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Missing Persons

Iowa Missing Person Training Curriculum

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INTRODUCTION

Approximately 2 years ago I received information regarding grant monies that were available for state clearinghouses through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Immediately my thoughts went to the need for training in the area of missing persons. \-Vith new laws that had been passed and improved resources that were available to law enforcement agencies I felt the need for training in these areas to be very important. I not only wanted to be able to provide this training in the area of missing persons, I wanted to be able to make it available to all Iowa law enforcement agencies. I realized that many agencies did not have the funds to pay for the registration, travel or overnight stays for their personnel. I also realized there were those agencies that would not be able to allow personnel to be gone for any great length of time, due to the fact they were either understaffed or one man departments. The decision was made to apply for the grant monies and bring training to as many law enforcement agencies as possible by dividing the state into sixteen different regions and presenting a one day seminar in each region.

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Understanding and Managing Risk in the Context of Missing Persons

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Introduction

An early assessment of a missing person report to determine the urgency of the investigation is critical. This can be compared to the triage used in assessing casualties and the speed of response needed to save lives. Core to this process is assessing the level of risk to the missing person and how immediate that risk is. The assessment and categorisation of risk and the particular circumstances of the case should shape the response, informing the investigative and search strategies. Risk should also be regularly reviewed to consider new information and evolving circumstances.

Making such an assessment of risk in relation to missing persons is often difficult, as only partial information may be known. Much depends on the judgement of the person trying to determine the risk and the skills and experience possessed by those people is widely varied.

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A Profile of Missing Persons: Some Key Findings for Police Officers

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2.1 Introduction

The most publicised reminders of inaccurate risk classification by police officers dealing with missing person’s reports come from cases where the missing person was presumed to have runaway but was later found to have met with foul play. Fortunately, such occurrences are extremely rare. Despite this, there is still enormous pressure on the officer taking the initial missing persons report to ask the right questions, assess possible risk factors, make a judgement about what may have happened to the missing person and then allocate appropriate resources—all within a timely manner. For all police officers, and for every missing person report made, the task is complex (see Fyfe, Stevenson & Woolnough, 2014 for more on this). No research has been conducted in the area of misclassifications of risk when a new missing person report is received, so the true numbers remain unknown....

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Spatial And Social Profiling For Missing Person Investigations – Center For Evidence-based Crime Policy

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Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP) – Scottish Institute for Police Research (SIPR) 2013 Joint Symposium and Congressional Briefing on Evidence-Based Policing

The CEBCP Symposium, Congressional Briefings and Special Meetings were held jointly with the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR) April 8-10, 2013 and was a major success! Over 250 people attended across the two days, representing over 100 different organizations. The focus was on translating police research into practice, and the Agenda and Presentations are listed below.

Additional Resource: Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP) – Scottish Institute for Police Research (SIPR)

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Missing Persons: Volunteers Supporting Law Enforcement

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The national Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) Program was established in 2002 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The VIPS Program provides support and resources for agencies interested in developing or enhancing a volunteer program and for citizens who wish to volunteer their time and skills with a community law enforcement agency. The program’s ultimate goal is to enhance the capacity of state, local, and tribal law enforcement to utilize volunteers through the provision of no-cost resources and assistance. The program’s Web site, www.policevolunteers.org, serves as a gateway to information for law enforcement agencies and citizens interested in law enforcement volunteer programs. The program offers a host of resources including a directory of law enforcement volunteer programs, a library of sample documents, publications addressing specific elements and issues related to volunteer programs, a model policy on volunteers, an e-newsletter, educational videos, a moderated online discussion group,

Additional Resource: National Neighborhood Watch – A Division Of The National Sheriffs' Association

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Missing Persons: Children in the Tax Treatment of Marriage

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Using the Tax Code to help children has become an extremely. popular idea both with the public and among politicians. Current proposals to help children by use of the Tax Code, however, ignore the fact that one of the best ways to help children is to promote stable marriages. This Article argues that we should attempt to find ways to use the Tax Code to contribute to the stability of marriages with children. Such use of the Tax Code would represent a radical departure not only from current proposals, but also from historic tax legislative practice and academic theories of taxation. It is firmly based, however, on a large body of social science research on the effects of family structure on children.' Recent research leaves no doubt that children growing up with both parents enjoy significant advantages that help them meet the challenges of childhood and adolescence and develop into healthy, well-adjusted, and productive adults. Children who do not grow up with two parents...

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Missing Persons Investigations Guidelines & Curriculum

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Investigating a missing person case can be one of the most challenging assignments you will handle in your career. The officer responding to a missing person call is in many cases responding to a situation where the reason for an individual’s disappearance is unknown. The officer will have to consider a number of variables when dealing with a missing person investigation that has no obvious reason for a person’s disappearance. Was the individual involved in an accident? Did the individual meet with foul play? Did a stranger abduct a young child? Has a young child met with tragedy while exploring an attractive danger such as a pool, creek, abandoned car or refrigerator? Even in a known runaway situation is the cause of the juvenile running away due to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse by an authority figure in the home? Has the runaway been lured into a life of gangs and/or prostitution? A missing person investigation can become a “high

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Missing White Woman Syndrome: An Empirical Analysis of Race and Gender Disparities in Online News Coverage of Missing Persons

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INTRODUCTION

On Sunday morning, November 3, 2013, Aaron Hubbard went to church. It was the last time his family would see him alive. A few hours later, Chicago police received a report that Hubbard had been kidnapped. According to witnesses, Hubbard, a seventeen-year-old high school student, was attacked and thrown into a truck that quickly drove away. After eight days of searching, police found Hubbard’s decomposing body in an abandoned building not far from where the abduction had occurred. A handful of short news stories documented the story in Hubbard’s hometown of Chicago, but the case received no coverage on a regional or national scale. Three months earlier, in August, California native Hannah Anderson disappeared, triggering a massive manhunt for her and her alleged kidnapper. The incident sparked a media firestorm, with news agencies across the country covering the sixteen-year-old’s disappearance. Local and national media outlets tracked the investigation, with CNN.com alone .

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Police Give Update On Search For Woman Missing For Nearly 10 Years

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ORLANDO, Fla.

It's been nearly a decade since an Orlando woman disappeared, but police and her family haven't given up hope of finding her. Police offered an investigation update recently and her parents made yet another plea for help from the public.

Jennifer Kesse left her Conroy Road apartment in January 2006 and hasn't been heard from since. Investigators released new information in hopes of finding her.

Kesse's family continues to show strength in the face of anguish. She was only 24 years old when she did not show up for work in January 2006. Kesse's parents believe somebody knows what happened that morning and all they want is information that will lead them to her.

Many searches have been conducted over the years with no results. Authorities searched an area of South Florida last month, based on a tip.

Police said tips are still coming in 10 years...

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Missing Person | Michelle Parker Video at KFC

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UPDATE 3/2/15 – Orlando police went back to the same wooded area and pond near her ex’s home where her cell phone was found two weeks later. UPDATE 11/18/13 – Police have released another video from two years ago showing Michelle’s Hummer. The truck was caught on camera without the decals on the back. It’s unclear who is driving the truck at that time. The 30-second video, taken at a red light the day she went missing and near where her Humvee was later recovered

It was found abandoned about a mile from where the video was taken. Police later found her iPhone.

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Jodi Sue Huisentruit | Missing Person: Legally Declared Dead

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State Representative Speaks Out About Resistance to Solving Huisentruit Case

Iowa State Rep. John Kooiker considered it a privilege to fill in the ninth term of his good friend, Dwayne Alons, who passed away shortly after winning the November 2014 election. But, as a member of the House Public Safety Committee, he found himself appalled at the number of cold cases in the state and the current lack of a cohesive effort to solve them.

In 2015, prior to the 20th anniversary of Jodi Huisentruit’s unsolved disappearance, he saw an opportunity to augment the work being done by the Northwest Iowa Review — one of approximately 200 newspapers participating in the Iowa Newspaper Association‘s statewide GONE COLD project. With the assistance of other legislators, Kooiker drafted a letter addressed to the city of Mason City, asking them to recognize Jodi’s upcoming anniversary and soliciting their help in solving the case....

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Profiling the Missing Person

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“This is such an important area, there hasn’t been anything like it done in the world. There are no profiles of missing persons at all. Having a tool where there are strong indicators or markers for what’s happened to the missing person is a first.”

Dr Shaunagh Foy from Charles Sturt University (CSU) is talking about her ground breaking research into who goes missing and why. The NSW Police Force hope it will help solve missing persons cases more quickly.

Dr Foy divided a sample of missing persons into three categories; runaways, suicides and foul play. The amount of data varied enormously. “There were so many runaways but not much information. With the foul play and suicide cases there is a vast amount of information because they tended to be on-going investigations.”

Age and gender immediately emerged as obvious indicators. The under 18s tend to be runaways,...

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Missing White Woman Syndrome How Media Framing Affects Viewers’ Emotions

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Abstract

In this experiment, the study of missing white woman syndrome is extended to video coverage to determine whether visual framing and race have an effect on the emotions of viewers. Missing white woman syndrome relates to the idea that stories about attractive, young, white females who go missing are more prevalent in the news to the exclusion of similar stories about other demographics. This study examined the relationship between race and framing effects through a factorial design experiment and posttest questionnaire. Experimental conditions compared television news stories about women of different demographics who are portrayed differently in both visual and nonvisual frames. Results showed that visual framing did affect the emotions of viewers, but the race of the missing person did not...

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