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An early morning Amber Alert in the Toronto area ended positively this morning.
The three-year-old boy that was the subject of the search was found safe and sound around 8 a.m.
Police in the area, however, are saying that once again they received a number of calls from the public complaining about being woken up by the Amber Alert, which went out at 5 a.m.
Once again our Communications Centre has been receiving a number of calls from citizens using it as a platform to complain about being awaken by the Amber Alert.
— Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) May 14, 2019
REMINDER:
9-1-1 is for EMERGENCIES ONLY. Please help us to keep our phone lines free for real emergencies. Thanks^adc
“Once again, our communications centre has been receiving a number of calls from citizens using it as a platform to complain about being awaken by the Amber Alert,” tweeted the Toronto Police OPS account.
“REMINDER: 911 is for EMERGENCIES ONLY. Please help us to keep our phone lines free for real emergencies.”
Plenty of people took to Twitter to say the Amber Alert system should be changed so it doesn’t wake people living far from where the child goes missing.
Wow...imagine if the missing child or person was their family member. When a child is in potential danger, the only thing that matters is finding them as quickly as possible. This new Alert System exposes the real nasty side of people. Hope this sweet little boy is found safe.🙏🏼
— Sara (@BeatsTOR) May 14, 2019
Many others, however, fired back at those claims, saying a brief wake up pales in comparison to what the family and friends of the missing child are going through.
Today’s complaints come three months after the Peel Regional Police in Ontario were barraged with the same types of calls after issuing an early morning Amber Alert for a missing 11-year-old girl.
Although the girl was killed later in the day, she and the suspect in the killing, her father, were located due to a citizen receiving the alert and calling 911.
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