Mattie's Call
Mattie's Call is an American law-enforcement-initiated public-notification system to locate missing elderly, or otherwise disabled persons. It was created by an act of the Georgia General Assembly[1] in 2006.
History
In 2004, radio stations and local law-enforcement agencies in the Atlanta, Georgia, area broadcast information about the elderly Mattie Moore missing from her home.[2] Moore had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Mattie's Call was patterned after the AMBER Alert system created to locate missing, or abducted children. It uses public-service announcements on radio stations, displays on publicly controlled signaling devices and transmissions to law-enforcement agencies in an attempt to locate the missing endangered person.[3]
Mattie's Call is an example of a Silver Alert system to locate missing senior citizens.
Some critics of Mattie's Call have condemned the alert system, as an alternative to the AMBER Alert, geared toward alerting the public of reporting missing African Americans, due to its racial origin.