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The Ohio Blue Alert program will alert the public by email with the known details of a suspect who has killed or seriously injured a law enforcement officer and is still on the loose.

 

Sergeant Virgil Conley of the Athens Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol says this program is needed.

 

"It is not only a threat to the law enforcement community if they are willing to kill a police officer they are willing to kill anybody to get away or stay in flight.  So, it's not only an individual threat against police, it's a societal threat," said Conley.

 

Conley says the program will launch officially on June 8.

 

"It is probably long overdue.  It's not something that happens all the time, fortunately, but it's something that a lot of times, other officers won't even know about it until it comes out in the news just because the investigation still goes on. If something happens in the northern part of Ohio, we may not hear about it down here in the southern part of Ohio," explained Conley. "This gives us a way to better apprehend and better relay information from officer to officer and post to post and form office to office to get that information out as quickly as possible so that these people can be apprehended."

 

A statewide test was conducted at 10 o'clock Friday morning when the system was activated.