South Carolina's Amber Alert Oversight Committee is making changes to its procedures to clear up confusion that was discovered during last week's alert for a kidnapped 7-year-old. Hunter Thompson was kidnapped from a K-Mart in Anderson, but was released unharmed the next day. A suspect is in jail.

The confusion stems from conflicting guidelines about who can call for an Amber Alert. One of the protocols says that only an officer who's been through the State Law Enforcement Division's Amber Alert training can make the request for an alert.

But Jeff Moore, chairman of the oversight committee and director of the state Sheriffs association, says there's another conflicting rule.

"Clearly, our protocol says the chief of police, the sheriff, one of their designees can do it. It doesn't say one of their trained designees, it just says a designee can do it. So we have to tighten that up. There's no question about it." 

He was concerned last week that there was a delay in getting out the alert in Anderson because the sheriff's office had only one trained Amber Alert officer, who was off duty when the call came in about Hunter's disappearance.

But that officer, Capt. Debbie Orr, was at home and was contacted quickly.  Moore says now he does not think that caused a delay in getting out the alert.

There was also concern before the review meeting that the whole process took too long, since Hunter's disappearance was known before 9 p.m., but the Amber Alert wasn't issued until about 1 a.m.

Moore says, "The second attempt, or second inspection of the child's home probably slowed the process down. But the bottom line for it was, the protocol was followed. There was a second checking of the house that may have caused a 30- or 40-minute delay." 

SLED had requested that deputies make that second check, since no one had seen Hunter being abducted, and officers wanted to make sure he hadn't walked home or been given a ride home by someone else.

Margaret Frierson, director of the state chapter of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is always concerned about the length of time it takes to issue an Amber Alert, since 75 percent of children who are kidnapped and murdered are killed within the first three hours.

But now, having heard the time lines and explanations of everything that happened from Anderson Sheriff Gene Taylor, Capt. John Skipper and Capt. Orr, she's convinced that everything was done in this case as well as it could have been, given the circumstances.

"Absolutely. And as we discussed in our meeting, Anderson County very quickly assessed the situation, realized they had a missing child, a very vulnerable 7-year-old. They responded very quickly, very appropriately, did some initial searches, and then, ultimately, activated Amber."

Another concern was that Anderson County notified only one media outlet about the disappearance before the statewide Amber Alert went out. That means not as many people as possible knew to be looking for a missing child.

But Capt. Skipper told the committee that he was just trying to get the word out as quickly as possible, and other media outlets picked up on it without his having to call them all and waste valuable time. He stands by his decision.

Jeff Moore says, "Nothing prevents a police chief or a sheriff or any other law enforcement agency to activate or to call local news media if they think they have a child who is missing."

As for just how fast an Amber Alert can and should go out, he says it will always vary based on the circumstances of a case. If a child is kidnapped and several witnesses see the abduction, it can go out within minutes.

In this case, no one saw Hunter disappear, so all other possibilities besides kidnapping had to be ruled out first, which took hours of searching.

"Bottom line, they followed the protocol," Moore says. "They did everything they were asked to do by SLED. And the activation came at their request when they made the request. So I think they probably did all they could have done under the circumstances."