"I WANT people to be running out of their houses to help us look for abducted children."

These are the hopes of a senior police officer, commended for his role in a child abduction case, as a new scheme to save the lives of abducted children is launched in North and East Yorkshire.

Detective Inspector Jon Reed, of York CID, won an award on Wednesday for his quick actions when a ten-year-old girl was abducted at knifepoint in Tang Hall, York.

The girl was found shocked but unharmed, and the man who snatched her was subsequently jailed for life.

North Yorkshire and Humberside Police both revealed today that they are launching the Child Rescue Alert scheme, in partnership with the region's media.

It is aimed at saving the lives of abducted children in the crucial first few hours after the child is snatched.

Child Rescue Alert (CRA) relies on the broadcast of an urgent appeal for information on television, radio, and newspaper websites, to get information to the public as soon as the police have it.

A CRA may only be issued by a senior investigating officer, if there is reasonable belief the child has been kidnapped or abducted or is in imminent danger, or there is enough information for the public to be able to help find the child.

Det Insp Reed said: "The public always give us fantastic assistance in these types of investigations, and it will be a good way to ensure they get the information just as quickly as we do.

"This is a fantastic step forward in the protection of children.

"The occasions on which it will be used are hopefully going to be very rare and the situation has to be right.

"But it will be reassuring to parents and the public that this is available when a child has been abducted and we have information that can be circulated."

He said it would have been useful in the Soham investigation, when Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered by Ian Huntley in 2003.

"The police knew straight away that there was something not quite right there," he said. "But a lot of the time it doesn't happen like that.

"We have to have intelligence to suggest it is a kidnap before we push the button, or we will frighten the whole area unnecessarily."

He said it would also have been useful when Robert Black abducted and killed three girls in the 1980s.

Black was jailed in 1994 for the murders of Susan Maxwell, 11, of Cornhill-on-Tweed in July 1982, Caroline Hogg, five, from Edinburgh, in July 1983, and Sarah Harper, who was ten, of Morley, near Leeds, in March 1986.

Det Insp Reed said: "We have to make sure as a police force that we do use it in the right situations because we don't want something coming up on the TV every five minutes, or people will get blas about it."

Under the terms of an agreement between the force and broadcasters, they will give the key information quickly and repeatedly.

North Yorkshire Police have also set in place plans to deal with the expected surge in calls from the public once an appeal has been launched.

Abductions timeline

Terry Delaney, 52, was found guilty of attempted abduction by a jury at York Crown Court on Wednesday, after he grabbed a young girl by the arm and tried to pull her away as she waited at a bus stop, in Acomb, on October 30, last year

In November, 2005, Phillip Bargh, 28, was jailed for life for attacking a ten-year-old girl on a secluded patch of wasteland in Tang Hall. He took the girl into a secluded alleyway, produced a knife and forced her to remove her underwear, but when she repeatedly asked to be freed he panicked and let her go.

In October last year, a man in a balaclava tried to abduct nine-year-old Joanne Walker as she walked past Eversley Avenue in Sherburn-in-Elmet. She hit him with her umbrella as he chased her along a road, escaped and called her mum

In March, 2004, a ten-year-old boy was abducted by his own father, Karl Tyler, an escaped convict from York. Karl-Tyler Gaskin disappeared from his mother's home on Christmas Day. Gaskin senior, was arrested in Cumbria and the boy was reunited with his mother.

In March, 2002, a terrified 14-year-old girl was attacked by a man who followed her on her way home from school along Huntington Road, York. He grabbed her from behind, but she managed to fight him off and escape. Her attacker was never caught

A week before, a man had tried to abduct two young boys, aged nine and ten, outside Hob Moor Junior School, in York.

In November, 2001, Daniel Stuart Lowe, then 22, escaped jail after he abducted a five-year-old girl and locked her in a garage. He was given a three-year community rehabilitation order by York Crown Court

In October, 2000, an abduction attempt on a 16-year-old student failed when she struggled free. She was grabbed and told to get into a car by a man who had sounded his horn at her near the Askham Bar branch of Tesco, in York.

Updated: 11:40 Monday, March 27, 2006