The wording is very weird to me too, almost in the sense of looking at it like this: If someone went into a PD of any kind and asked, "Have you seen my kid" you would think they would have made a report, or would have had him make a report since Dylan is a minor and had been MIA for quite a few hours without contact. I don't want to dog LE for anything but could it be they 'brushed' him off when he came in thinking Dylan was just being a kid, when they should have filed a report, but didn't?
Sorry if this has already been all spoken about, catching up a bit after taking a much needed nap that has restored much of my energy...
I know if it were my child vs. my husband I would have handled it a bit differently, but before we had a car with onstar, my husband was very, very late coming home from work in the early am (still dark). Before starting to call around to all of the hospitals, and before waking his boss up at home, I called my local Sheriff's office non-emergency number to ask if there had been any accidents reported that night.
The dispatch officer I spoke with confirmed to me that there had been no accidents, and that if I wasn't able to reach him within a couple hours, and if his boss, nor others had seen him, that I was to call back and tell them. I don't know if any notation was made of my call as I don't remember them asking me a bunch of information such as my name, etc... and I was calling from a pre-paid cell phone, so it's not like the info. would have shown up on their system.
She understood that I was a bit paranoid at the time because 2 weeks before they had responded to an accident with fatality of my husband's co-worker on that same stretch of road. Of course, this was an adult male, and not a minor. And, I'm aware that it would be some time (48 hrs. I think) before an actual missing person's report could have been filed.
I think the fact that ER was able to file the report in the first place is because they couldn't confirm any communication with Dylan (at that time) since she texted with him that his Dad had picked him up. Of course, upon filing the report they would be able to check store tapes, etc... to begin tracing his steps after he arrived in the area.
ETA: I knew I should have kept reading before replying. I see now that this matter is still being discussed in fact. I will read through the rest of all the posts before commenting again. Sorry if I brought anything back up that's been covered...
BBM