New ‘Missing Child Repository’ hopes to bring home more missing children more easily
By Eric Miller
Click here for updates on this story
North Carolina (WRAL) — On Monday, the North Carolina Center for Missing Persons launched a brand new tool that aims to make it faster and easier to bring missing children home.
This comes after both a year of work and a week that saw two high-profile Amber Alert cases.
Called the Missing Child Repository, the tool is a centralized database with the names and photos of missing children in North Carolina.
It was built in-house by staff at the Center for Missing Persons, and Director Morrissa Moyer said the goal is to make reunions between parents and lost kids as simple as the click of a mouse.
“They don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops or look through different databases,” Moyer said.
Moyer said there are several advantages. For one, it makes names, agency information and photos easy to find for families and members of the public; it also allows families to search solely based on physical characteristics and easily look through photos. This can be particularly helpful if a very young or nonverbal child is found.
“There have been a few cases where there have been some small children, toddlers, who have been located, but can’t verbalize their name, who their parents are,” Moyer said.
She explained that parents can go to the website and input descriptors (e.g. this child is about two years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, etc.) to narrow down the search to anyone who meets that criteria.
Children also won’t have to qualify for an Amber Alert to be listed in the Repository – a potential boon after this last week, when two different teenage girls disappeared, one in Harnett County and the other in Siler City. In the Siler City case, the teenager was missing for an entire week before officials decided her case met the requirements for an Amber Alert.
“It gets the word out,” Moyer said.
There are still challenges with this system, however. The data is only updated once a week from the Federal NCIC database, and the center doesn’t always have access to photos.
But Moyer said this system is still a major step in the right direction – for some of the youngest and most vulnerable North Carolinians.
You can now access the Missing Child Repository at nccmp.ncdps.gov.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
