The search for Adji entering a new venue -- the Internet
Facebook may be the new milk carton.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office has taken a new approach in the search for Adji Desir, the missing Immokalee 6-year-old, possibly initiating a new trend other area law enforcement agencies will pursue in the future.
On July 10, the six-month anniversary of Adji’s disappearance, Sheriff’s Office officials posted a video about the case to the agency’s many Internet presences and asked members of the public to share it on the Web, including their profiles on the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.
Two missing child experts said this is the first time they have heard of law enforcement taking such actions.
“This is not standard for law enforcement to reach out to the community like this,” said Dave Thelen, who has been helping parents find missing children worldwide for 20 years. “It is a good thing, because overall they are doing something that I have rarely heard of law enforcement doing, which is thinking outside the box.”
Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Jamie Mosbach said the decision to pursue the new avenue came from a brainstorming discussion on new avenues for expanding the search for Adji.
“We started thinking, ‘What’s the best way to get the word out there,’” Mosbach said. “If there’s a particular message we want to get out about safety to the community or we want to get help from the community, this was the best way to get the word out to the community as quickly as we can.”
Thomas Lauth has been investigating missing persons cases for 15 years and currently operates a for-hire investigation service for families. Like Thelen, Lauth also said it was the first time he had heard of law enforcement taking such actions, noting that it is usually families or nonprofits that go online for their searches.