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**Arizona Launches “Turquoise Alert” System to Aid in Search for Missing Indigenous People**

**PHOENIX, AZ** – Arizona has officially launched its “Turquoise Alert” system, a statewide alert designed to assist law enforcement in locating missing and endangered Indigenous people. Governor Katie Hobbs signed the legislation into law in May and hailed the system as a “critical communication tool that will save lives.”

The Turquoise Alert fills a gap in the existing Amber and Silver Alert systems, covering missing persons under 65 who don’t meet the criteria for those alerts. Before this, no public alert was mandated for missing adults, a challenge faced by many Indigenous families.

“This tool is a meaningful step to improve the safety and well-being of communities across Arizona, and in particular Tribal communities, which for too long have suffered from a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people,” said Gov. Hobbs.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety will manage the system, distributing alerts through various channels, including the Emergency Alert System, Wireless Emergency Alerts, and social media. An alert will be activated when a person goes missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances and is believed to be endangered. Specific criteria must be met, including the exhaustion of local resources, the potential danger to the missing person, and the availability of sufficient descriptive information.

The launch has been praised by Indigenous leaders across the state, who emphasized the urgency of the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP). According to the FBI, more than 10,600 Indigenous people were reported missing in the U.S. in 2023. Arizona has a particularly high number of unresolved cases.

“We have long lived with the painful reality that our Indigenous brothers and sisters go missing at alarming rates and too often slip through the cracks of systems not built to protect them,” said Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis. He called the new alert system a promise that “Indigenous lives matter.”

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren also expressed his gratitude for the new system and said his office will utilize the tool in collaboration with the Navajo Nation’s existing public safety resources in hopes of enhancing the tribe’s emergency response efforts to “end the MMIP crisis.”

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