Child safety advocates and Washington state lawmakers met on the steps of Seattle City Hall Friday to call for a review of Washington’s Amber Alert system. Their calls are in response to the deaths of the three Decker sisters.

Wenatchee Police had asked the State Patrol to issue an Amber Alert for the missing girls, but instead got an Endangered Missing Persons Advisory, which does not send out cellphone alerts. A manhunt is still underway in Chelan County for the father of the three sisters, Travis Decker, the prime suspect in their deaths.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Republican state Rep. Brian Burnett serves parts of Chelan, King, and Snohomish counties. Previously, he served for 12 years as Chelan County Sheriff. KUOW’s Paige Browning asked him about the current system, why a review is necessary, and what it might entail.

: I think they're doing well. I mean, it's a shock. Anytime you're talking about impact and death to children, I don't think there's anything more tragic than that. You take the innocent lives that have their whole life ahead of them, and then all of a sudden, overnight, instantly it's gone. That impacts people, not just our family members and loved ones, but entire communities, probably across the nation, right?

One of the bills that we were working on across the aisle in the last session was House Bill 1620. It concerns parental plans, the civil aspect of a parenting plan, and trying to keep children safe if there's concern for parental behavior, or some of their history. We wanted trauma-informed training for the judges. We wanted to make sure that we had the best qualified judges to make these decisions. If there's any concern for children being safe because of one or both parents, there needs to be supervised visits until you can make sure 100% that there's no concern there.

I told the group today this isn't attacking the Amber Alert. This was a system put in place that brought resources we didn't have before, putting information out there into the public's hands, especially now that we have all our electronics and social media, and people have the ability to be eyes on the street for us. In the world of law enforcement, that's where most of our crimes are solved, because of our community members bringing information to law enforcement.

I don't think we're ready to sit down and write new policy yet. I've made a couple of phone calls. I talked to Washington State Patrol’s Missing Persons Task Force. They're open as well. They said, "We want to serve our people. We want to keep people safe."

Some people have voiced concerns that making it easier to trigger Amber Alerts could numb the public to them. What do you say to that?

I suppose there's a chance of that. I think when we're dealing with missing and endangered children, people take that seriously. I don't think our lawmakers and law enforcement are going to allow it to be dumbed down. This is something we're going to take seriously. I think the key component is making sure if a child is endangered, that we have all the pieces in place to say that we are triggering alerts as soon as possible, because time is always going to be of the essence to be able to locate that child or children as soon as possible, to have a safe resolve.

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