Pissed Texans send 4,000 Blue Alert complaints to FCC
Texans took to social media to air their grievances over a 5 a.m. Blue Alert on Friday, October 4. Thousands of comments were shared in most of Texas' regional subreddits, and memes made it a viral moment across many Facebook, Instagram and X timelines for a brief time.
It appears that frustration pushed nearly 4,000 Texans to lodge a complaint about the public safety alert to the Federal Communication Commission, according to a report by CBS News . It is not immediately clear how the complaints will be handled.
The Blue Alert was issued in Memphis, located in the Texas Panhandle about 430 miles north of San Antonio, after 33-year-old Seth Altman allegedly shot Memphis Police Chief Rex Plant on Thursday night. Plant and another officer were trying to arrest Altman on a burglary charge, according KVII News. Plant is reportedly hospitalized in stable condition.
Altman was added to Texas' Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list and is wanted on a charge of attempted capital murder of a peace officer. DPS is offering a reward up to $10,000 and says he is considered armed and dangerous.
The alert was received by many Texans at approximately 4:53 a.m. (myself included). A Reddit user posted to the Texas subreddit at 4:55 , and the thread amassed thousands of comments where users were shocked at the use of the public alert system, shared ways to disable the alerts and where to file complaints.
Comments in the posts about the alert in the San Antonio , Dallas and Houston subreddits pointed users to file complaints directly to the FCC, with users sharing language to easily copy and paste to make the process easier. In the Austin subreddit, a user created a whole post about how to file. Other users shared links and advice on filing complaints with DPS and the Hall County Sheriff's Office.
A search for "blue alert" on Reddit shows a similar angry sentiment about middle-of-the-night Blue Alerts over the years, and not only in Texas. People in Tennessee and North Carolina have taken to Reddit to complain about the alerts and lament being forced to unsubscribe from severe weather alerts if they disabled Blue Alerts .
The Texas Department of Public Safety issued a statement to CBS News, stating that "Blue Alerts are urgent public safety warnings that are meant to warn people of possible danger. They are designed to speed up the apprehension of violent criminals who kill or seriously wound law enforcement officers by generating tips and leads for the investigating agencies, and therefore giving those agencies the best opportunity to apprehend a dangerous criminal."
The Blue Alert program was signed into law in 2008 and the criteria to send an alert includes: an officer hurt or seriously injured by a suspect, the suspect must pose a serious risk or threat to the public and other law enforcement, a detailed description of the offender's vehicle, vehicle tag, or partial tag must be available for broadcast to the public, and investigating law enforcement agency must recommend it, according to the DPS website.
