Posted on 03/28/2007 10:20:05 AM PDT by Graybeard58
When Janice Smolinski's 31-year-old son Billy disappeared in 2004, there were no Amber Alerts, no urgent police investigations.
Police made the family wait three days to report the Waterbury man's disappearance because a neighbor believed he left town voluntarily. The family organized its own search parties and pressured police to fingerprint Billy's truck, his mother says.
Two and a half years later, Billy Smolinski is nowhere to be found and his mother has joined a national push for more consistent laws for handling missing-adult cases.
The group's Campaign for the Missing is lobbying this year in Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Oregon, New York, Missouri, Ohio and Indiana.
"Our system isn't working," says Janice Smolinski. "Unfortunately, when adults go missing, they don't really take it seriously."
Just under half of the more than 109,000 active records in the National Crime Information Center's missing person file as of 2005 involved adults.
The National Center for Missing Adults, a government-supported organization that handled more than 23,000 reports and helped nearly 25,000 family members in 2005, had its federal funding cut last year to $148,000.
In October, the organization warned it may close its doors if it did not get more funding; it did not return repeated calls recently, and it was not clear whether it was still in operation.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, in comparison, typically receives more than $35 million a year from the federal government.
Police say they do not have the resources to focus attention on every case, particularly because there is nothing in the law to prevent an adult from walking away from his friends and family.
"We cannot do for everybody that they would like us to do," said West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci, legislative chairman for the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association. "We can only do what the law and our budgets allow."
Contrary to TV crime shows, he said, the FBI rarely assists in missing adult cases.
Family members said they believe local police need better training and more resources to track down missing adults. The laws proposed by Campaign for the Missing would require police to accept most missing-persons reports and to collect certain information, such as blood type and eye color.
The families also want to require police to enter all collected information, including DNA, into federal databases and to provide updates to family members. They also want to ban the cremation of unidentified remains.
Kelly Jolkowski helped create the Campaign for the Missing after her 19-year-old son Jason vanished from the family's Omaha, Neb., driveway in 2001.
"The only thing you can do is get the story out there," she says.
"One of these days you're going to hit the right person."
Jolkowski says she has heard horror stories from families whose local police departments did not know of the federal DNA database. She has also learned of unidentified bodies cremated or buried in unmarked graves without any DNA taken.
In Indianapolis, family members say it took six weeks for a formal police investigation into the disappearance of Molly Dattilo, who disappeared in 2004.
"They could have tracked down more people in the very beginning with a fresh memory," says Dattilo's cousin, Keri Dattilo. "I think they need to start taking these cases seriously in the beginning. They need to listen to the families."
Dattilo has not been found.
The crux of the matter.
This is so hard. So many adults leave and don't want to be found.
I think of all the missing spouses reported missing, when all they wanted to do is get the hell away from their partner.
The point is, people also leave, and do want to be found. I.e Kidnapped, killed, thrown in a ditch.
It's a shame. The cable channels becomes focused on a select few, such as Natalie Holloway or Chandra Levy, and the rest be damned. Maybe they should do a story on one different missing adult per week, instead of concentrating on one or two. But, of course, they probably wouldn't get the ratings they are seeking.
I would be interested in hearing about a 19 yr. old boy who disappears from the driveway of his home and nothing is done about it. What if he had been a girl? That sort of bias is really evident in missing persons cases.
You are right. If the adult is not a young woman or pregnant young mother then you hear nothing.
In our local area there are a number of young men as well as young women who do fit the media profile who disappear and there is rarely if ever a big local effort much less national attention.
Young missing men are usually not considered important enough to spend much time on.
I agree.
After Natalie Holloway vanished, I read (think it was in a a FR post) that according to the FBI, a majority of those adults who disappeared were non-white, and a majority were male.
Apparently, all victims are equal, but some victims are more equal than others.
The problem is, adults have a right to disappear if they so desire. Some have good reason to do such, and might not want authorities aggressively looking for them - a wife might leave an abusive husband, the husband puts on a sob story for the cops, the cops find the wife, the abusive husband uses the info to go to her new residence and harm her.
I think the current system is a good balance - pursue a missing persons case if there is any indication of foul play.
I think that ADULTS can disappear if they wish!!
Not after the GPS/OnStar®/cellphone chip gets implanted at birth.
Ya gotta know your audience.
Then there's the Purdue guy, found after a couple of months, laying across a high-voltage transformer.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/20/national/main2587320.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2587320
(Check out the placement of the AD right above the VIDEO here.)
Stop youth smoking indeed!!!
Not 463-3266? A zero is not an "o".
By choice - you get the idea. I'll stick with the original 10.
When I was a kid, I had a little electric hotdog cooker.
(It's probably BANNED now!)
Just the electric cord that terminated with 4 prongs on the left and four on the right.
You'd stick a wiener between a set of prongs and then plug the cord into the outlet.
That poor dog would pop and sizzle as the current went thru it, heating it up nicely.
That was the FIRST thing I thought of when I'd heard the news about this unfortunate kid.
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