Nov 30, 2008 - 04:05:25 CST
Your son is missing. Or your sister. Or your grandfather, who has Alzheimer's disease.But in any case, the missing person is older than 18 - an adult. And adults have the right to leave without telling anyone where they are going, who they are with or why they left.
For law enforcement officials, cases of missing adults are among the harder ones to handle. Adults have the right to do what they want and go where they want, but loved ones left behind wonder where they are and seek to know that they are OK.
Law enforcement officials have to balance the missing person's right to privacy with the desire of family or friends to know what's happened, and a bill being proposed to the 2009 North Dakota Legislature would set out procedures for law enforcement to follow.
Bismarck Police Lt. Randy Ziegler said he was asked to write the department's policy on missing adults a few years ago following the disappearance of an elderly Bismarck man. The policy sets out the responsibilities of officers, investigators and supervisors, and how to proceed with reports and disseminating information to other agencies and the public.
The policy includes instructions for what information needs to be gathered and what kinds of people would be considered "high-risk missing persons" based on the gathered information. From beginning to end, the policy sets out how police should proceed when an adult is reported missing.
"We consider missing persons very serious cases," Bismarck Police Chief Keith Witt said.
When a child is missing under unknown circumstances, law enforcement agencies know what to do, Ziegler said. Amber Alerts go out to the public, and officers begin searching.
But when the missing people are adults, police enter a sort of gray area.
How to handle the cases depends largely on the information gathered. If the missing person has dementia, is sick and does not have the necessary medicine, or may have been abducted, police are likely to get information out quickly in an effort to find the person.
"Based on that, obviously we would do some initial notifications" to other agencies or the media, Witt said.
But if the person is a healthy, capable adult, law enforcement agencies are cautious in proceeding.
In a recent case, Kimberly Cooklin, 26, was reported missing by her employer as well as others in the community. Police visited her apartment, which was still full of her belongings. She had contact with family members, but her whereabouts still were not known. People worried that she may have been taken against her will, so police continued searching and trying to contact her. The department gave the media information to put out about Cooklin in the event that someone in the community knew where she was.
Eventually, Cooklin contacted a detective and was able to give enough information about herself that the case was closed. Police still were not positive where she was, but she told them she wanted to be left alone. Even though the incident was out of character for the woman and still left questions unanswered, police decided to close the case.
"If you don't want to be found, that is your right," Ziegler said.
Sometimes, the person who is reported missing actually has been hiding out from the person making the report, such as in cases of domestic violence. In those cases, the person making the report would be told that the "missing" person is safe and given no further information.
In some instances, the Bismarck Police Department has used a community emergency notification system, in which a recorded call goes out to all landline phones in a certain area. That way, if a person disappears, as many people as possible in the immediate neighborhood get direction information about the person and can be on the lookout for him or her, Ziegler said.
If a person is never found, a "cold case" investigator maintains the case for the Bismarck Police Department, Witt said.
"Those will stay open indefinitely," he said, noting that Bismarck has several "cold cases."
Though the Bismarck Police Department and other large departments in the state have policies regarding missing persons, not all departments do, said Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Dickinson.
Johnson attended a conference in Philadelphia put on by the Department of Justice in 2005. At the conference, she learned that there are many unidentified human remains in the country, but no national system to link the remains to the identity of a missing person. Legislators at the conference were encouraged to work toward state laws setting up law enforcement procedures for handling cases of missing persons and unidentified human remains.
In 2007, Johnson sponsored Concurrent Resolution 3056, which directed the interim Judicial Process Committee to study the search for and identification of missing persons.
"It's too big of a deal to just dump into a bill" without studying, she said.
Coming out of that committee, of which Johnson is a member, is a bill that would set out procedures for all law enforcement agencies to follow when someone reports someone else missing or when unidentified human remains are found.
The bill, based on model legislation from the Department of Justice, would require law enforcement agencies to take any report of a missing person, set out procedures to follow in the case of a missing person or found remains, and require information about missing persons or found remains to be entered into national databases.
Witt has problems with the legislation, though it is similar to his department's policies and he plans to incorporate parts of it dealing with unidentified human remains into the department policy. Burleigh County Sheriff Pat Heinert also said he thinks the legislation contains good ideas for policy, though he thinks there are too many variables involved in investigations to put it in state law.
"There are some good things in it," he said.
Witt said placing detailed law enforcement procedures in state law can make it hard to change how things are handled when new technologies become available or if a situation calls for a different procedure, and Heinert doesn't think state law should instruct law enforcement agencies in how to run an investigation.
"I'm not necessarily supporting that," Heinert said.
Johnson countered that the Legislature meets every two years and could change the law in case of a new technology that conflicts with statutes.
The bill would require law enforcement agencies to take any missing person report, regardless of whether there is any evidence the missing person had a connection to the area. Law enforcement officials worry that the requirement could be problematic due to jurisdictional restraints. While nationally people may have problems getting someone to take a report, North Dakota agencies typically want to help people, they said.
Mandan Police Chief Dennis Bullinger worries that someone in another state could report someone missing in California, then Mandan police would be responsible for following up on the report if they couldn't find a more appropriate agency willing to take responsibility for it.
"I don't know how Iwould have investigative duty" in another state or community, Bullinger said.
"I understand that concern," Johnson said.
However, she thinks people looking for a lost loved one may need to find a law enforcement agency willing to take a report to get the ball rolling. For instance, if someone from North Dakota has an adult child going to college in Minneapolis who plans to go to Fort Lauderdale for spring break but never makes it there, a parent might not know to whom to report the disappearance.
"Who do I call?" she said.
Police in Minneapolis may say the person left, so it's not their responsibility, and those in Florida may say they don't need to get involved because he never arrived, Johnson speculated. But law enforcement in the person's hometown might be able to take the report, then help convince law enforcement in the appropriate jurisdiction to take over investigations, she said.
"You need to have somebody take ownership," she said.
Johnson said a missing person who is not located can be entered into a national database that includes DNA. Then, if some day remains matching that DNA also get entered into the database, family and friends of the missing person could have some closure. Without that link, the missing person case would remain unsolved, and the human remains found somewhere else would remain unidentified, she said.
Witt and Heinert suggest a bill be put forward that requires law enforcement agencies to have a policy on missing persons that would fit each agency, instead of the detail bill proposed. Then, the state could help agencies develop their policies. Such a law was put in place requiring agencies to have domestic violence policies.
Johnson agreed agencies should have their own policies, but she worried that smaller agencies wouldn't have the time or resources to write their own.
"Would it get done? Would it get put into place?" she asked.
Johnson said concerns about the bill could be taken into consideration for possible amendments once the legislative session is under way. But she said she thinks the legislation could help people struggling to find out where their loved ones are.
"What's important to know is that no matter where your loved one might be, you can get some help,"she said, noting that such a law would be a success if it helped even one family get answers. "That's what it's all about."
(Reach reporter Jenny Michael at 250-8225 or jenny.michael@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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