It was the initiative of a police officer that brought about an awareness among residents of Washington D.C. They realized that a strategy has to be drawn up to pursue cases of Missing Girls because, most of them are either Black or Latino.
New York Times reports that Cmdr. Chanel Dickerson, who was promoted in December, was assigned to lead the department’s Youth and Family Services Division. Her knowledge on these subjects is vast and, she knows of a case where the mother was on drugs and to get money for her drugs, she sold her daughter into the flesh trade.
Defining the problem
When children go missing, the police have to locate them and return them to their families but, when the color of the child becomes a criterion, it reflects adversely on the setup. Therefore, Commander Dickerson took the help of the social. She created a hashtag #MissingDCGirls and, once it started trending on Twitter, it woke the people out of their slumber. Celebrities like rapper Ludacris and actress Viola Davis joined the cause and angry residents demanded to know the facts of the case.
The official stand is that there is no sudden increase in disappearances, rather the number of children who have gone missing is down. Statistics have been furnished to justify the stand.
Last year 2,242 children had gone missing in Washington D.C. – this is less compared to the figure of 2,433 in the previous year.
Commander Dickerson admits that 99 percent of the children are found and the reason of why they go missing is because of family problems. However, the alarming part is that, as on date, there were 18 cases of missing young people and all of them were minorities with half of them girls.
Obviously, missing girls are very much there.
How to keep the children safe
Missing children are everywhere but, when it pertains to a particular section of the population, there is a need to be more thorough. Washington D.C. has a mix of youth who are at risk alongside a disproportionate mix of black and Latino. Lives of these people and their struggle for survival mark them out for exploitation.
At times the missing girls fall prey to sex trafficking and, when these incidents are ignored by public officials and the news media, it gives rise to anger and dissent.
Robert Lowery, vice president for the missing children division of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has indicated that out of the children that go missing, about 35 percent are black, and another 20 percent Latino.
