SS mentioned that she wished media would have a public search for missing persons day. That got me started, because I knew I had seen some statistics for Chicago about missing persons.
It's a sad fact that it's not that unusual for someone to vanish in Chicago. Chicago Police Department files are packed with missing-person cases -- kids, mostly, but also a growing number of adults.
Of the 20,000-plus people reported missing in Chicago last year, about 8,000 were 17 or older -- 40 percent of the total, up from 35 percent in 2000.
The figures are inching upward nationally, too. Last year, 169,447 adult missing-person cases were logged nationwide, up from 144,209 a decade ago.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/missing/614159,CST-NWS-missing22.article
Now of the
20,000 a percentage of them will probably return. But a percentage will never return. And a large percentage of them are in all probability dead. Dead, missed, and ignored.
I would like for us to use those figures to try to push the Chicago media into declaring a "missing person's day." As a part of their broadcasts and articles they could talk about the fact that rewards are available in many of the missing persons cases, they could encourage property owners and tenants of those properties to walk the grounds and what they should be checking and looking for (like checking in containers on the property and checking the ground for new areas that may have been dug, depressions and mounds and signs of burn sites that cannot be previously accounted for.) Property owners should be checking out their vacant properties.
It should be a matter of pride for any community to come together in the time of crisis. And when a person is missing, that is indeed a time of crisis. To ignore the fact that they have decomposing remains of once living human beings in their alleys, fields, woods, ditches and basements they own is not anything to be proud of. To not even try to locate them is worse.
Since we have been watching the Peterson case, one body was found in an abandoned home, one was found in a ditch- the one in a ditch was thought to have been there for
13 years.
In the next few days I am going to be sending out some emails to as many media providers as I can find asking that the media come together, choose a date and then go public with the information and the request.
Property owners don't have to be searching for a reward, not for Lisa or Stacy or for any particular person. They will be doing it for their community pride, for themselves, and because that type of search will benefit
all the missing. But it will take more than one voice, one who doesn't even live in the area. I am asking that everyone help me in gathering media email addresses and starting an email campaign.