Cherisse Moe

They dis­ap­peared with­out a trace. Mys­te­ri­ous­ly gone from the face of the earth. Sta­tis­tics from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit re­vealed that 904 peo­ple have been re­port­ed miss­ing over the past year. Fifty three of those peo­ple have not been found. In 2008, the fig­ures were just as wor­ri­some with 610 peo­ple re­port­ed miss­ing–48 of them re­main un­ac­count­ed for. When the is­sue of hu­man traf­fick­ing reared its ug­ly head again in March, the calls came fast and fu­ri­ous from al­most ever sec­tor of the so­ci­ety for the ur­gent im­ple­men­ta­tion of leg­is­la­tion to deal with the is­sue.

The clam­our grew when ru­mours sur­faced that chil­dren were seen, packed like sar­dines, in large con­tain­ers at the Port of Port-of-Spain. The word on the street was that the con­tain­er was des­tined for Cu­ba and that the chil­dren were go­ing to be ex­ploit­ed for labour and sex. How­ev­er, the au­thor­i­ties quick­ly played down any as­ser­tions of hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T, in­sist­ing that "there was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that peo­ple are be­ing traf­ficked." Still, the ques­tion re­mains: Where are T&T's miss­ing per­sons?

Gale Lam­my: Where is my daugh­ter?

Gale Lam­my knows all too well the an­guish that comes with los­ing a loved one. Her daugh­ter, eight-year-old Leah Lam­my went miss­ing on Feb­ru­ary 10. De­spite count­less search­es, in­clud­ing one led by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert, Leah has not been seen or heard from since. Salis Mack, a 33-year-old Cunu­pia PH dri­ver has since been charged with Leah's kid­nap­ping. Mack, who has al­so been charged with steal­ing the child's $1,700 cell­phone, re­mains un­der 24-hour watch by Pris­ons of­fi­cers at Re­mand Yard, Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca.

Mean­while, Lam­my said she has not giv­en up hope that her daugh­ter will be found. "She used to help me in the kitchen with the cook­ing for Christ­mas. She was al­ways anx­ious to learn new things. All these things I'm miss­ing. It's very dif­fi­cult for me. They took some­thing that was pre­cious to me with­out my con­sent. I feel the pain and hurt every­day," she said, in a re­cent in­ter­view. "When I sit and study that she's not here and I don't know what is go­ing on, it's very hard to ac­cept." Lam­my claimed the au­thor­i­ties have not con­tact­ed her to in­form her of the sta­tus of her daugh­ter's case. "They seem to have giv­en up. The po­lice have not called me to tell me any­thing. I on­ly hear up­dates about my daugh­ter's case over the news. It seems they have for­got­ten about me and my fam­i­ly. But I can't for­get be­cause my daugh­ter is still out there."

Philbert: We are try­ing

Philbert says tack­ling the is­sue of miss­ing per­sons re­mains high on his agen­da.De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a "ma­jor con­cern" he said the au­thor­i­ties have made sig­nif­i­cant changes to poli­cies sur­round­ing miss­ing per­sons. Among the more crit­i­cal ini­tia­tives were the amend­ment of the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a "miss­ing per­son" and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures for re­ceiv­ing and clos­ing a re­port, as well as the time-frame used for mak­ing a re­port. He said the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit and the Homi­cide Bu­reau were be­ing con­tact­ed im­me­di­ate­ly when­ev­er a miss­ing per­son re­port is re­ceived.

"There's no longer a 24-hour wait pe­ri­od to make re­ports on miss­ing per­sons. For kid­nap­ping and mur­ders, the homi­cide and An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad would col­lab­o­rate and work in con­junc­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tor. We pub­lish faces of these per­sons in the me­dia as soon as we get a pho­to­graph," he said.

Philbert said due to the T&T's es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, these ini­tia­tives al­lowed for more im­me­di­ate ac­tion from the po­lice. Re­fer­ring to the case of Leah Lam­my, Philbert said the sit­u­a­tion was "dis­turb­ing." "The is­sue with Leah is some­thing else. I want the fam­i­ly to know that we are do­ing all we can. These things grieve us just as much as it grieves the fam­i­lies.

"We nev­er give up hope. Even though the case seems to be far fetched, we want them to know that we sup­port them. We im­plore our po­lice of­fi­cers to work as hard as they can to bring clo­sure." Philbert al­so not­ed that the po­lice ser­vice's web site was be­ing re­vamped and should be launched ear­ly in 2010. All pic­tures of miss­ing per­sons, he as­sured, would be pub­lished there. Philbert al­so warned cit­i­zens to re­main vig­i­lant to safe­guard them­selves and their fam­i­lies against kid­nap­pings and oth­er crimes. "Just last week we had to get in­to quick ac­tion to res­cue a two-year-old child. We're mov­ing faster in re­spond­ing to these sit­u­a­tions but peo­ple al­so need to be care­ful."

More need­ed

Found­ing mem­ber of the MPA, Nathi­fa Mitchell, has again re­it­er­at­ed her call for greater sup­port from the au­thor­i­ties when deal­ing with miss­ing per­sons. Mitchell, whose aunt Lena John­son, 35, went miss­ing on No­vem­ber 8, 2008, ac­cused the Po­lice Ser­vice of turn­ing a blind eye to the is­sue. "We don't get any co-op­er­a­tion at all from the po­lice. When we con­tact them for an event, we wish they would give us their sup­port.

"Next year we will hold a pub­lic meet­ing to in­form the fam­i­ly mem­bers and the pub­lic about our cause. We would be invit­ing some­one in au­thor­i­ty to an­swer some of the burn­ing ques­tions that fam­i­lies have per­tain­ing their loved ones." Mitchell said the as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so work­ing to pro­vide coun­selling for fam­i­lies of miss­ing per­sons and will soon es­tab­lish a web site where the pic­tures of all miss­ing per­sons will be post­ed.

Help us

Mean­while, CrimeStop­pers' gen­er­al man­ag­er Kei­th Subero is ap­peal­ing to cit­i­zens to re­port crimes they had wit­nessed. Subero said giv­en T&T's ris­ing crime rate, the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­mained pub­lic con­fi­dence. "We face the is­sue of peo­ple be­ing re­luc­tant to come out and give the in­for­ma­tion. We're call­ing for cit­i­zens to be more re­spon­si­ble. Please call our 24 hour call cen­tre," 800-Tips. He added, "Our sys­tem is safe and con­fi­den­tial and it's part of an in­ter­na­tion­al net­work. We are one of over 1,500 crime stop­pers units op­er­at­ing through­out the world in 35 coun­tries."