Committee considers changes to North Dakota Silver Alert rules to allow family reports, tighten criteria

The Senate State and Local Government Committee opened a hearing on Senate Bill 2098 to revise North Dakota's alert statutes, including changes to Silver Alert procedures that would allow issuance based on a report from a missing adult's family member when the family provides sufficient evidence of a threat to health or safety. Senator Diane Larson, sponsor, told the committee the bill largely reorganizes existing language and adds the new provision allowing family-initiated Silver Alert requests when the report contains sufficient evidence.

The bill would add the term "endangered" across Silver Alert definitions and align the danger standard with AMBER Alert language, substituting wording that the missing person "may be in grave danger of serious bodily harm or death." Sergeant Jenna Claussen Huberts, North Dakota Highway Patrol alerts coordinator, said the change "expands that discretion for law enforcement when finding missing endangered individuals, but it also maintains that high standard of that strict criteria." She described the alert workflow: local law enforcement submits a request form to state radio, the Watch Center…