Please write the essay on the following question: Why is the initial response from a police officer to a missing child call considered a crucial component of an investigation? What does an officer do to verify that a child is missing?
Solution
Criminal Investigation
Missing children’s cases are often viewed as a violation of the law and thus prompt the need to protect them. A minor may be missing due to an abduction or voluntarily leaving their usual location. In any case, the investigation must take all the necessary measures. According to a report from the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention (OJJDP), 74 percent of the abducted children get murdered within the first few hours (Patterson, 1987). Consequently, the initial response builds an introductory to the investigation to identify facts regarding the case and the structure of the subsequent procedures. A police officer’s response to a missing child call determines whether the minor will be found or remain missing (Lyman, 2018). The dispatch officer’s response is crucial to the investigation since the information gathered during the call is accurate and in real-time (Lyman, 2018). Notably, predetermined questions are used to gather pertinent information from the caller, such as basic facts and description of the missing child and the abductor to ensure that details that may be forgotten at a later time are captured.
An officer should be thorough when getting the facts in order to verify that a child is missing. Therefore, conducting preliminary interviews of witnesses helps the police to establish the seriousness of the complaint through crucial details, which can be verified since the call is dispatched on time to an officer within proximity of the crime (Leigh et al., 2015). According to the formula developed by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the police should first thoroughly interview the child’s guardians or the person who placed the report to the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) (Lyman, 2018). Secondly, the officer should conduct an intensive investigation, where every lead is exploited and investigation tools and strategies employed (Leigh et al., 2015). The final step is follow-up and close cut. Upon the recovery or identification of the location of the child or the minor’s remains, the final step determines the crimes that may have been committed prior and during the time the individual was missing (Patterson, 1987). The final steps also include the routine for closing out case files.
References
Leigh, J., Dunnett, S., & Jackson, L. (2015). Police response officer selection – Development of tool to aid the dispatch of police response officers. Proceedings of the International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems. https://doi.org/10.5220/0005285104070412
Patterson, J. C. (1987). Investigator’s Guide to Missing Child Cases For Law-Enforcement Officers Locating Missing Children. National Criminal Justice Reference Service | NCJRS. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/108768NCJRS.pdf
Lyman, M., 2018. Criminal Investigation. Hoboken: Pearson, pp.218-222.
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