WYOMING – On Feb. 21, Governor Gordon signed a bill that will establish a new Ashanti Alert to allow local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement agencies to facilitate search efforts for a missing person or adult at risk.
HB0018 was sponsored by the Select Committee on Tribal Relations and the legislature came from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force that Governor Gordon established.
According to the bill, “state highway patrol shall operate and integrate additional missing persons alert communications networks that enable and help facilitate search efforts for an adult at risk or other missing person of an age, needs or circumstances that may fall outside the scope of the America’s missing: broadcast emergency response alert criteria.”
The bill defines “an adult at risk” as any adult with a developmental disability, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia or cognitive impairment resulting in an inability to get to a familiar location without assistance.
The passing of this bill and the implementation of the Ashanti Alert system recognizes the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, particularly women, in Wyoming. The alerts will be rapid notifications sent to cell phones and other media regarding missing adults. Local law enforcement will be able to request these alerts after the Wyoming Highway Patrol initiates them based off of specific alert criteria.
The alert name Ashanti comes from a woman who went missing in Virginia after being abducted in 2017 and found dead two weeks later. The Ashanti Alert aims to address the need for an alert system for people over the age of 17 who do not qualify as missing children.
