A measure that would establish a new missing person alert system in Arizona was unanimously passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, advancing to Gov. Katie Hobbs for final approval.
House Bill 2281 proposes the creation of a new Turquoise Alert System under the Department of Public Safety. Once activated at the request of any law enforcement agency operating in Arizona, the system would trigger notifications statewide to help locate missing people under age 65.
The bill, named Emily’s Law in honor of Emily Pike, passed 57-0 and three representatives did not vote. The San Carlos Apache teen went missing after running away from a group home in Mesa earlier this year and was found brutally murdered on Valentine’s Day near Globe, almost 100 miles from where she disappeared.
The measure is sponsored by Rep. Teresa Martinez, a Republican from Casa Grande, and supported by Indigenous state Reps. Brian Garcia, Mae Peshlakai and Myron Tsosie, all Democrats. It was developed in collaboration with Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis to address cases of missing Indigenous people across Arizona.
“In memory of all of those who have gone missing and have been found deceased or still have not been found and are still missing, this is for you,” Tsosie said ahead of his vote on Wednesday. “This is for shíyázhí Emily Pike. This is for shíyázhí Ashlynne Mike and many others who are still missing.”
“We may not be able to hear your cries or your shouts, your voices, but deep down in our hearts we do hear it and we will continue to fight for you each and every single day,” he continued.
The bill has undergone several amendments since it was introduced in January, including renaming the alert the Turquoise Alert System, similar to an alert system recently signed into law in New Mexico.
“When we announced this bill, it was in January, we had no idea that Emily Pike had gone missing,” Martinez said during Wednesday’s vote. “By the time it came over to the Senate, we had realized that not only had she gone missing, she had been missing for 30 days, and no one bothered to look for her.
“Had this law been in place, an alert would’ve gone out to look for this little girl. It breaks my heart that we the state of Arizona didn’t go looking for this little girl. No one looked for her,” she continued, her voice cracking. “We cannot let children go missing without somebody being alerted. … I think my great niece who is a member of the Gila River Indian tribe, if she went missing, I would turn this world upside down looking for her. We need to do that for every single one of our children and every single one of our loved ones.”
Until April 30, the bill’s language restricted the alert to missing people between 18 and 64 years old, but was amended to include minors after Arizona Luminaria reported the restriction would’ve made Emily’s case ineligible for an alert despite the law bearing her name.
While the change to include any missing person under 65 expands coverage for cases that wouldn’t qualify for the state’s Amber or Silver alerts, it’s still unclear if it would help runaway children like Emily due to its requirement that the missing person must be endangered — a designation not all runaways receive. Emily’s most recent missing person report from the Mesa Police Department did not indicate she was in danger, and no Amber Alert was issued in her case since it requires that a child must’ve been abducted, is not a runaway and is in danger.
Earlier bill amendments gradually expanded protections from solely focusing on missing Indigenous people by removing the term “Indigenous” from its language. It also introduced a definition for “person,” specifying that it “includes a member of a federally recognized tribe.”
While these changes make the alert system more inclusive, it also shifts attention away from the alert’s initial purpose: To address the disproportionately high rates of violence Indigenous communities face — an issue long overlooked by government and criminal justice systems across the state and nation.
Arizona is home to 22 federally-recognized Tribal Nations, and was identified in a 2018 study as having the third-highest number of Indigenous women and girls going missing or being murdered in the country.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System on Wednesday showed just more than 90 Native Americans were reported missing in Arizona. Another 67 children identified as “Indian” also were listed as missing on DPS’s missing children database as of Wednesday. It’s unclear how many are Native American versus Indian from India.
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