Police carry signs of hope for missing kids
Friday, May 16, 2008
CLARKSVILLE — On May 2, the Clarksville Police Department posted on a police cruiser a photograph of smiling, redhaired Dixie Rogers, who ran away from her Conway home.
Before the clock struck midnight, Rogers, 16, resurfaced. The adult she was staying with in south Arkansas heard that police were looking for the girl, panicked and had her call home.
On Thursday, parents of 24 other missing children prayed that the Police Department’s new program leads to their safe return as well.
While photographs of missing children have long been posted on fliers, billboards and grocery store bulletin boards, Clarksville’s Police Department is the first in the nation to post such pictures on its vehicles, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
It’s a simple yet inspired idea that the Virginia-based nonprofit plans to ask more law enforcement agencies to consider.
Nationally, one in six missing children featured in a photograph campaign is located, Allen said.
“I can’t imagine a better place to put these pictures than on a police cruiser because, believe me, people pay attention to police cars,” he said. “The power of these images is really extraordinary.” The 15-officer department in Johnson County has affixed names, telephone numbers and photographs of missing children from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri to the rear windshields of Clarksville’s police cruisers.
Clarksville Police Chief Greg Donaldson got the idea while watching television and seeing a photograph of a missing child on the side of a cement truck.
Donaldson contacted the nonprofit Morgan Nick Foundation, which had placed the photograph on the cement truck through its “Picture Them Home” campaign. The Alma-based foundation has helped law enforcement agencies find 3, 721 missing children since its founding in 1996.
Today, Clarksville cruisers each sport photographs of two missing children on their rear windshields. Each police officer also carries a set of fliers in the cruiser with biographical information about the missing children.
On Thursday, Donaldson and Morgan Nick Foundation founder Colleen Nick wept as they pasted a red “Recovered” sticker over Rogers’ photograph on the cruiser.
Nick’s daughter, Morgan Nick, was abducted in 1995 while attending a little league baseball game in Alma. She was 6.
She hasn’t been heard from since.
Morgan was one of about 800, 000 children who vanish across the United States each year, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
More than half of these children are believed to be runaways. Many others are abducted by family members. Only a fraction are taken by strangers who intend to kill them, keep them permanently or demand a ransom.
It’s hard to say exactly how many children are missing in Arkansas, said Robin Sanford, an analyst with the center.
All law enforcement agencies are required to report missing children to a Federal Bureau of Investigation National Crime Information Center database. But it’s hard to break out numbers for missing children because many are lumped into a category that includes missing adults.
However, the database shows there were at least 3, 812 new reports of Arkansas children who ran away from home in 2007 — more than 300 per month.
Branson Perry, who disappeared from his home north of Kansas City, Mo., on April 11, 2001, is among those featured on the Clarksville Police Department’s cruisers.
Mother Becky Klino said her 20-year-old son was at the family home with a friend before he disappeared.
Perry went outside to put some jumper cables in a shed. He never came back.
He had never run away before or run afoul of the law. Klino is sure he was abducted.
But she’s equally sure that he’s still alive, despite no word from Perry in seven years.
She has to believe that to make it through the day.
“You have to keep believing. You have to keep looking until there’s no hope left. Until there’s evidence, you don’t give up,” she said. “If you have children, then you surely understand why you just can’t give up.” Perry’s photograph on a Clarksville cruiser gives Klino just a little more hope that she’ll be reunited with her son one day.
Donaldson challenged every law enforcement agency in the nation to follow his department’s lead.
While it costs $150 per cruiser to affix the photographs, it’s money well spent, he said.
“There’s no way that it can get any better than doing what we did this morning: putting a ‘recovered’ sticker on a child’s picture,” he said of Rogers, who was missing for 17 days.
“I know every chief and every sheriff wants to do the same thing.” More information about the “Picture Them Home” campaign can be found at www. morgannick.com
