CLEVELAND, OHIO: The police are stumped as almost 50 children have been reported missing in Cleveland in the month of September only. And the month isn't even over yet.
The numbers are even greater when the entire year is taken into consideration as 1072 children have been reported missing this year, since January 2023, per Daily Mail.
Why are so many children missing?
After Cleveland 19’s story on the upsurge of missing children in Cleveland received ample media coverage, Police Chief Wayne Drummond addressed the issue at a press conference in June calling the numbers as "misinformation."
Drummond said in June that out of the 1072 missing children, 1020 have returned home, per Axios Cleveland.
The police chief said in the press conference, "The vast majority of missing juveniles are runaways and sometimes habitual runaways," before adding, "I don't say that to minimize missing juveniles. I say that to add context."
Drummond further added that the police department has assigned detectives to missing persons in each of the five districts.
Drummond also claimed, "We do have missing persons in the city of Cleveland," and added, "We take every single one of them seriously."
Since the number of missing children in 2023 is a tad higher than the previous year, board president of non profit ‘Cleveland Missing’ told Fox per Cleveland 5, "We've seen a lot more [missing kids] than we normally see.”
He added, "We don't know what's going on with some of these kids, whether they're being trafficked or whether they're involved in gang activity or drugs."
However, Detective Larry Henderhan said in June that the Northeast Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force did not register a rise in the number of trafficking incident, explaining, "It's becoming summer months; kids get antsy," before adding, "They want to get out with their friends and enjoy themselves during the summer. That's some of what we're seeing."
‘There’s just not enough police officers’
Majoy, who is also the Police Chief Village of Newburgh Heights said to Cleveland 5, “There’s just not enough police officers in the streets to do this as law enforcement,” before adding, “The public is our greatest asset. We can’t do this without the public.”
The public has come forward to help the police in the cases in the past. But some are more active than others, like Breana Brown, a mother-of-four.
Brown started an organization this year named JUMP which is an abbreviation for ‘Join us in minors protection' to help generate awareness.
Brown said to the outlet, “As a community, I feel like we need to do more.”
She added, “We need to make it a priority. If we make more things like this a priority, we will be more on top of it, such as updating the website so we can know who is missing. This is our community; we want to know what’s going on in our community and with our children especially.”
She regularly hosts community gathering where she shares parenting tips in order to restrict children’s missing.
She continued, “We have so many missing children, we want to prevent this from happening, so we need to buckle down,” Brown added. “This is not a matter we should take lightly, not at all.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost too resonated the same. He said that while the state is collaborating with University of Toledo to improve the overall data collection and data reporting system, relying on the public will help for now.
He said to Cleveland 5, “Law enforcement can’t be everywhere and can't see everything,” before adding, “We rely on the people, the population because we have 11.7 million pairs of eyes out there that can keep an eye out.”
He further added, "Now, what we know is when we look behind the numbers, some of those represent repeated runaways and local police have talked about that."
He continued, "All of these things have localized reporting problems that again are a function of local conditions."
Youst voiced his fears saying, "We do our best to encourage compliance and improve assistance to remove barriers, but at the end of the day, we have to rely on our local partners that we don't control."
He placed his faith on the worried parents and said, "I am fearful of all kinds of things that fall through the cracks that include missing children. I rely on the tenacity of a worried parent more than I do a harried bureaucrat whose job it is to put data into a computer."
List of missing children in September
Keshaun Williams, disappeared on June 17 has not been found yet.
Gideon Hefner, 14, disappeared on September 12.
Camryn Nicole Golias, 17 was last seen in September.
Elijah Hill, 16, was last seen on September 20.
Iyahna Graham, 17, disappeared on September 23.
Teonnah Thompkins was last seen on September 17.
Maurice Hamrick, 14, Honesty Howell, 16, Chloe Hadley, 17, all went missing with five days of each other, per Daily Mail.
