6:00 p.m., Saturday, March 7, 2009
6:00 p.m., SNearly two months after his disappearance and supposed abduction, two questions nag:
Where is Adji Desir?
Did his case get less notoriety than others?
With the continued pursuit and hard work of law-enforcement agencies and TV programs such as “America’s Most Wanted,” we hope to have the answer to question No. 1.
Dissecting the past for the answers to question No. 2 may be less constructive than resolving to move on and tighten local and national alert systems already in place.
We would like to see them built up rather than torn down. They have accomplished a great deal and can accomplish even more.
We can understand the need for separate alert systems for different categories of cases. We can understand why searches for adults and children, whether they are believed to be abducted or runaways, can call for special skills.
We also can understand why there ought to be a certain level of evidence required to trigger activation of a major alert. False alarms can diminish the impact and distract from bona fide cases.
Still, there can be a fine line between bureaucracy and remembering the mission of networks such as AMBER Alert. That mission is finding missing children. That means getting their pictures and descriptions out there to as many sets of eyes and ears as possible as quickly as possible. Delaying any of that can play into the hands of real abductors as opposed to estranged parents using bad judgment for a few hours.
Some of the questions about little Adji may never be satisfied. Some come against a perception of injustice, with Adji being Haitian and other missing children being white and wholly American. Some can never be answered short of turning back time and having the mute 6-year-old watched more closely while at play.
We do not know what if any level of emergency alert could have made a difference in Adji’s case.
Our effort to be a productive fault-finder comes up short. We believe the news media has more to contribute here as a solution-finder. That means working with authorities to issue future alerts and requests for volunteer searchers, or on processes that make spreading bad news more systematic — regardless of how a child or adult becomes missing. All that matters is finding them. Whatever it takes.
link
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2009/mar/07/editorial-missing-children-search-adji-goes-can-we/
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