RE: OLAAT - What We've Found Out So Far & What We're Doing Next!
Hello! I'll definitely do a post soon about what to do when a child goes missing. There's a lot of bad information out there. I'll start with the worst. There seems to be a misunderstanding about how long you have to wait. There is none. If your child is missing, I would call the police right away. Then there are other steps you should also take. The process is not that complicated, and hopefully no one ever needs to use it.
The most important thing to teach your children is to fight to the death before they allow themselves to be put into a stranger's car. If they are put into the car, they are probably lost forever. Most kidnapped children are never seen again. Therefore, keep them in your site or under the observation of a trusted person at all times.
I'm a registered PI in Virginia with my own PI business, Liberty Professionals, LLC. I have volunteered at the following site too:
http://www.operationfoundsafe.org/
People should keep that site in mind. As soon as you call the police, you should call them next. A PI will help a great deal in addition to the government system.
There are not many PI's on Steemit yet unfortunately. Compiling a list on here might not work well. As far as I know, I'm the only one. The above link is to an organization that already does that too. Steemit can still be used to make response times faster however and to make sure the parent's of the victim are doing everything they can as quickly as they can.
Thanks finnian, great information and much appreciated.
I've heard the wait 24 or 48 hours before phoning the police too and that's here in the UK. When my daughter didn't come home from school one and & I phoned the school to see if she was still there and was told no, and then drove the routed between her school and home several times and couldn't find her, I phoned the police - wow must have been one of the most scariest incidents of my life, definitely as a mother. Turns out she was at school after all, words cannot describe what you go through and for some parents the ending is not good like mine was.
Good information on what to do and how to react is most important and yes telling your children to fight, and scream, shout, make noise too. I have to confess that I avoided the subject with mine as I didn't want to scare them and my mum had made me a bit paranoid about being snatched by a stranger so I didn't want to do the same to mine - so good useful information that isn't going to scare them, a light hearted video maybe that gets the message across without creating fear.
Thank you for sharing your information and the website - http://www.operationfoundsafe.org/
There's about 270 PIs on there! Not all have website addresses but still probably over 200 that do, so I'll compile that into a by state list and post soon. Do you know if all these work for free for kidnapped children?
I might well work through email some to join Steemit and see what sort of replies I get. If you have any suggestions in what to say to encourage them to join then please do share with me!
Thanks again for your post, so appreciated.
I run private-investigators.slack.com, and I mentioned the initiative in there to other PI's in my area. It's worth it to at least ask them. That organization, as far as I am aware, is volunteer only. If you see a person or firm's name listed, that means they will do child abduction cases for free.
Great thanks for the information Finnian.
I'll make a State by State list later today from http://www.operationfoundsafe.org/ as it's not a very user friendly format on their website.
Thanks for mentioning our project in your website, most appreciated and yes if we don't ask we don't know.