An all-point bulletin (APB) is an electronic transmission that sends information about a suspect or person of interest from one law enforcement agency to others. It can be issued for missing persons, witnesses, or suspects. Other countries have similar systems, such as the UK’s all-point warning (APW) and Australia’s keep an eye out (KALOF).
When a United States law enforcement agency is looking for a suspect or person of interest, they often issue a comprehensive bulletin, or APB for short. An all-point bulletin is an electronic transmission that sends information about the suspect, or person of interest, from one law enforcement agency to other law enforcement agencies around the country. The purpose of a comprehensive bulletin is to alert other law enforcement agencies that you are looking for a person so they can arrest you if they come across you.
There need not be an official arrest warrant issued for a person to be the subject of a bulletin at all points. Indeed, a warrant can also be issued for missing persons or witnesses to a crime. Prior to the Amber Alert system in the United States, an emergency alert was often issued when a child was believed to have been abducted. Now, a comprehensive bulletin can be issued alongside other alert systems, such as the Amber Alert system.
An APB can also be issued to a “person of interest”. A person of interest is a term used by police when they want to find someone to question them, but aren’t quite ready to call them suspicious. In some cases, the person may eventually become a suspect, while, in others, the person may be an essential witness to a crime. When the subject of an all-point bulletin is a person of interest, a law enforcement officer who comes across him or her generally cannot take the person into custody, but can inform the issuing agency of the location in where the person is located.
When the subject of an APB is suspected of a crime and a warrant has been issued for his arrest, the law enforcement officer who meets with him can take the person into custody. In today’s digital age, an arrest warrant is likely to appear if a wanted person is stopped by law enforcement for even a minor traffic offense; however, if an officer has no reason to apprehend an individual, a wanted person can evade capture for a significant amount of time. By issuing a comprehensive bulletin, law enforcement agencies across the country can proactively search for a wanted criminal instead of relying on a chance encounter to locate them.
Many jurisdictions around the world use a similar system to communicate between law enforcement agencies. The UK, for example, issues an “all-point warning” or APW, for the same reasons that the US issues an APB. The Australian counterpoint to an APB is a “keep an eye out” or KALOF.
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