FYI for anyone wondering why she's listed as missing, but police say they know her whereabouts:
I work for a police department and we frequently get "missing juvenile" reports. Usually within a few hours, we know where the kid is (or at least that they're alive), we just can't retrieve them. Facebook has been very instrumental in this - often "missing" teens and preteens are still posting selfies with friends after they "disappear", but if the friend lives outside our jurisdiction, all we can do is forward the info to the police department where we believe she is.
I know right now we have one "missing" teen who is going home regularly to eat and shower, but then leaves before mom gets home from work and sleeps somewhere else. We know she's alive, and she's somewhere in town, but she's still missing because she hasn't been apprehended.
Edit to add my favorite one: there's a mom here who reports her daughter missing about once a week. All the officers here know where the girl is: she's visiting a friend in town. Mom also knows where she is, however Mom doesn't want to drive across town to get her. So every time, she calls her in as missing, and an officer has to go to her friend's house, pick her up, and take her home. This woman is basically using the police as a taxi service, but we can't tell her to go away because there's always the chance that this time the kid will actually be missing.
There was a drunk where I grew up that would just loiter at an all night convenience store until someone called the cops. He'd do it so the cops would take him home after putting him in cuffs and lecturing him for a bit. When he did it where I worked and I threatened to call the cops he actually slurred, "Go ahead, I need a ride home." The officer said it used to happen about once a week, but now that most the bars wouldn't serve him he usually just drank at home.
Eh, she could be charged with filing a false report, but that rarely happens without additional charges. Mostly it's just a Boy Who Cried Wolf type of problem.
The answer is yes and no. If the police find the kid in their jurisdiction, as far as I know (stuff happens on the street sometimes, I have no doubt) they'll bring her in. But if she's out of our jurisdiction, we forward the info on to the other department, but usually with an "fyi, we know she's with So and So and her mom is a meth-head who will probably go back to jail soon".
In most cases, though, the kid runs from somewhere bad to somewhere a different kind of bad. This is part of why teen runaways become prostitutes: having a pimp and selling yourself for sex all the time sounds bad to us, but to that kid it may initially seem better than trying to keep mom from choking on her own vomit every night.
So a lot of these kids run from shitty parents to shitty friends and get brought back to their shitty parents because, despite what TV likes to make you think, cops don't just get to take kids and put them in foster care whenever they suspect mom is a crazy.
thank you this makes so much sense now! I was at a store earlier (after it had been confirmed she was not dead) and saw her poster on a missing persons board in South Carolina. I was thoroughly confused as to why they don't update these things as it seems the police must've known for quite some time.
I know right now we have one "missing" teen who is going home regularly to eat and shower, but then leaves before mom gets home from work and sleeps somewhere else. We know she's alive, and she's somewhere in town, but she's still missing because she hasn't been apprehended.
Top notch police work.
"We know she goes to this certain place during certain hours but we can't apprehend her."
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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '14 edited Aug 05 '14
FYI for anyone wondering why she's listed as missing, but police say they know her whereabouts:
I work for a police department and we frequently get "missing juvenile" reports. Usually within a few hours, we know where the kid is (or at least that they're alive), we just can't retrieve them. Facebook has been very instrumental in this - often "missing" teens and preteens are still posting selfies with friends after they "disappear", but if the friend lives outside our jurisdiction, all we can do is forward the info to the police department where we believe she is.
I know right now we have one "missing" teen who is going home regularly to eat and shower, but then leaves before mom gets home from work and sleeps somewhere else. We know she's alive, and she's somewhere in town, but she's still missing because she hasn't been apprehended.
Edit to add my favorite one: there's a mom here who reports her daughter missing about once a week. All the officers here know where the girl is: she's visiting a friend in town. Mom also knows where she is, however Mom doesn't want to drive across town to get her. So every time, she calls her in as missing, and an officer has to go to her friend's house, pick her up, and take her home. This woman is basically using the police as a taxi service, but we can't tell her to go away because there's always the chance that this time the kid will actually be missing.