OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - The Omaha Police Department is teaming up with a local nonprofit to reduce the number of missing children in the city.
Police Lt. Tracy Scherer told the Omaha World-Herald that the department realized there’s a systematic problem behind the more than 3,000 reports of missing youth each year in Omaha.
The majority of the reports involve youths who run away from home, and many children could be running from abuse, said Scherer, who runs the department’s child victim sexual assault unit.
“Police will often find a kid and just return them home, not getting to the root causes of why they’re running away,” Scherer said. “I saw it as us doing a disservice to the children because all we’re doing is going out and finding them and returning them home.”
Since September, Omaha police have been working to identify cases where officers believe a child is in danger or has been abused. Police have then coordinated with Project Harmony to take the child to the center, which provides services to victims of child abuse and their families.
The center can interview children about home life, provide a medical exam or therapy and contact Child Protective Services, if needed. Project Harmony also plans to reach out to affected families.
The organization hired a coordinator and mental health therapist in September to review the city’s roughly 50 missing juvenile reports per week.
Scherer hired a data analyst to integrate various databases to make it easier for law enforcement to pull background information about a missing child.
The partnership helped contact 313 youths ages 7 to 19 from September to January. At least 19 of the juveniles have received therapy at Project Harmony.
“The Police Department is a very reactive entity - a crime happens and we respond,” Scherer said. “We very rarely get to stop a crime in progress, so I’m actually happy because we’re doing something very proactive for these kids.”
___
Information from: Omaha World-Herald, http://www.omaha.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.