Nationwide Amber Alert test planned for Wednesday | Police and public safety

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation will conduct a statewide test of its Amber Alert notification system at 11 a.m. Wednesday

The test follows the organization’s recent decision to remove some elements of its X (Twitter) landing page.

CBI spokesman Rob Low said various changes to the social media platform and concerns about public access to information led CBI to develop an internal solution to circumvent the character count in wireless emergency alert limits set for Links apply included in its Wireless Emergency Alert System (WEA) messages.

Links contained in CBI WEA messages will soon point to a permanent CBI Alerts landing page rather than the organization’s X (Twitter) landing page.

The link to the new page should be platform-independent.

“This test is intended to ensure that the redirection of the link to the new solution works properly,” he said.

In most cases, the WEA alarm test feature is not enabled by default on mobile devices. However, a CBI statement said those who have activated testing alerts will receive a notification but should not be alarmed.

No action is required.

Shortened forwarding links in WEA messages are nothing new, Low said.

“However, we hope that through the internal landing pad we will provide direct public access to alerting information, independent of individual social media accounts of the public wanting to help.”

This test comes just three days before National Missing Children Day on May 25th.

Low points out that alerts will continue to be posted on the CBI’s social media platforms, but will include links to the new landing page.

“Our goal is to ensure that as much information that can be sent through the WEA system can be viewed by as many people as possible to obtain public assistance on child abduction and other alerts,” he said.