AMBER alert in Loranger case lasted 3 hours, lawmaker calls for improvement of process

HAMMOND, Louisiana – After the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office requested an AMBER alert in connection with the disappearance of 4-year-old Erin and 6-year-old Jalie Brunett, it took nearly three hours for the Louisiana State Police to issue one. Erin Brunett was found dead shortly afterward. In a memo, the LSP called the TPSO’s original request “incomplete.” This week, a state lawmaker called for simplifying Louisiana’s AMBER alert process.

“A sheriff says one thing, the state police say another,” state Rep. Dixon McMakin of Baton Rouge said in an interview Friday. On Thursday, he sent a letter to Gov. Jeff Landry to “express his concerns” about the state’s AMBER alert system and to look for ways to “improve” it.

On the morning of June 13, Callie Brunett was found dead in her home in Loranger. Her two daughters, four-year-old Erin and six-year-old Jalie, were missing.

Logs provided to WBRZ from both LSP and TPSO indicate that TPSO requested an AMBER Alert for Erin and Jalie around 9:30 a.m. that morning. At around 10:30 a.m., LSP’s log shows that “it received an incomplete AMBER Alert request from TPSO.”

TPSO Sheriff Daniel Edwards denied this at a press conference last week. “To say we provided incomplete information is, in my opinion, an inaccurate representation,” he said.

The TPSO log shows that at 10:30 a.m., someone from the state’s law enforcement information center (known as the Fusion Center) contacted the TPSO “advising that the request did not qualify as an AMBER Alert.”

According to LSP’s website, AMBER Alerts are only issued when “law enforcement believes the circumstances of the abduction indicate that the child is in danger of serious injury or death” and “there must be enough detailed information about the child, the abductor, and/or the suspect’s vehicle to reasonably believe that an immediate alert will assist in the recovery of the child.”

Over the next 20 minutes, the TPSO log shows, phone calls back and forth took place, including one instance in which “(TPSO Chief Jimmy) Travis speaks with Jonathan Kemp, who is at the Fusion Center. Travis asks the Fusion Center why this is not considered an Amber Alert (sic). Kemp says he will make a few calls to find out exactly what is going on.”

“I know we’ve asked several times why it’s taking so long,” Sheriff Edwards said, “and they’ve never told us that information was missing or incomplete.”

Shortly after noon, according to TPSO logs, Kemp called Chief Travis and told him the alert would be coming in soon. It was sent at 12:28 p.m.

Rep. McMakin believes the delay could have been avoided if the state had a more streamlined process for requesting AMBER alerts. “Even though the AMBER alert system is a national policy, that doesn’t mean we can’t be at the forefront of modernizing that process,” he told WWL Louisiana.

His vision is both a simpler online form and a more direct approval process between LSP and the local law enforcement agency making the request. “We put those two people in touch immediately and have them contact each other when necessary. That way we eliminate any discrepancies between who’s talking to whom and when that might be.”

MP McMakin said he would try to meet with LSP leadership in the near future to discuss his concerns.

In a statement accompanying the minutes, LSP noted that it must conduct a “thorough review of each individual case” before issuing an AMBER alert. TPSO did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

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