Technical tools to help find missing children

In 2023, almost 30,000 children were reported missing to Florida law enforcement agencies.

An abducted child is every parent’s worst nightmare, something no parent should have to experience.

When I was a child, a kidnapping in Florida was thrust into the national spotlight that no one who lived through that time could forget.

Adam Walsh he disappeared in 1981 at the age of 6 and was killed by his captor. That summer, Adam was taken from a Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida.

After his abduction, his father, John Walshmade it his mission to stop kidnappings and crime in general.

With that, the show “America’s Most Wanted” was born.

Hosted by John Walsh, the show ran for 24 seasons, catching more than 1,190 criminals through tips solicited on the show and law enforcement.

Also in 1984, following the landmark abduction of Adam, Congress passed the Missing Children Assistance Act, followed by the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Before long, the “Code Adam” alert became the standard for department stores to help quickly find missing children.

Then, in 2006, President George W. Bush signed the “Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act.”

There was also a made-for-TV movie called Adam that ran for a few years in the 80s.

During each show, images of the missing children were shared with a hotline for viewers. 50 missing children were reported and calls resulted in 13 of those children being found. These media engagements would be an early glimpse of the future massive impact that technology and digital media would have on locating missing children.

We now have a wide range of tools to ensure that missing children are found as soon as possible. One of these instruments was named after Adam Walsh. The ADAM program is “Automatic Delivery of Missing Child Alerts”.

This program was launched in 2000 and to this day uses technology to geo-target the region of the missing child and get photos sent to the media, schools and medical centers as soon as possible to assist law enforcement in locating the child. NCMEC led this effort and LexisNexis built the software.

Some statistics about the ADAM program bear this out 1,145 of the 1,672 cases of missing children processed are solved. That’s awesome. Technology is helping parents and law enforcement to keep our children safe.

Another massive weapon in this battle is the Amber Alert system. We all know that loud noise could be the difference in finding a lost child. The system is named after another kidnapped child, Amber Renee Hagerman. Amber was kidnapped in Texas on January 17, 1996; he was 9 years old.

The alert system developed by the media and local police in Dallas, Texas, was a response to her abduction. By 2012, through the Wireless Emergency Alert Program (WEA) — AMBER alerts will be sent directly to the cell phones we are familiar with today.

The impact is overwhelmingly positive.

According to last year’s figures, more than 1,200 children were saved or found thanks to the system. Other technology tools that allow us all to do our part in locating missing children. Right now, you can scan a QR code to see missing children within 50 miles of your location. This program and technology is another product of NCMEC.

I scanned it to keep my eyes open for the five missing children listed in Tallahassee.

Facial recognition tools and artificial intelligence they are also engaged in the fight to find missing children. During the pandemic, this technology helped reunite a Chinese man with his family 32 years after his abduction.

GPS tracking can also be used. If you have a child, make sure they have one of these GPS devices and track their whereabouts on a mobile phone. This redundancy could make all the difference.

Here are several to choose from.

The meaning of the angel is explicitly designed for children with special needs; it even includes a two-way talk function, which could be a positive plus in various situations.

With these technologies and programs, agencies and people are helping parents and law enforcement fight back. The goal is that no one has to experience what the Walsh or Hagerman families went through.

Unfortunately, there will always be criminals, but by working together (along with the latest technology), we can do our best to stop the monsters in our society from committing crimes and getting away with them.

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