are not making this up. We wish we were, but we aren’t.
Let’s note that @CoachFelecia is engaging in the cheapest race baiting.
If you object to race based missing person alerts like Ebony alerts, you supposedly object to finding missing black women.
As if you can’t find black ppl without setting up a special alert for them.
If you… pic.twitter.com/WnIzfn7Iij
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 17, 2024
The race-based rule is receiving a fair amount of mocking on social media.
Creating an Amber Alert specifically for black kids and calling it an “Ebony Alert” was an incredible choice by the State of California https://t.co/Jm5nm8Q0rd
— Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) February 17, 2024
“Ebony Alert” and “Feather Alert” do sound like a racist troll made them up https://t.co/fdIQO5MF1V
— Alice (@AliceFromQueens) February 17, 2024
Some offered a few interesting alternatives for other races and ethnic groups…in the interest of entertainment and “fairness”
Is there a Indian alert called Curry Alert?
Is there a Jew Alert?
Is there a white alert called Unseasoned Chicken Alert? https://t.co/QJ0wRTnTGM
— Мulletless Man 🇺🇸 (@Mullet_Simp) February 17, 2024
California…where we drown under atmospheric rivers of ludicrous race-based legislation.
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Comments
nothing unconstitutional
when a constitution that is ignored on a local basis is the new “Real” constitution
but good article none the less
Can you turn off ebony alerts?
People who work in retail issue Ebony Alerts all the time to all store personnel when a gang of you-know-whos enter the store.
Past performance is an indication of future thefts.
so when the ebony alert ( or even the amber alerts) are IGNORED by the populace
the only people truly hurt will be the children >>the families>>society
YET ANOTHER WIN FOR LEFTY
as that then will necessitate a further government intervention
OHHH AND WHO IS NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THESE EBONY ALERTS?
YOU WILL NOW BE CALLED OUT AS RACISTS
and your phone will KNOW your racist status etc etc
its a comn
I shut off all alerts on my phone. I don’t need them, I don’t want them, I don’t get them.
I am 100% oblivious to what is going on around me when I drive, except to know the other cars and potential hazards around me. I don’t look at other cars, I don’t look at other drivers, I don’t look at the passengers.
I drive my car. Safely.
I don’t study the “alert” signs that require me to read lengthy I formation to memorize card names, colors, and plates. I drive my car and don’t read billboards.
My brother rode beside me for 5 miles one day trying to get my attention for fun. It wasn’t until I stopped at a traffic light when he pulled up to me laughing his ass off.
That seems to be a terrible level of situational awareness. What if your brother had been an aggrieved motorist, who believed you “cut him off”, and was brandishing a firearm?
I watch every car, and every driver. Even in my rear-view mirrors. I see problems before they develop, even if they’re happening behind me. I notice the distracted drivers (as deserving of special attention, because I have to make up for their distracted condition in order to make sure that I avoid them, because I can’t rely on them to avoid me). I see people recklessly changing lanes, whether they’re behind me (and I can anticipate they will pass and take the lane in front of me without leaving adequate distance between our vehicles – have they stopped teaching “one car length for each 10 mph”?) and in front of me (in case they cause an accident, maybe with a distracted driver who runs into the backside of a lane-changer he didn’t notice). I watch brake lights and turn signals. I look for signs of impaired driving. I carefully watch people I’m passing for signs that they didn’t notice me. You get the picture. I can’t imagine driving today and only paying attention to my own vehicle’s operation.
I stated that I drive safely.
I did not say that I drive with blinders on.
Actually, you did say that:
“My brother rode beside me for 5 miles one day trying to get my attention for fun. It wasn’t until I stopped at a traffic light when he pulled up to me laughing his ass off.”
Most people will block those alerts.
After the first month, they wore thin. So and so stole a Hispanic kid out of Tucson and they’re driving a Honda. I’m out here in wild-burro-ville northwest of Phoenix where everybody drives a Ford Fx50. I can guaran-damn-tee you they ain’t coming here.
CA gov newscum is woke joke. He failed to deliver on “reparations”. So now he’s trying to compensate with other policies to make himself look like “ally” of BIPOC. Woke progressive leftist clown show.
It’s not ridiculous – there’s the all blacks look alike problem for whites, and probably the reverse for blacks, which comes from settling on the most efficient method of recognizing your circle of acquaintances.
Chinese think all Caucasians look alike, with the added bonus that we white people smell like wet dogs. Which is handy for blind Chinese people.
Except that would do absolutely nothing to change that dynamic if that were even the issue.
The point isn’t to remedy efficiency but to put out the notices to an interest audience. Which feed you subscribe to is your choice but it makes it more attractive to you, whichever one it is.
Upper comment by you said it was about improving efficiency. Lower comment by you says its not about improving efficiency. But double think is part of virtue signaling.
No, he didn’t say that Amber Alerts are about improving efficiency. Quite the contrary. He said that our relative inability to distinguish people of other races comes from our settling on the most efficient method of recognizing our circle of acquaintances. We automatically look for the subtle differences that distinguish individuals within our own race, which doesn’t help us when a person looks complete different. Thus all X look the same to us, regardless of who we are. And thus “alerts” for people of other races are not very useful to us, and we should unsubscribe from them.
Why is there so much racism on LI but not on other conservative blogs?
Racism like special programs for blacks?
Go find out, and report back in a year.
Have you seen the comment section on PJ Media?! It’s much worse there, with outright antisemites running rampant and moderators unwilling to stop them. Here if you see something that is outright, unmistakably racist, email the moderators and if they agree with your assessment it will usually be taken down. What you see here is generally borderline, not explicit enough to justify removing it.
Milhouse, I am at Instapundit a lot. Make no mistake that a lot of those posters are trolls, sent by leftist groups or even by the Feds to discredit conservative websites. We know this for three reasons:
a) No matter how many times you block them, they reappear with a new IP address.
b) They appear at all hours – which indicates multiple posters under the same forum name.
c) You will get one troll posing as a Nazi and magically, a few minutes later, a lefty troll points out the racist “post” but by the rightist troll.
Make no mistake, a lot of this is an effort by the left to shut down all dissent.
Is there anti-Semitism on the right? Yes. It is primarily people upset with liberal/secular Jews for being so prominent on the left and pushing for a leftist, secular society. And let’s be honest, Milhouse – a lot of Jews played a big role in it.
Eric, this has been going on for a long long time over there. My friend buzzsawmonkey used to spend a lot of time there butting heads with the neonazis and antisemites. I don’t know whether he still bothers.
Go read the comments at Zero Hedge, American Renaissance, and Vdare. Then, get back with us.
Radish Alert:
Anti-communist Chinese. Red outside, white inside. Possibly KMT. Mao made it up, not me.
The satire at babylon bee writes itself for CA. Next the missing tranny alert?
Tranny alerts will require a seven page description to differentiate them from the other trannies. Unattractive depressed man who became even less attractive more depressed woman is too generic. Applies to 99.9% of them in Portland. Therapists support the trannies because the effect on the trannies children will be employment forever.
“All units, all units. BOLO for a 1986 Chevy Camaro 5-Speed standard tranny. Age 38, silver.”
In days past I would change the fluid and filter in my tranny because it prolonged the life of the life of the car. If I didn’t, it might not want to work on a cold morning. Can I say that now?
.
Put it next to the missing catalytic converter alert.
They go missing much more often in LA, but people actually notice.
I hope so. A dear friend in southern Italy is trying to locate a tranny for his 1956 Cadillac. Any ideas?
IVORY ALERT
Missing piano?!?
No! Bar of soap. Be alert to slipping in the shower. Bend over with caution.
I was in the Army and a “dropping the soap in the shower” talk started. I said, “The right way to react is to put your back to the shower wall, and squat straight down to pick it up.”
Sgt. Fox, a very funny Viet vet (1st Marine Div), said, “No, no, no. The correct response is to ask the guy next to you, ‘Will you pick that up for me, please?'”
OK. But there are many who have a white and a black parent. Shouldn’t these be Ebony and Ivory Alerts?
And those who have white splotches deserve an alert.
No, those are Clio Awards.
Missing homeless junkie alert for SF? They were dumping on the sidewalk in front of my home for 11 months, and then one day there were just “gone” ?!
Once you understand the left can’t see anything without the prism of race, you can understand what they do.
The original “Amber Alert” was racist because Amber was white. They do have “silver alert” for demented peoplewho wandered off. We will eventually need a “POC LGBQWERTY Fluid Gender Unablist Alert”.
One new bill submitted in the Cali Senate … registration of all firearms with yearly requirement to re-register all firearms. Military and law enforcement not included. Of course this won’t be broadcast as a “Tyranny Alert”.
“The original ‘Amber Alert’ was racist because Amber was white.”
And the “Miranda Warning” is racist because Miranda was a light skinned Latino. Therefore black criminals should not be warned they have a right to remain silent.
How many of you ever known to remain silent?
True. But the only thing they say is, “I can’t breathe.”
Oh shoot. I forgot, “Hands up. Don’t shoot'”
You also forgot “Din do nuffin!”
Especially in a movie theater.
They have the right to remain silent…. They just don’t have the ability to do so. Of course, I find most people have that issue. Including myself when I’m in trouble with the Mrs.!
Another bill has a requirement for insurance companies to rat out policy holders with guns.
As I mentioned when the idea for this was reported before:
So you tell black kids that police are the most dangerous thing in the world to them…then implement a system where the police are supposed to actively look for black kids who haven’t done anything wrong. What happens when they find the subject of an “Ebony Alert” and they don’t want to go with the police? When the subject fights the police? When they go for an officer’s gun?
And if you think police actually are out to get black people:
What happens when it’s someone who looks like the picture but isn’t them? When a picture is a couple years old and there’s a broad range of people it could be? You get a great way for police to detain people they wouldn’t have previously. You’re going to get a whole bunch more interactions that can go wrong.
They’ve managed to create a racist, unconstitutional system that can be used to screw over the people it claims to help. You know, just like the rest of the California government.
They are in “the vacants.” Case closed.
“Is there a Indian alert called Curry Alert?”
No, you idiot, it’s the Dot Alert, so you can tell it from the Feather Alert.
What really chaps the proggy’s asses is when you point out that advertising to recover black runaways (but not white runaways) is the Democrats’ new Fugitive Slave Law.
Ummmm, that’s a reset button.
The vile Dhimmi-crats must impose their utterly obnoxious, corrosive and racist diktats upon every facet and sphere of American society. The “black national anthem;” the utterly contrived, farcical “harvest festival” of “Kwanzaa;” “black history month;” etc., etc. — all destructive conceits contrived by a political party that seeks to promote and impose racial tribalism and Balkanization at every turn.
GOP candidates need to articulate how utterly destructive this agitprop is, to any nation. The U.S. cannot survive this ceaseless, dishonest and corrosive racial incitement and division.
The so-called “black national anthem” is neither obnoxious nor corrosive, and certainly not racist. It’s a beautiful hymn and I’d be happy to sing it on almost any occasion. It’s just not particularly black, and doesn’t sound anything like an anthem.
It is meant to be racially divisive Milhouse, and you know it.
Please stop being so obtuse.
The song was meant to be racially divisive?! Surely not. Neither of the Johnson brothers, back in 1900, was into that.
That it’s being used nowadays as an instrument of divisiveness does not reflect on the song.
The same can be said for “Dixie”. For the very life of me, I can’t hear racism in it.
Then again, one of my illnesses has affected my hearing and I don’t hear dog whistles very well. /s
Don’t be obtuse, Milhouse — the artistic merit of the “black national anthem” isn’t at issue. It’s the act of singing a so-called “black national anthem” at sporting events, as a sop to insecure and embittered black nationalists, that is inherently a corrosive and divisive act of racial tribalism and Balkanization.
Should American Jews have an anthem unique to their culture sung at such events? Hispanics? Asians? This is racial tribalism at its most corrosive.
Your contention about the alleged beauty of the “black national anthem” misses entirely the negative manner in which the song is being exploited and wielded.
You wrote that the “black national anthem” is a “destructive conceit contrived by a political party that seeks to promote and impose racial tribalism and Balkanization at every turn.” My reaction was to that statement. The song in question is not particularly black, and not an anthem, and certainly not destructive or divisive. If it’s being exploited for such purposes that doesn’t reflect on it, any more than when patriotic songs were used by the likes of Father Coughlin and his followers.
Ebony Alert??
Why not? After all, we have other bulls–t in place, such as the “Black National Anthem”.
Fani Willis would approve and call it “Eboni Lert”.
For someone who has been to university and holds a JD, she sure sounds like the principal I heard at a ghetto elementary school years ago.
This particular Ebony Alert has a 14 year old missing from Figueroa St. in LA. Did her momma report her after she didn’t come back from work?
She’s being pimped out by black homies on the street. But since all white police are now considered racists, blacks want their own black teen hoe app.
So, the Democrats now have alerts for runaway blacks?
That’s not new for them.
They were doing that before the Civil War.
Feather Alert for elizabeth warren? She’s off the reservation?
Will there be a Spirit of Aloha alert for Native Hawaiians?
I blocked Amber Alerts long ago. Why?
1) Getting blown out of bed at 2:30 in the morning by Amber Alerts.
2) “Amber Alert” too often translates to “father picked up child at school to go for a burger and a chat because the bitch ex wife denies him his court-mandated visitation rights. I will be damned if I will turn in some poor bastard for a beating, tazing, and a jail cell for visiting his kid.