What is a Blue Alert: TBI sends alert after Tennessee police officer is shot

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued a Blue Alert overnight for two suspects accused of shooting a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper on I-40 East in Putnam County the night of July 19.

The TBI said it is looking for a Kia Forte with a broken right taillight and the temporary TN license plate Q9SC4JR. The vehicle was last seen on I-40 in Putnam County heading east toward Knoxville. Anyone who sees it should call 911 or 1-800-TBI-FIND. For more details on the shooting, visit this link.

So what is a Blue Alert? It essentially functions like an Amber Alert, but is reserved for dangerous suspects accused of seriously injuring or killing a police officer. It is sent out to the public “to assist in the apprehension of violent criminals who kill or seriously injure law enforcement officers in the line of duty, or to assist in the search for a missing officer when a crime is involved,” according to the TBI.

TBI issued a blue alert around 11:30 p.m. Friday.

Tennessee began issuing these alerts on July 1, 2011. A Blue Alert is issued to quickly provide information to the public “to assist in the apprehension of violent criminals who kill or seriously injure law enforcement officers in the line of duty or to assist in the search for a missing officer when a crime is involved,” according to the TBI.

Blue Alerts are issued only by TBI’s Criminal Intelligence Unit personnel. When TBI receives a request from a law enforcement agency about the death or serious injury of a police officer, administrators ensure that the criteria for blue alerts are met.

According to TBI, these criteria include:

• A sworn law enforcement officer is killed, suffers life-threatening injuries, or goes missing in the line of duty under circumstances that give rise to concern for his or her safety.
• The suspect(s) pose(s) an immediate threat to public safety and police personnel
• A description of the offender or vehicle is available for distribution to the public and law enforcement 911 emergency dispatch centers nationwide.
• The head of a Tennessee law enforcement agency, the colonel of the highway patrol, the chief, the sheriff, or his or her designated representative of the appropriate investigative agency shall request the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to activate the Blue Alert system.

The last time the TBI issued a statewide Blue Alert was in February 2024, after a shooting left a Blount County deputy dead and another deputy injured. In June 2022, alerts were sent out to find two men accused of shooting at law enforcement officers in different parts of Middle Tennessee. Before that, the TBI issued a Blue Alert in May 2018, after a Dickson County deputy was killed.

The Blue Alert has generally been hampered by various technical issues and limitations in the few cases it has been used in Tennessee. When a statewide Blue Alert was issued in 2022, the TBI apologized because several people across the state received audible Blue Alerts overnight, long after the situation had been resolved. Likewise, in 2018, the TBI apologized after a Blue Alert was sent out across the state without a location or much context about what was going on — it only included a name, a brief description of a person, and the words “armed and dangerous.”

The TBI responded in 2018 that the alert system it uses, known as IPAWS, can only convey a small portion of the information in an alert, with a 90-character limit. The TBI said at the time that it would work to find better ways to provide access to that information beyond the current structure it had to work with — and eventually get around to sending alerts with a link that takes people to public information on Facebook or its website.

IPAWS is the same system the state uses to send other emergency alerts to phones, including AMBER alerts.

The problems the TBI has identified with its Blue Alerts have been reported for many years on nationwide emergency calls that use the same system. Federal authorities have said these problems are largely due to ongoing limitations in smartphone technology and the way the national cellular alert system works.

IPAWS was updated in 2019 to allow agencies to send alerts of up to 360 characters, but some phones still don’t support the expanded alerts and can only receive 90 characters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said it is considering making 360 characters the standard in the future, once most people have newer phones that can ensure “the maximum number of people receive an alert.”