Posts Tagged ‘Missing Child’

Johnnie Walker’s Missing Person Search Analogy

December 3rd, 2009

I’m pleased today to be able to offer you a special guest post to the Re-Search website. Johnnie Walker from Sussex Search and Rescue sent me an e-mail today offering the following;

I have found myself using the following analogy quite a bit.  Is there a place for it on your website?

I know that to you it is stating the obvious.  However, a saying I use quite a lot in SAR is ‘we always state the obvious.  That way, everyone knows the same obvious.’


A lot of Mispers die while search teams ‘patchwork’ sectors across the landscape, rather than producing a scenario based plan, and targeting specific areas by Misper type and specific intelligence.  This is a search tactic that has grown out of Police forensic searching, and is actually very counter intuitive.

Imagine you are at the park with a child.  They are on the swings.  You take your eye of them for a moment, and when you look back, they have vanished.  Where do you search?

  • You search the play park; purposefully wandering to check under the slide and in the climbing frame.  This is your hub.
  • You run to the pond, because you know they like to see the ducks, and the field at the edge of the park where the donkey lives.  These are your reflectors.
  • You run their route home, you check the home address, and then you go back to the park and check the route to their friend’s house. These are your spokes.

What you would never even consider doing is getting a map of the park and surrounding area, and searching each grid square one at a time.  You might do that the next day, if they were still missing, but you would know in your heart that ‘search is an emergency’. You need to find them quickly, and to do this you need to search in very specific places; places you identify from what you know about them.

I obviously think there is a place for such wisdom on this website. I particularly like the “same obvious” quote!

So a big thank you to Johnnie for taking the time to think about sharing this with everyone on this website and for putting pen to paper.

If you have something to share, please e-mail me. I’m happy to put useful content on here from anyone! [Saves me writing stuff every day!]

  • Share/Bookmark

4 comments »

Posted in Guest Posts, Search Thoughts

Tags:

How do the police search for a missing child?

November 27th, 2009

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.

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Search Thoughts

Tags:

Search exercise planners handbook – Part Five

November 18th, 2009

Picking your search exercise’s SCENARIO

One of the other things that often let’s down ALSAR search exercises is their scenarios. This is despite the fact that many search exercise planners and training officers spend a large amount of time coming up with these fantastic scenarios [or more accurately because they do!]

Classic examples of this include some probationary ALSAR Units’ assessment exercises such as the man who abducted his two children and is now deemed suicidal. Probably thought up to give a definate IPP and three mispers to find, the scenario is unrealistic. How often does your Unit get these calls? Does your local police really believe you are an appropriate resource to use for locating abducted children anyway? [Personally I'd have failed the Unit for not thinking about or mentioning this during the briefing - but I suppose if you are set this for your assessment, with police and assessors looking on you are stuck with it!]

So what scenario should you use? Guess what, you need to train for what we do. So go back to your Unit’s callout stats – find out what you are generally used for and start thinking about that as a scenario. Over two thirds of ALSAR callouts are for mispers with Dementia and Despondents. So over two thirds of your search training scenarios should be for these – unless your local stats tell you something different. This might happen; a coastal Unit may be called for missing children on holiday more – I don’t know, your Unit should!

Once you have your misper type, you then need to turn to your misper stats. Get out your well-thumbed copy of Koester’s Lost Person Behavior and find out what this type of misper does. How far they travel? Where they are found? How far from the track? In what sorts of environment and position?

This should form the basis of your planning for where the misper will be during the exercise. Whilst it is tempting to position the misper to be found at the “right” time when the exercise should end, try to avoid this – it will skew searchers expectations of where missing persons are found. Rather select an appropriate location according to the stats – 30% of the time in your exercises they will be close in and found quickly for instance [or hopefully they will], 20% of the time they will be found by R&P outside the hub and so on.

You can always plan an extra activity to follow the exercise if it finishes too early. However, most ALSAR Units do not leave enough time to properly de-brief and feedback following exercises anyway. UKLSI allows one and an half to two hours to de-brief the Team Leaders after their assessment exercise which last three hours – this is on top of their assessment feedback; just time for them to share what they have learnt from the exercise. This gives you an idea of how much can be learnt from this process and how little it is done after Unit exercises.

So pick your scenarios with care and attention to detail. They can make or break the exercise and its benefits to your Unit.

Return to Search Exercise Planners Handbook Index

  • Share/Bookmark

No comments »

Posted in Search Thoughts, Search Training

Tags: