Wanted: A missing person
Reasons for the calls run the gamut, police say, and solving the cases isn’t necessarily an easy matter.
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Article RatingWhen it comes to missing person cases, law enforcement officials have two familiar pieces of advice to offer: Time is of the essence, and a picture is worth a thousand words.
“If it is a situation that is believed to be a legitimate report, getting information out to the public is paramount,” says Trooper Karl Schmidhamer, spokesman for Pennsylvania state police. “The quicker that information goes out, the better the chance of locating the missing person.”
The human element matters, law enforcement officers say, but they are also excited about new technologies that can aid in the task of effectively restoring a runaway teen, stray toddler, confused senior or, in the worst-case scenario, kidnap victim.
For the Carlisle Police Department, the newest such feature is the A Child Is Missing alert program.
“Say you have a 4-year-old who walked out the back door while the parent was at the front of the house,” says Lt. Michael Dzezinski. If a 10-minute search does not turn up the child, he says, the department can activate the program and trigger automatic phone calls to the area around which the child disappeared, asking residents to walk out of their homes and check their properties for the child.
Carlisle has subscribed to the free program for about a year and a half, Dzezinski says, and although his department receives an average of one or two reports of missing juveniles per week, it has not, “thank goodness,” had to use the program, because so far the young children for whom the program is geared have been found within several minutes.
But, he says, it’s nice to know the program’s there.
“The benefit of the Child Is Missing program is there’s not any criteria that’s required,” Dzezinski says, stressing how that sets it apart from more recognizable programs like Amber Alert. And, he says, the program can work in reverse -- so if a lot of people are searching for a child who is located, police can prompt the program to call the area and report the find.
Schmidhamer says the program that has staffers in its barracks excited is called Project Thumbprint. The idea, he says, is to use thumb drive devices to store current pictures and personal descriptive information of a child -- everything police need to know about a missing child except his or her date of birth and Social Security number.
“These are the parent’s keys to relate when talking with investigators,” Schmidhamer says. The advantages of the program are great, he says, as it allows police to take pictures that show a child’s unique features such as marks, moles and scars, and the data can be easily updated.
The thumb drives may be purchased by parents or donated by sponsors of an event, Schmidhamer says. Issued in conjunction with them are state police child ID kits that include a workshop for parents and children to discuss their expectations of safety.
“This program has been met with great interest from the public,” Schmidhamer says, noting that parents appreciate the opportunity to safeguard their children in the event the unthinkable should happen.
“This is just one more step in the process that could bring a child safely home,” he said.
Whether the missing person is young or old, Schmidhamer and Dzezinski say, there are some aspects of how police handle calls that the public is often misinformed about.
“There is some misunderstanding out there that parents are required to wait a certain amount of time before they report it to police,” says Dzezinski. Schmidhamer agrees, pointing out that whether the individual causing the concern is a young person or an adult, many people think they have to wait 24 hours before calling police.
In actuality, Dzezinski says, there’s “no time requirement for any of them.” Officers are dispatched when a missing person is reported, he says, and police decide what to do from there.
The big divide, Dzezinski says, is whether the missing person is a juvenile or an adult.
Missing juveniles, he says, are automatically entered in the national crime database program,
“Any time a juvenile isn’t home and can’t be accounted for, there is an inherent danger in that, because of their age and vulnerability,” Dzezinski says. “People like to think, ‘He’s a habitual runaway, so police aren’t doing anything,’ but that’s not the case at all.”
Although cases in which a child has not run away before do tend to inspire more concern in parents, he says, the fact is that abductions could happen.
Dzezinski cited the recent series of attempted child abductions that culminated in the arrest of Chambersburg resident Kirk Gobin in Carlisle.
“Carlisle’s like any other community out there,” Dzezinski says. “These things do happen.”
More than half of the cases the department sees are juveniles who have simply run away because of something at home and who return a short time later, Dzezinski says, and he has seen cases in which children neglected or forgot to tell parents where they were going.
“We would rather the parent err on the side of caution and call us if they can’t account for their whereabouts if they can’t find (a child), versus waiting a day or two,” Dzezinski says.
Many people are familiar with Amber Alerts, Dzezinski says, but to preserve the program’s effectiveness, certain criteria must be met before an alert is triggered.
Law enforcement officials have a reasonable belief that an abduction of a child 17 or younger has occurred, and they believe the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death.
Similar guidelines come into play when police get reports concerning adults.
“Adults have a given right to go about as they please,” Dzezinski says. Unlike juvenile cases, he says, when adults are involved, police have to take into account the person’s expectation of privacy and the fact that, especially in domestic violence or tangled romantic situations, the person may have chosen to disappear.
“You have to make sure the motivation of the complainant is justified,” he said.
Schmidhamer agrees, explaining that police must have some reason for believing an adult to be endangered to enter them into the missing person system.
The criteria, Dzezinski says, is that adults must be believed to have disappeared involuntarily, be endangered, be disabled or be connected with a catastrophe. But, he says, that does not mean police cannot and should not conduct an investigation anyway.
Finally, the two say, up-to-date information and descriptions are of paramount importance when it comes to locating people.
“If possible, a digital photograph,” Dzezinski says, pointing out that in today’s wired world digital, images can be disseminated faster and more reliably than other kinds. But, he says, it’s still important that the information be current: Bringing in an infant picture of a child who is now 4 years old isn’t going to be much help.
