Virginia Lottery Teams With Police To Broadcast Amber Alerts

By Amber Lester Kennedy Thursday, March 10, 2011

An e-mail from a Virginia Beach resident prompted the Virginia Lottery and Virginia State Police to partner in the effort to find missing and endangered children.

The Virginia Lottery’s in-store electronic display systems will now add Amber Alert messages to the information that scrolls across the top of self-service Lottery Express vending machines and along display screens mounted above clerk-operated Lottery terminals.

Virginia Beach resident Christopher Divers e-mailed Gov. Bob McDonnell with the idea, which will add the messages to approximately 5,700 screens across the state. The screens normally display jackpot amounts and marketing messages; when Amber Alerts are scrolling, no marketing messages will be displayed.

“When the Virginia State Police issues an Amber Alert, every second counts and the message needs to be spread quickly,” McDonnell said in a press release. “Thanks to a great idea from Christopher Divers of Virginia Beach and the collaborative efforts of the Virginia Lottery and our State Police, thousands of Lottery retailers in the Commonwealth will be able to notify customers of Virginia Amber Alert activation.”

The Lottery’s data center will process the messages when it receives them from the Virginia State Police. The Virginia Amber Alert system, established in 2002, notifies the public of a missing and endangered child through broadcast media, Virginia Department of Transportation electronic message signs, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Amber Alert website, the Virginia State Police Facebook page and the nonprofit A Child Is Missing program. Major public utilities and the Virginia Realtors Association also help spread the message to their employees across the state. The state has issued 29 Amber Alerts since 2002.