Child Kidnapping: Missed Opportunities
I have watched and read in frustration as one child after another is kidnapped from their home. Well-intentioned people show up by the carload and offer to search for the child. They are frustrated too. They want to help. Flyers are distributed, and posters are posted. Soon a search of the neighborhood is underway, and searchers begin a grid search of neighboring wooded areas and fields. Unfortunately, recent cases have proven the ineffectiveness of these actions. They make the searchers and the victim’s family feel better, but they contribute little to the successful resolution of the case.
What other options are available? What else can Law Enforcement do to respond more effectively to kidnappings and missing children?
Two years ago, a 12 year-old young man got angry at his parents over the use of his computer. He waited until they went to bed, then put half a loaf of bread, and small jars of peanut butter and jelly in his pack. Out the door he went at about 2am. He was angry and determined when he headed for a friend’s house. He never made it.
At six the next morning, his parents discovered him missing. They called the police, who immediately instituted a search. By 9:00am, a helicopter was in the air. Dogs were scanning. The Township police had every available officer in the field looking for the boy. His friends were contacted. No one had seen or heard from him. At about noon, trackers were called in. No one thought of the trackers until then since they assumed the boy would be with friends or would be found hanging out at a local convenience store.
The trackers arrived on the scene by 12:30pm. They interviewed the parents, and then scouted out the back yard. They found several of the boy’s prints in the back lawn, and they were able to differentiate his tracks made the night before and follow them to the street. When the tracks indicated that the boy turned and walked along the street, the trackers spread out. They paid particular attention to storm drains that were situated in intervals along the road. Near the entrances to the drains were sand bars that had accumulated from heavy rains, and the boy’s tracks were found in one of them. Now the trackers had a direction. They focused their attention on the main highway near the house and found more tracks. The tracks indicated the boy was headed towards the center of town. However, the tracks ended abruptly. While the trackers feared the worst, after a few more minutes of scouting, they soon figured out what had happened. As the boy walked down the highway at 2:30 in the morning, he wanted to avoid being seen. So, when he could see a car approaching, he would run back into the forest and hide. While lying down in the forest leaves waiting for the car to pass, he fell asleep. When the trackers found him the next afternoon, more than 2 miles from home, he was still sound asleep.
While the story here is not a story about kidnapping, it does provide an example of how trackers can be of use in a suburban or rural setting. The recent home intrusion kidnapping of Jessica Lundsford in Florida and the kidnapping in Salt Lake City of Elizabeth Smart might have had different endings had the respective jurisdictions had tactical response teams that had been trained in tactical and search tracking. In both cases, there were tracks of the perpetrator leading up to the house, and tracks of the victim and the perp leaving the house. In the Lundsford case, the tracks would have led trackers directly to the home of the man accused in the crime. In the Smart case, the tracks led across the back yard and up into the foothills behind their house. A well-trained tracking team could have followed both of these trails. There are never any guarantees, but from my perspective, both cases might have turned out differently if trackers had been early-responders.
Tracking is not a lost art. Over the last 9 years I have taught this particular type of tracking to many law enforcement officers, and have seen them use these tracking skills with great results. There are many other examples of how tracking has been used successfully. When a boy goes missing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a tracker, finding track evidence, re-focuses the search to a particular area and is close on his trail when the boy is discovered alive by a searcher. In another case, trackers are brought in to find a lost child in the mountains of Colorado after ten days of fruitless searching by hundreds of volunteers and professionals. Trackers pick up the trail and determine the scenario of the boy’s disappearance and ultimate demise. In another case, trackers are brought in to search for an escaped fugitive in New Jersey. The fugitive is located and captured after trackers lead officers to the man. In another case, a tracker-trained officer solves a homicide in a park by matching the killer’s footprints to a bystander. In another case, a tracker-trained Marine pilot directs an assault team to rescue a fellow pilot after tracking him and his captors through an urban environment. In each of these and many other cases, trackers made a difference in the outcome, saving valuable time, energy and resources - and often saving lives.
Tracking is a viable and yet under-utilized tool that can lead to recovery of missing persons, and the capture of criminals. Instead of feeling frustration and helplessness at child predation, police can add a new tool to their arsenal. Tracking can be a life saving skill.
About the Author:
Kevin teaches tactical, search, and combat tracking as well as point man training, survival skills and urban escape and evasion though his school, On Point Tactical Tracking. Contact him at 609-668-5384 or http://www.onPointTactical.com