Safety for Children

Children go missing every day, and it is becoming quite an epidemic. Child safety service InstantAmber has some pretty interesting missing children statistics that highlight just how big the problem is:

In America, more than 797,500 are reported missing on average in a single year. Broken down further: 2,185 children are reported missing each and every day. Fortunately, of those reported missing, only a small percent (9%) are victims of either family abductions, or stereotypical kidnappings. Once more, after a further look at the statistics, we find that only 2% of children who go missing are subject to a non-family abductions and 7% have been abducted by family members.

Unfortunately, when a child is kidnapped those figures become increasingly grim. There is typically over a two-hour delay in the initial report of a missing child. Sadly, 74% of those that are murdered are killed within the first three hours of the abduction. There are estimated to be over 100 cases a year where a child is abducted and murdered. These children are generally low risk victims. Most of them, 74%, are girls and 80% of the time the initial contact between child and abductor is generally within 1/4 of a mile from the home.

Child safety is still a very important issue that we must remember to pay attention to.

8 year old Sandra Cantu is missing. Gone since Friday, mystery to her disappearance abounds. Since authorities are not quite sure what has happened to the girl, an Amber Alert has yet to be issued.

“It is our belief that she is alive and unharmed,” said Sgt. Tony Sheneman of the Tracy, Calif., police, who are coordinating a search for the girl with the FBI. More than 200 volunteers combed the trailer park and surrounding area over the weekend, and the search for the girl is ongoing.

“Until we have evidence that an abduction has occurred, we’ll handle this as a missing person,” Sheneman said.

 

Alaska’s first Amber Alert was issued over the weekend, and turned out to be false. With  the report of the fake Alert comes many questioning just how much issuing an Alert costs. With the added manpower needed to search for a missing child, the time paid goes back to the police department.

While it’s impossible to put a price on life, it may be difficult to overlook the costs of running an Amber Alert.

"Most of the people who got called out especially were on overtime details," said Parker.

Using man power which included C.S.I. investigators, patrol officers, detectives, and k-9 units. Overtime dollars added up to close to fifty hours.

"All of that costs go directly to the police department because of a false report," said Parker.

Regardless, police say these calls need to be taken seriously when a child’s life is threatened.

"In terms of finding a lost child there is no cost that is too great," said Parker.

Officials say every second matters in child abductions as 74-percent of children who are kidnapped and later found murdered are killed within the first three hours after being taken. That’s why the public is very important in a finding a child.

More details are surfacing in the missing child case of Haleigh Cummings. Her brother, who saw Haliegh as she was abducted from her home, reports of a “man dressed all in black” coming into the house and taking Haleigh from her bed.

Crystal Sheffield, the children’s mother, said Haleigh’s father Ronald Cummings, Jr. and her son recounted the same story to her.

"When I see him [Haleigh's brother], all he said is, ‘I want to find my sissy,’ and he said something about somebody in black took her," Sheffield said, according to Central Florida News 13.

"He said they were all dressed in black, but I didn’t question him. I’m not going to question him."

It was not immediately clear when or where Sheffield made this statement. Haleigh apparently vanished Feb. 9 from her father’s Satsuma-area trailer home where she lives with 24-year-old Cummings, his 17-year-old girlfriend Misty Croslin and Haleigh’s little brother Junior, 4.

Family members of a missing central Florida girl are being asked to take polygraph tests in conjunction with the disappearance of the child. Five year old Haleigh Cummings went missing from her own home over a week ago and no promising leads have been found since. At this point in the search for the missing child, law enforcement is moving towards less of a ground search approach and more on following leads.

The Sheriff’s Office said they have received some 500 tips since Haleigh’s disappearance, but said some of those leads have been from people who are trying to get back at someone, for example: "An ex-wife trying to get back at a husband."

Officials said several people have inquired about Chad Reynolds, a sexual predator who disappeared from Marion County. Pape said that although Reynolds is not a person of interest at the present time in Haleigh’s disappearance, they are not ruling anything out and want anybody with information about Reynolds’ whereabouts to call law enforcement.

Have you received the following text message in the last few days? “A 7 year old girl was taken by a man driving a newer silver truck. The license plate reads 72b381 please, please pass on.” This turns out to be a known fake Amber Alert, but something that is quickly circulating across the country as a hoax.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) would ask that instead of forwarding AMBER Alert messages, the public is referred to the official locations designated by your particular state for receiving AMBER Alerts. This will ensure the AMBER Alerts are geographically targeted, they are updated, and there is a cancellation at the conclusion of the incident.

The AMBER Alert program is a highly successful nationwide effort that has resulted in 443 children being safely returned to their families. The success of the AMBER Alert program depends on the involvement of the entire community. The public has many ways to receive official AMBER Alerts via radio, television, roadway and digital signage, internet service providers, and through their wireless carriers.

To receive official AMBER Alerts on a cell phone, wireless customers can enroll in the Wireless AMBER Alerts program by visiting www.wirelessamberalerts.org or by texting the word AMBER followed by a space and their 5-digit ZIP code to 26237. Wireless AMBER Alerts is a free public service of the wireless industry, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the United States Department of Justice.

 

There is a lot of back and forth going on these days about the validity of the Amber Alert system and whether or not it is worth the time and expense. The abduction of two Pennsylvania girls whom the state would not issue an Alert for has some questioning the system on a whole.

But when Tammy Kongkham allegedly snatched her daughters Kelly and Kimberly outside their Juniata Park school on Oct. 16, Pennsylvania State Police didn’t issue an Amber Alert, which would have publicized the disappearance nationally to faster locate them.

Those involved say that this failure illustrates serious shortcomings in a federal system, implemented in 2002, that missing-persons investigators hoped would hasten the recovery of endangered children and the arrests of their abductors.

Federal law requires all states to have child-abduction alert systems in place, but the varying state-to-state interpretations often cause tension and confusion, according to an Associated Press study published last month.

In Pennsylvania, that criteria requires that a child was abducted and not a runaway or throwaway; the child must also be under 18 years old and believed to be in danger of death or serious bodily harm, according to the state’s Amber Alert Web site.

The state of Florida is considering eliminating the Amber Alert system, claiming that they do not have the budget for it. Also up for elimination from the state programs is the sex offender registry. Both programs are run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement which the state could require to cut it’s budget by $18 million.

"We’ve lost 56 positions in the last year and we know any additional cuts are going to be in our key service area," FDLE spokesperson Heather Smith told WOKV. "Anything beyond this point is certainly going to have an effect on public safety."

The Amber Alert program gets out the word on abducted children statewide by issuing emergency broadcast warnings and utilizing electronic highway signs. The state’s sex offender registry notifies 44,000 Floridians who signed up for alerts if a sex offender moves in their neighborhood.

The cuts are just proposals. If lawmakers decide on less severe budget reductions, the Amber Alert and sex offender registry would very likely keep their funding.

Proving that Amber Alerts do indeed work, a child in Florida was found after a tip was sent in to police from a citizen who saw the Amber Alert.  There are many critics of the system, but when you hear stories such as this, it is hard to deny that it does good.

Authorities say a Bartow boy who has been missing since Monday has been found in South Florida. An anonymous tipster contacted the Hialeah Police Department on Wednesday night, saying they had spotted a car that matched information from an Amber Alert issued for 6-year-old Ar’Marion Hargrove.

Hialeah police located the white four-door Chevrolet Impala that the tipster saw and found the child with 25-year-old Charles Hargrove. Authorities say Ar’Marion Hargrove will be returned to his mother.

Keeping your children safe in our ever growing global environment is becoming tougher and tougher for parents, especially with children having access to the internet. There is a new service out there called Instant Amber that allows you to store all of your child’s vital information online in case they go missing. Newsguide.us outlines the unique service for parents who want to store their child’s info in a format they’ll always have access to.

InstantAmber is a web-based gathering, storage, and delivery service that enables law enforcement to retrieve critical data and photos in the event of a missing child emergency. InstantAmber.com was the first online data storage product that was designed to transfer vital information to law enforcement in the case of a situation requiring a nationwide Amber Alert. InstantAmber was created, with help from law enforcement, to make sure that all necessary information will be captured, which ensures that a missing child’s information is available to law enforcement within minutes, instead of hours. InstantAmber.com also includes useful parenting resources and tools that will help ensure that a child doesn’t become another statistic.

InstantAmber.com has more information on the service.