STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER MIGNON L. CLYBURN
Re: Amendment of Part 11 of the Commission’s Rules Regarding Emergency Alert System, PS Docket 
No. 15-94.
Mr. Liu, and Ms. Liu, and Ms. Ramos, thank you for traveling to D.C. to take part in this event.  
Your sons and husbands served their community with great honor, dedication and courage.  Today, with 
the adoption of this rule to promote an alert code when there is a credible threat against law enforcement 
officers, we honor the memory of your loved ones and take an important step to help ensure the safety of 
our police officers when they’re in the line of duty.  
An estimated 240 million calls are made to 9-1-1 centers each year.  But when the need arises for 
one of us to make that dreaded call for help, it is our nation’s first responders -- which includes law 
enforcement officers -- who step up, often at great risk to their own personal safety, in order to ensure 
ours.  For that, we will always be indebted.
So I am thankful we can show support for them through today’s Order which revises the 
Commission’s Emergency Alert System, or EAS rules.  Adding a three-character Blue Alert event code is 
the most effective means to share vital information in critical situations involving:  the serious injury or 
death of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty; an officer who is missing in connection with his or 
her official duties; or an imminent and credible threat that an individual intends to cause serious injury to, 
or kill, a law enforcement officer.  
It is important that we do our part as a Commission to update the EAS system to facilitate broader 
dissemination of information that can help keep these officers safe.  And as the City of New York and the 
National Association of Broadcasters have pointed out, issuing the Blue Alert via the EAS system has the 
added benefit of further protecting the public from violent suspects.  
I thank Lisa Fowlkes and her staff in the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau for your 
work on this important item.