CLEVELAND — The man suspected of abducting his girlfriend's daughter, then his own daughter, is still on the run Thursday. The Cleveland Division of Police says Julian Early took the girls Wednesday night and that both have been found.
However, it took over seven hours for authorities to issue an Amber Alert for Early's daughter.
The Cuyahoga Emergency Communications System (CECOMS) said the Cleveland Division of Police submitted an Amber Alert request to them at 12:27 a.m. Thursday morning, telling them 2-year-old Journey Early was abducted by her father around 5:20 p.m. Wednesday evening. The Amber Alert was then sent out at around 1 a.m.
Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy -- who is also chairman of the Northeast Ohio Amber Alert Committee -- spoke to 3News about the situation on behalf of CECOMS. We asked him why it took so long for the Amber Alert to be issued.
"It's a fair question to be asked of law enforcement: why did it take so long?," he said. "But what's not fair is to automatically assume that they were sitting on their hands and not doing their job."
Majoy tells us they don't know the details of why Cleveland police took so long to submit their request. but said it may have taken time for the situation to meet all four Amber Alert criteria.
The first criteria being the person must be under 18-years-old. There has to be credible info that that they were forcibly taken or lured away, and they have to be in danger of serious bodily harm or death. Also, there has to be enough descriptive info on the child, abductor, and/or abductor vehicle to be helpful for a broadcast alert.
"Before the finger gets pointed at law enforcement, you have to understand that we want law enforcement to do a very comprehensive investigation before they ring that bell," Majoy explained. "Because once the bell is rung, you cannot unring it, and it's really critical that they have all that information. What looks to be a delay, like 'why did it take so long?' Well, we need to be sure."
CECOMS wants the public to know they have two categories for missing kids, the lesser level of "Endangered Alert," and then the Amber Alert. With both local media partners and social media are utilized, but it's only with Amber where they notify all cell phones and broadcast over TV and radio.
Majoy said CECOMS' Amber Alerts reach 1.2 million people in 20 minutes. To keep the public from growing desensitized to them, they've only issued three so far this year and 36 since 2014.
"We want law enforcement to be 100% sure that this is an Amber Alert, because if we issue too many Amber Alerts, then people are going to become immune to them," he explained. "They're not going to listen to them, and they're not going to pay the type of attention to it that really needs to go to it."
On Thursday morning, 3News asked the Cleveland Division of Police for more details on the timing of their Amber Alert request for the 2-year-old. They provided the following statement:
"This investigation is ongoing as the suspect is still at large. What we can share is we identified that the County activation checklist is slightly different to the documentation of the Cleveland Division of Police. This resulted in the Amber Alert documentation arriving to CECOMS in a timely fashion but the Division’s Communications Section was not notified which delayed activation. We are thankful for the hard work of the community and officers that allowed these two missing children to be delivered home safely. The Division remains committed to making the Amber Alert activation streamlined and we are taking measures to ensure that future Amber Alert activations are efficiently and effectively executed."
