Group still seeking answers after Fort Worth kidnapping

A neighborhood group is demanding answers from Fort Worth city leaders after delays in issuing an Amber Alert after an 8-year-old was abducted.

The Ryan Place Task Force sent a letter to the city council. It wants to know if the Fort Worth Police Department has made any further policy changes since the young girl was kidnapped in the neighborhood three months ago.

On that day, an Amber Alert didn’t go out properly because there was no working fax machine at the crime scene.

Police did eventually find the girl with Michael Webb in a hotel room in the Fort Worth suburb of Forest Hill. But that was hours after Forest Hill officers questioned Webb at the hotel and two concerned residents reported seeing the car in the parking lot.

Residents brought their concerns to police back in June.

“Just the fact that a fax machine was even mentioned caught a lot of people off guard given how antiquated that is. So those are things we want to hear from city leaders about,” said Tim Keith with the Ryan Place Improvement District.

Fort Worth police said that fax machine that didn’t work was part of the process for getting some but not all of the alerts out via broadcast outlets.

The department said it will be making updates to its procedure to use email as well as to get those alerts out.

The Ryan Place Task Force is also asking Fort Worth police to look into changing its social media policy to allow officers and command staff on the scene of an incident to more quickly push out information.