There are some things that I have learned from experience while working for a busy police department. Missing person (juveniles) cases receive a very low priority. There are many reasons for this. Most of the juvenile missing person cases filed everyday are for habitual runaways. Others are related to incidents such as arguments with parents and the child returns before the detailed report is even entered into the national database. Without the statistics at my fingertips, I could only estimate that I handled several hundred missing juvenile cases in my career. Of these, none of them amounted to more than a simple runaway or angry child returning home after serving their own needs, but other officers handled more serious incidents such as violent kidnappings and murder but while they will never be forgotten, they were rare in my career.
Violent and domestic crimes continue to rise as the economy slinks further into the abyss. Budget cuts are forcing city and town managers to put fewer and fewer police officers at work patrolling the streets and causing these officers to prioritize their assignments. A desk piled with open murder, rape and robbery cases, take priority over missing children.
Several high profile child cases has helped to improve the approach to these cases but not nearly enough. The abduction and murder of Amber Hagerman in Texas corresponded with the need for an emergency system designed to alert the public and law enforcement of the details arising from a possible child abduction. Police departments were trained in the criteria required for the Amber Alerts and some even looked at their departments policy for the investigation of these matters but many did not.
Getting back to my "down-time," I looked through several of the major online databases that displays names and the available information related to the missing child. In one of the cases that caught my attention waas a 5 year old boy named Richard Wayne Landers. He was abducted by his non-custodial grandparents, Richard E. and Ruth Ann Landers. He was abducted in LaGrange County Indiana on July 29th, 1994. Richard is a white male and has brown hair and blue eyes. Other than a five year old's height and weight, there is no further information to be found on this case. This case has just seen it's 17th anniversary, making Richard Wayne Landers , 22 years old.
I know about family privacy and protection laws. I also know that society has created these rules to protect ourselves and our children. I am using this case as an example, in order to promote the need for these cases to be opened up by police departments and investigators and displayed to the community. Without contacting the investigator in this case, who is probably unable to release information on an open investigation, I am at a loss in this case. Has Richard been reunited with his family? Is Richard still alive? Are his grandparents? Did they abduct him to protect him from an abusive situation? Was this a random kidnapping by delusional family members? Does this case need to be investigated further? If it were one of my children, not only would I want every possible detail released everywhere it possibly could, I would go door-to-door until I found them. There aren't many parents that wouldn't. I can't say anything about Richard's parents. The information just isn't out there.
There are more questions than answers here. Police departments all over need to open these files on their website, national databases and every other site where the interested public and professionals are able to view them and assist the police departments depleted ranks. Since society has proved that their assistance is useful and needed as displayed in the results of the Amber Alerts, open up the files and arm the public with this knowledge. My 17 year old son is so proficient with social networking that he alone can scan the nation electronically. Imagine what a seasoned, experienced professional investigator could do.
