Our Penchant for Privacy Often Prevents Quick Response

A friend of mine and I recently spoke with a Durham (NC) police officer to file a missing person's report on a mutual friend. It was a Saturday morning, and no one had heard from our friend since aout 6pm Friday. Our friend's roommate called about 3am Saturday concerned because Renee had not come home. This was so unlike her that the three of us were immediately concerned. The voicemail on her mobile phone was full, so after a point we could not leave another message.

As we spoke with the police officer, I was hit by the fact that our penchant for privacy often prevents prompt response to potential emergencies. We knew Renee's married name, but not her birth family name. We had a rough estimate of her age, but not her date of birth. We knew what kind of work she did, but not the correct name of the company she worked with. Consequently, a report that should have taken maybe twenty minutes to complete took almost two hours to get through as we tried to track down vital information.

The date of birth was the real roadblock. "I cannot enter this report into our statewide network without a date of birth," the officer explained, "and until a report is filed, she is not officially a missing person."

According to the website Private Investigations Now.com, "On average, more than 800,000 people are reported as missing and are entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC). Of these 85-90 percent are minors. These statistics do not include those who are unofficially missing--such as those who have not been reported as missing persons." Actually, the statistics vary, depending upon who collects them. For example, according to the FBI's National Crime Information Center, about 400,000 people--adults and children--are reported missing annually. But the National Center for Missing and Exploited Chidren claims the number of missing children cases, alone, total about one million annually.

The numbers notwithstanding, the real problem is how do we begin to locate missing people?

We realized that as we spoke with the police officer who could not file a report with the NCIC because we did not know Renee's date of birth. Since her mother lives someplace other than Durham, and we did not know how to contact her daughter, it was about 12 hours later before we tracked down the date of birth. Well, by that time, the officer who took the report was off duty, and I had to wait until Sunday to call him and supply this vital piece of information.

Because of the missing data, we could not treat this situation like the emergency it might have been. We still don't know for certain. According to the NC Search and Rescue Dog Association, every missing person incident should be treated like an emergency.

"Time i critical and you must be prepared to work quickly. Given the rate at which a person can walk, the search area will expand exponentially with each passing hour," the NCSRD advises at its website. "Be prepared to respond to our investigator's questions about the lost person's medical history and personal habits, including their level of experience in the outdoors. They will need your assistance in preparing a Lost Person Questionnaire that will give searchers the information they need to do their job."

Of course, the NCSRD group specializes in missing persons who are lost in the outdoors, most of whom, according to statistics, are not victims of foul play, or kidnapping, as might be the case in other missing persons cases. Nevertheless, the following advice holds true for each of us, no matter how we might becoming missing. At a minimum, each of us should: entrust a list of basic personal information about ourselves with a close friend, not leaving all of this up to relatives. Each of us should discuss travel plans, particularly weekend excursions, vacations and other circumstances of that sort with friends so someone would have all the information critical to launching and orderly search should the situation arise. Even if you want to disappear due to an abusive relationship, or similar circumstances, you still should have at least one person you trust enough to stay in touch with so everyone else won't be worried sick.

All this becomes even more true as each of us grow older. For example, I am almost 65-years-old and live alone, and realize that I often move about and no one close to me knows when I left home, where I was headed, or when I was expected to arrive at a given destination. I also realized that since I'm the last living member of my natural family, and since my adult children do not live in Durham, no one here knows all the information vital to launching an organized search for me should I become missing.

I will begin correcting this situation immediately. I urge you do think about it and do the same. By the way, do you have a will? I will comment on that in another article.

See you at success!