Child Protection
Part IV
Your Child Is Missing
This is the fourth article in a four-part series on protecting children from predators. Part I focused on abuse awareness and reporting, Part II on preventing abduction, and Part III on Internet safety.
Your Child Is Missing - What to Do?
It is important to keep in mind that the first few hours are the most critical in an effort to find a missing child. So if you as a parent or guardian have reasonable belief that your child is missing, call 9-1-1. Do not wait.
The 9-1-1 dispatcher will want the following information about the child:
- Name
- Address
- Last known location and time
- Description, including gender, age, hair and eye color, height and weight, distinguishing features (scars, missing teeth, etc.), and clothing. The more detailed information you provide, the more you will help the first responders. Remember that the responding officers do not know what your child looks like.
- Whether there is reason to believe the child was abducted
- Location and time of the abduction
- Description of the abductor
- License plate number and description of the abductor's vehicle
- Direction of travel
How Corvallis Police Respond
When a missing child call comes into the Regional 9-1-1 Center, the dispatcher will immediately send an officer to the child's home. The responding officer will want a recent photograph and the names, addresses, and contact information for the child's friends or other persons or places where the child may have gone. To prevent duplication of effort, the officer will want to know which ones you have already called.
The officer will ask for consent to search the house to confirm that the child is missing. Why search the house? There are cases where the child returned home but the parents did not know until after a large search effort was already underway. And officers have also found clues that parents have overlooked as to why or where the child has gone.
While the responding officer is talking with the parents and searching the house, all other patrol units will move as quickly as possible to the area of the child's last known location. There, the officers will conduct an area search. If found, the child will be taken home. If the child is not found, the officer in charge at the scene has several options for how to continue the search. These include calling in the Corvallis Police K-9 Unit, neighboring law enforcement agencies, the Benton County Search and Rescue Team, A Child Is Missing Alert System (ACIM), and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Amber Alert System. (Information about ACIM, NCMEC, and Amber Alert is presented below.)
The child's age, access to money and transportation (e.g., bicycle or car), physical abilities, and whether the child has friends with access to money and transportation are all important factors in determining the boundaries of the search area and how the search will proceed. For example, a missing two-year old is not likely to go as far as a ten-year old on a bike or a teen with spending money and a car. However, a two-year old may be attracted to dangerous places that a teen would not, such as an open pipe or a crawl space under a building.
In contrast to a missing child, if a call comes in reporting an abduction, the dispatcher will immediately send an officer to the scene. The first thing the responding officer will want to do is verify that an abduction has actually occurred. The officer will then advise detectives who will usually respond. The officer and the detectives will also want a recent photograph and all of the personal information about the child and as much information as is available about the abduction and the abductor. In the case of an abduction in which the child is not found, the Corvallis Police will want fingerprints or DNA (e.g., a hair sample) in addition to a photograph.
The Corvallis Police will then ready a report for the Oregon State Police so an Amber Alert can be activated if the situation meets Amber Alert criteria. ACIM and NCMEC can also be activated. And, depending on conditions of the individual case, neighboring law enforcement agencies may be called to help search. In addition, the FBI will be notified.
In either kind of situation, missing child or abduction, the Corvallis Police will set up a telephone center to receive calls from the public. This can present a strain on human resources to staff the phone center and to process the information from the calls. An Amber Alert can be especially challenging in this regard.
Corvallis Police Resources for Missing Children Reports
The Corvallis Police Department has a number of resources to assist it in finding a missing child. These include neighboring law enforcement agencies, the Benton County Search and Rescue Team, A Child Is Missing Alert System (ACIM), Amber Alert, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
A Child Is Missing is a 501( c )3 non-profit public service that makes phone calls to alert residents in a given area that a child is missing and to ask for their help in searching for the child. It is funded by federal and state grants and by donations. This makes the service available to law enforcement agencies at no cost to the calling agency.
A Child Is Missing Alert can be activated in many kinds of missing person cases such as children who are lost, wander off, are abducted, or run away, and also for people with physical disabilities, and elderly or mentally challenged adults. All uniformed Corvallis Police Officers have the authority to call ACIM and activate an alert. The system works as follows.
The responding officer calls ACIM and gives the ACIM operator the child's description and the time and place last seen. With the aid of a satellite mapping program, the size and scope of the area to be called is determined by ACIM's technicians based on their experience and the information provided by the officer. They also take into account the missing person's age and mobility. ACIM is private so it can cross jurisdictional boundaries and it can call anywhere in the US if the case warrants.
The ACIM operator records an alert message and then activates ACIM's telephone system to broadcast the message in the designated area. This phone system can generate up to 1,000 calls in 60 seconds and, according to ACIM statistics, it has a 98% listen rate. Calls begin, “This is a call from the Corvallis Police. Please…" Calls only go to home and business phones, not to unlisted numbers or cell phones. But people with an unlisted number or cell phone who want to be involved can register on ACIM's website at www.achildismissing.org.
With ACIM activated, literally thousands of people in the target area can be out looking in addition to the Corvallis Police.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a valuable resource that will provide additional investigators with experience in investigating cases of missing, abducted, or exploited children. The Center also has computer experts who can generate age-adjusted photographs.
The Amber Alert program is for children seventeen years of age and younger and for disabled or mentally challenged adults. After the abduction is confirmed and there is reason to believe the child is in danger of immediate harm or death, the Oregon State Police issue an announcement to media within the state for immediate release. The alert is also flashed on all ODOT electronic highway signs.
Such broad coverage elicits the possibility for thousands of phone calls to come in from all over the state. In that each call has to be listened to, catalogued, and evaluated, a deluge of calls can quickly overload the capacity of the call center to take calls and subsequently process information. OSP will provide help in screening the calls and in prioritizing leads that develop.
Child ID Kits
The Corvallis Police Department provides child ID kits that have a fingerprint card and an ink blotter. Kits can be obtained, free of charge, during regular business hours (8 - 5, M- F) at the front counter of the Law Enforcement Center, 180 NW 5th Street, Corvallis.
Or, you can receive a kit in the mail by sending an e-mail request with your name and mailing address to neighborhoodwatch@ci.corvallis.or.us.
Friends of Corvallis Police thanks Corvallis Police Lt. Jon Keefer for his dedication to child protection and his inspiration for this series of articles.
