A Dispatch investigation into how police search for missing people
After numerous families accused law enforcement of failing to adequately investigate disappearances, Dispatch reporters launched their own probe. The full investigation can be found at www.dispatch.com/vanished
- The Ohio BMV is considering including information about a children’s identification program in vehicle registration renewal notices.
- The Ohio Missing Persons Working Group, formed in response to an investigative report on missing persons, convened for its fourth meeting.
- Ohio State Highway Patrol emphasized the effectiveness of their aviation unit in locating missing persons quickly.
- The working group is finalizing recommendations for improving the response to missing persons cases in Ohio.
- Potential recommendations include training for healthcare professionals on handling missing persons cases and developing model policies for law enforcement.
The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles Registrar wants to send information out to 3.5 million Ohioans that could help law enforcement find their children if they go missing.
BMV Registrar Charles Norman spoke at Thursday’s Ohio Missing Persons Working Group, convened by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in response to The Dispatch’s VANISHED investigation on Ohio’s missing people, which published in November. It was the group’s fourth meeting.
Norman told the 25 working group members about the 12 million notices sent from the BMV to every registered vehicle owner in Ohio annually as a reminder to renew their registration and his idea to include information about a children’s identification program in those.
“It’s a great program,” Norman said of ID R Kids for Safety as he passed around his own son’s state identification card. “The child’s image, all their information, that is in the BMV system permanently and law enforcement has instant access to that, which is great.”
VANISHED, the Dispatch’s investigation into missing persons in Ohio, found that information about hundreds of missing Ohioans had not been entered into federal databases. Missing information includes photographs, which are present on a state identification card.
The lack of a photo in databases, including the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), can make it harder for the public or law enforcement in other jurisdictions to find and identify missing people, VANISHED found. There were missing photos for at least 440 Ohioans in NCIC, which is only accessible to law enforcement. Though, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office pulls NCIC data to create its public-facing database of missing Ohioans.
Jennifer Lester, a criminal intelligence analyst at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said photos are often not submitted to NCIC. She works to pull photos from sites like the BMV to populate the public-facing database of missing Ohioans.
“The more pictures we get the better,” Lester said, following the working group meeting Thursday. “We use kid IDs all the time. … The photo is the easiest way to find someone by what they look like.”
On the ID R Kids for Safety website, it states that one advantage to the ID card for children is that it could help police if they are reported missing. Included in the ID information can also be contact information for parents so police can get in touch with them if they go missing.
There’s no minimum age for a child to get an Ohio ID card and they typically cost $10, and can be obtained at BMV offices.
Missing persons working group recommendations
Also discussed at the meeting were potential recommendations the working group may include in its final report.
Andy Wilson, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, said the group already has 20 recommendations and two meetings left. One might be canceled in order to get the recommendations to the Governor more quickly.
The meeting’s focus was adults and included presentations from the Ohio Department of Aging and the Ohio Department of Veterans Services.
After a discussion about getting information on missing people’s whereabouts from mental health facilities, hospitals and drug addiction programs, Wilson suggested two potential recommendations.
One was designing a training or continuing education program for professionals working at hospitals, emergency rooms and treatment facilities on what laws apply and what to do when police come looking for a missing person.
He also suggested developing a model policy for law enforcement who are looking for people in those facilities that would include how to explain the applicable law.
“If you have an adult who goes missing and there’s no evidence of foul play, where do you go?” Wilson said. “What’s the playbook?
@DanaeKing
发表回复