The Arizona Department of Public Safety, which reviews and distributes all statewide alerts for missing people, says Arizona’s new Turquoise Alert system is working like it's supposed to.
The alert, established under House Bill 2281, has only been activated once since launching in July, even as nearly 300 people were reported missing in Arizona during that same period, according to an Arizona Luminaria analysis of local and federal databases.
Lawmakers promoted the alert earlier this year as a way to close gaps in the system by reaching more of the people who go missing but don’t qualify for an Amber or Silver Alert. They regularly pointed to the disappearance of 14-year-old Emily Pike as an example of the kind of cases they hoped to help and even renamed the law in her honor.
But its near-total inactivity in the face of hundreds of missing persons cases in recent months raises questions about its effectiveness. DPS, however, contends that the new alert’s limited use is intentional and rooted in state statute.
“The limited number of Turquoise Alert activations is not indicative of underuse but reflects the intentional scope of the program,” DPS wrote in a statement provided to Arizona Luminaria by Sgt. Kim Love-Ness of the agency’s Duty Office, which directly manages the alerts.
DPS explained it does not initiate or investigate missing person cases, but instead acts as “a pass-through authority” that reviews formal alert requests for compliance and then coordinates statewide dissemination, if approved. The agency said it’s received several activation requests for a Turquoise Alert from local and county agencies, but none — apart from the one time it was approved — met all of the criteria outlined in state law. It did not provide specific details about any of those denied requests.
According to DPS, each Turquoise Alert request undergoes a rigorous review to ensure it meets all legal requirements for one — a threshold the agency says is essential to maintaining the system’s credibility.
“Issuing alerts outside of those parameters has the potential to dilute public responsiveness and reduce overall system effectiveness,” DPS wrote.
To issue an alert, all five of the following must be met:
- A missing person report is entered into law enforcement databases
- The person is under 65
- Local resources have been exhausted
- Circumstances are unexplained or suspicious
- There is enough descriptive information to aid in recovery efforts, according to DPS
The agency explained that state statute does not explicitly define terms like unexplained, suspicious or endangered, leaving their interpretation up to the law enforcement agencies. In practice, DPS generally defines unexplained as a disappearance that lacks a routine or voluntary explanation, suspicious as having facts that suggest possible criminal activity or coercion and endangered as involving a person who faces credible risk or harm.
“These operational definitions are intended as a guide, as each alert request is handled with thoughtful discretion, case by case, like all investigative cases, acknowledging each contains unique variables,” DPS wrote.
DPS did not respond to Luminaria’s specific questions about the missing children database on its website, which it referred to as the Arizona Missing and Exploited Children database, including exactly how it’s maintained and how many reflected children labeled runaway. It noted, however, that the database contains limited information as entered by investigating agencies and lacks the context needed to assess whether Turquoise Alert criteria are satisfied.
The agency also explained that Arizona law enforcement agencies generate hundreds of runaway juvenile reports each month and issuing a statewide activation for each case would “quickly desensitize the public and reduce effectiveness.”
“Many runaway cases, while important and investigated, do not present articulable danger or suspicious circumstances beyond leaving voluntarily, and therefore do not qualify for Turquoise Alert activation,” DPS wrote.
DPS said it continues to offer outreach and training to law enforcement agencies across Arizona about the state’s alert systems, including virtual sessions on how to submit a Turquoise Alert request. Participation in both the training and use of the state’s alert systems is voluntary, according to DPS.
Turquoise Alert would’ve excluded case of its namesake
Emily Pike, a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, went missing from a group home in Mesa earlier this year. She was labeled a runaway, and her disappearance was not widely known when Rep. Teresa Martinez, a Republican from Casa Grande, introduced a bill to establish the Turquoise Alert in January.
After Emily was found brutally murdered weeks later near Globe, her story was used by lawmakers to rally support for the legislation. But a DPS official during a ceremonial signing of the bill into law in April confirmed Emily’s case wouldn’t have qualified for a Turquoise Alert due to her being labeled a runaway and not considered endangered at the time she disappeared.
“As far as ‘runaway’ goes, in and of itself, a runaway isn’t necessarily a crime or a suspicious or unexplained circumstance,” Arizona DPS Captain Thomas Neve said at the time. “So if somebody decides to leave or go missing of their own volition … it wouldn’t necessarily qualify.”
“But again, if the circumstances are suspicious or unexplained, adding that to somebody who maybe ran away might actually, I would say, tip the scale to actually meeting that criteria,” he continued.
Advocates — including Emily’s own Tribal Nation and family since she was found — say the runaway label shouldn’t be used for any missing child because it takes away the urgency from cases. A growing number of criminal justice experts also argue that any missing child under 18 should immediately be considered endangered.
“I hear two words, ‘runaway and missing.’ Two little words that make a big difference on whether an investigation is done or whether they just sweep it under the rug,” Emily’s uncle, Allred Pike Jr., said at the ceremonial signing in May. “Something that’s named after her wouldn’t have made a difference if she was still here, that’s something that we need to take a look at.”
Indigenous children in particular go missing “at a disproportionate rate to their representation in the overall U.S. population of children,” according to a 2023 congressional report. Since the Turquoise Alert was implemented on July 10, more than 20 children identified as “Indian” were reported missing in Arizona, according to the missing children database on DPS’ website.
DPS noted that while the Turquoise Alert is the state’s only alert that specifically mentions it's available to members of a federally recognized tribe, all of Arizona’s alerts have historically included tribal communities and been available for use to tribal law enforcement.
But the legislation establishing the Turquoise Alert system was initially introduced to focus exclusively on any missing Indigenous people in Arizona. It was later amended to apply more broadly to any missing and endangered person under 65.
While the change made the alert system more inclusive, it also shifted attention away from its original purpose: To address the disproportionately high rates of violence Indigenous communities face and the long-standing inaction by government and criminal justice systems across the state and nation.
Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized Tribal Nations, and was identified in a 2018 study as having the third-highest number of Indigenous women and girls going missing or being murdered in the country.
In 2020, a legislative study found that 160 Indigenous women and girls were murdered in Arizona between 1976 and 2018 — a total that steadily increased in those 40 years. Additionally, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System showed just over 90 Native Americans were reported missing in Arizona since 1956, the database showed as of Oct. 29.
Arizona Luminaria recently launched an MMIP database, where nearly 100 women and girls who are missing or were murdered are reflected so far. That data has shown that women ages 19 to 46 accounted for about 70% of all the cases.
This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.