Blue Alerts are issued to help catch people who are believed to have wounded or killed local, state or federal law enforcement officers. Here are the criteria for a Blue Alert: A law enforcement officer must have been killed or seriously injured by an offender.

Texas sent out 282 public safety alerts last year, six times more than in 2017. The state also leads the nation in alert opt-outs.

Phones buzzed across Texas just before 8 p.m. Wednesday with a high-priority emergency alert. But it wasn't about flooding, a storm, or a missing child. It was about a five-day-old shooting at an ICE detention center hundreds of miles away.

As the state mourns the deaths caused by the floods, the disaster is drawing attention to the effectiveness of the Blue Alert system.

Texas is one of several states that use Blue Alerts, but what is it, and how does it differ from AMBER Alerts?

A crisis communication expert says everyday notifications are weakening the impact of life-saving emergency alerts.