Members of a Senate committee unanimously advanced a bill Thursday that would require Kentucky State Police to operate a new alert system that helps find missing people over the age of 17.
Under Senate Bill 45, the program would be called the Kentucky Ashanti Alert System – named after Ashanti Billie, a 19-year-old woman who was abducted in 2017 in Virginia.
Senate Minority Whip David Yates, D-Louisville, is sponsoring the bill. He said the proposed alert system could help locate victims more quickly and would add Kentucky to the list of states where the system already exists.
Billie’s case “put the nation on alert of how often this is happening, and that we could have done something different,” Yates said. “We knew there was a huge problem that fell outside of the other alert programs.”
The Ashanti Alert Act was adopted on a federal level in 2018 to help establish a national communications network to aid in the search and recovery of missing people over the age of 17. But Kentucky is one of 20 states without an Ashanti Alert System, Yates said.
When implemented, the Kentucky system would quickly disseminate information to law enforcement, the media, and then the public about missing people and abductors, Yates said.
It calls for Kentucky State Police to work in cooperation with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the Division of Emergency Management, and media providers to create the system.
Megan Moseley, a domestic violence detective with the Louisville Metro Police Department, told the committee that she supports the alert system because it can save investigators valuable time.
“This first came to me probably two years ago when I was lead investigator on a domestic violence kidnapping. Through that course, my victim was missing about 8 hours before I was even notified of it,” she said. “And at that time, I got informed that we had no alert system in place that could assist with my search and my department’s search and recovery of my victim. Thankfully, my victim was found safe, probably about 24 hours later.”
Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, asked about possible funding for the system.
“I’m not sure how you can create this without some costs being incurred,” he said.
Yates replied that it only requires the use of existing resources within the existing budget.
“The infrastructure, the technology is already in place because of our other alert systems. What’s happened is obviously if the individual was under the age of majority, or if it was a Golden Alert of something else, you would be able to use it,” he said. “But because of the way that we’ve defined that, if a young person turns 18, then automatically we cannot use our system for alerts.”
Sen. Denise Harper Angel, D-Louisville, spoke in favor of the bill.
“I was proud to, I think back in 2004, pass the Golden Alert,” she said. “So this is another really good step to protect our young people, and I appreciate the effort.”
The bill now heads to the full Senate.
Information from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission.
