How do the police search for a missing child?

Following on from last Friday’s post taken from the website’s statistics and questions people have asked to get to this website; I found this question this week so thought I would try to briefly answer it.

The police response to a missing person incident can be split into two distinct, yet equally important (to take an American show’s wording) parts; The search and the investigation.

With a missing child the investigation side will start by finding out as much as possible about the child; where s/he likes to go? Who their friends are? Is there a possible reason for their disappearance? And so on.

Whilst a stranger abduction of a child is still, thankfully, very rare in the UK, the police may also start to consider this potential scenario – although generally this only becomes a likely scenario if there is some positive evidence of it, or as time goes by. It is a sad fact that it is a more likely scenario that the parent is somehow involved in their disappearance and that the missing person report is a cover story for them.

The search side of the incident starts with the home address; very often small children reported missing are later found in their own home, hidden away somewhere. The police should, in all cases, carry out a thorough search of the home before anywhere else. [Sometimes they don't do a thorough search and get egg on their faces...See here]

Very small children are unlikely to travel far, so in most cases, a thorough search of the immediate local area  will find the  missing child quite quickly.  As they get older,  friends’ houses or other buildings become a more likely place to find these missing children.

Generally missing children are found very quickly.

However, in many cases, the missing child just disappears – some are known to run off to London, where they are sometimes found, sometimes not found. It is in these cases that charities like Missing People help support the families of these missing children.

November 27, 2009 · Robert Bradley · No Comments
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