Missing & Exploited Children

Sheriff & Detroit Police form joint task force dedicated to finding missing & exploited kids --- “Amber Unit” to tackle 1,300-case backlog in Wayne County --- Agencies to use successful Fugitive Apprehension team as model

Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans and Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver today announced the formation their own “Amber Unit”, a new joint task force dedicated to finding and rescuing the hundreds of children listed as missing in Wayne County. Currently there are more than 1,300 open juvenile cases in Wayne County, where approximately 3,000 children were reported missing in 2002. In many of these cases, the kids fall into patterns of drug use, crime, and forced prostitution or are killed.

“Too often we are seeing cases of kids who are abused, exploited or murdered because not enough resources have been available to find them,” said Oliver. “The creation of this task force represents a renewed commitment on the part of these two agencies to the safety of our children our highest priority.”

To form the Amber Unit, two Sheriff’s Office officers and two Detroit Police officers who currently work on foster care and neglect /abuse cases will begin working together. [The two Sheriff’s officers will continue their work involving foster children, as is required under their current funding source.]

An additional Sheriff’s sergeant and two deputies will join these four officers, bringing the unit to a total of seven full-time officers. The salaries of the three new officers will be funded through a $297,000 Byrne Memorial Fund grant recently awarded to Wayne County by Governor Jennifer Granholm, specifically for this purpose.

Pooling knowledge and resources
As the national AMBER Alert system, for which this new unit is named, has shown, the most important aspect of finding any missing person is communication among police agencies, not only regionally, but nationally. Evans said that by joining these sections of the state’s two largest law enforcement agencies the Amber unit’s collective knowledge base will grow immediately, as will its ability to deploy the various tentacles of the law enforcement community across numerous states.

As an example, Evans cited the recent case of Justin Smith of Taylor, a four-year old who was the subject of a parental abduction case last June. In that case, sheriff’s deputies worked with agencies from various states and eventually tracked the family to Galveston, Texas, where Justin was safely recovered.

First things first
Although records show that there are more than 1,300 open cases involving missing juveniles, the reality is likely far different. One of the first orders of business for the new unit will be to reconcile these records with reality.

“We know that many of the children listed as missing are no longer children because their cases have been open for so long,” Evans said. “We need to clean up that list so we can have reliable information. Otherwise, we’ll just be spinning our wheels.”

Using the FAST model
Chief Oliver said that the blueprint he and Sheriff Evans established earlier this year with the creation of the Fugitive Apprehension Services Team [FAST] was the model for the Amber Unit. Since the two agencies joined forces and doubled the number of officers assigned to fugitive apprehension, the rate of arrests have quadrupled over recent years.

“We have seen from the tremendous success of the FAST team that increasing the number of officers dedicated to a single mission and having them work collaboratively multiplies their productivity,” Oliver said. “In this case, we believe that combining our officers’ experience and efforts will result in a much higher rate of children being returned to their families or other appropriate custody. ”

Oliver added that once the list gets purged of old or closed files, Amber Unit officers will begin to develop a database the can be link with other resources, including the national Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

History of AMBER Alert
The AMBER Alert System began in 1996 when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed with local police to develop an early warning system to help find abducted children. AMBER stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnaped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, and then brutally murdered. Other states, including Michigan have set up their own AMBER Alert systems.

Stats
3,000 juveniles reported missing in Wayne County in 2002
Approx. 1,342 open files of missing person under the age of 17
- 1,135 are Detroit cases
- 207 are out-county

Child rescues to date in 2003
188 [WCSD]

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