Responsibilities of the Missing Children Unit
The Unit compiles and distributes lists of missing children from reports submitted by local law enforcement agencies. The reports are released to school districts and to any other entity or person the Unit determines may be instrumental in the identification and recovery of missing children.
STATISTICS
Consistent with statute, the Unit maintains and distributes statistics
on missing children which include:
- The number of missing children reported.
- The number of missing children cases resolved.
- The approximate physical location at which each child was last seen.
- The time of day each child was last seen.
- The age, gender, and physical description of each child reported missing.
- The activity the child was engaged in at the time last seen.
- The number of reported sightings of missing children.
- The Project documents the circumstances of recovery of missing children. These include a breakdown by age, race, and sex in cases resolved by: recovery by a law enforcement agency, recovery by an agency other than law enforcement, voluntarily returned, deceased, and circumstances unknown. These were summarized for the first time in the 1991 Annual Report to give a clearer picture of what is being done to resolve missing children cases in Colorado.
MONITORING
The Unit reviews each missing child report to the Colorado Crime
Information Center (CCIC) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC)
for validity, completeness and accuracy and insures the originating agency
makes any necessary corrections or additions.
When a child has been missing for thirty days, the Unit must attempt to obtain the child's dental records and attach them to the NCIC missing person report.
The Unit sends lists of children missing from Colorado to each Colorado school district for comparison with their enrollment records to identify missing children in their schools. If a district chooses, it may submit enrollment lists to the Unit for comparison with NCIC records to locate children missing from all states. When a match is verified, the Unit notifies the appropriate authorities to facilitate the return of the missing child.