KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

There is a per­cep­tion that most of the peo­ple re­port­ed miss­ing are teenagers who run away from home to be with ro­man­tic part­ners. How­ev­er, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion ACP Sharon Coop­er says al­most as many old­er per­sons are re­port­ed miss­ing by their fam­i­lies, friends or guardians..The TTPS sends out miss­ing per­son bul­letins al­most dai­ly. Yes­ter­day, bul­letins were sent out on Sameer Samuel, 13, Faraze Mo­hammed, 17 and Jes­si­ca Madoo, 16.

Coop­er said the po­lice treat each re­port with mer­it as there many rea­sons why peo­ple go miss­ing.

“Peo­ple leave home for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tions where hus­bands leave wives, or wives leave hus­bands with­out say­ing any­thing. We must en­sure we look for them once a re­port comes in,” Coop­er said.
She said judg­ing a sit­u­a­tion too soon could lead to a per­son’s death. In ad­di­tion, there are more trag­ic rea­sons for a per­son’s dis­ap­pear­ance, such as kid­nap­pings, mur­ders, and ac­ci­dents. 
An ex­am­ple is the dis­ap­pear­ance of 22-year-old court clerk An­drea Bharatt, who was last seen en­ter­ing a taxi in Ari­ma on Jan­u­ary 29, 2021. A scrap iron deal­er found her de­com­pos­ing body on Feb­ru­ary 4, down a precipice in the Heights of Aripo.

Kei­thisha Cud­joe suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate. A male rel­a­tive re­port­ed her miss­ing last Jan­u­ary and a bee­keep­er found her body at the Heights of Aripo.

Miss­ing peo­ple al­so in­clude those who suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness­es who can wan­der out of their homes and get lost.
The TTPS re­ceived 552 miss­ing per­son re­ports (MPR) be­tween Jan­u­ary 1-De­cem­ber 28, 2022, with 466 ac­count­ed for, in­clud­ing 30 peo­ple found dead. Up to Jan­u­ary 6, 56 of the peo­ple who dis­ap­peared last year re­mained miss­ing.

Be­tween De­cem­ber 1 and 28, there were 13 MPRs with po­lice ac­count­ing for eight, while five re­mained out­stand­ing up to Jan­u­ary 6. 
Of the 552 peo­ple re­port­ed miss­ing, 220 were male, with 26 found dead. There were 272 fe­males, with four found dead.
Up to Jan­u­ary 6, 33 males and 23 fe­males re­port­ed miss­ing in 2022 re­mained on the TTPS miss­ing per­sons data­base.
In some cas­es, it is ob­vi­ous why some peo­ple go miss­ing as they may give rea­sons or pack clothes. How­ev­er, po­lice still have to act if the miss­ing per­son is a mi­nor. Some­times peo­ple who run away from home and do not re­port their where­abouts af­ter a miss­ing per­son’s bul­letin is is­sued can be con­sid­ered a waste of po­lice re­sources. 
The An­ti Kid­nap­ping Unit is the main arm of the TTPS charged with in­ves­ti­gat­ing MPRs, check­ing homes, fam­i­lies, friends and as­so­ci­at­ed places. How­ev­er, oth­er units and po­lice sta­tion of­fi­cers join in search­es. There­fore, peo­ple leav­ing home with­out in­form­ing any­one can stretch po­lice re­sources which are al­ready en­gaged in try­ing to help peo­ple who may be kid­napped or lost.
“Our re­mit is that once some­one makes a re­port, we in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances and try to put things in place to help the per­son who went miss­ing. Of­ten when peo­ple run away from prob­lems, we do not seek to charge them if there is a case. We will deal with them by some­times get­ting them to see a so­cial work­er or help­ing them get some sup­port,” Coop­er said.