According to the National Institute of Justice website,
every year tens of thousands of people in the U.S. disappear under mysterious
circumstances. The site also claims that on any given day there are as many as
100,000 active missing person cases on the desks of law enforcement officers.
Moreover, there are an estimated 40,000 unclaimed remains on file at Medical
Examiner offices or that have been buried before being identified.
In 2005, the realization of these facts was the impetus for
the formation of The National Institute of Justice’s National Missing and
Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). A free online system that can be searched
by medical examiners, coroners, law enforcement officials and the general
public from all over the country, NamUs offers three databases: missing
persons, unidentified persons, and unclaimed persons.
Thousands of records have been input into the databases, but
are of no use unless someone accesses the information. According to a press
release issued in 2011 by the Department of Justice, the remains of sixty-two
people have been identified through NamUs and returned to their families. Many
of the cases were solved because of the opportunity for the public to search
the records or to input photos and identifying marks about their relatives.
There are actions the public can take with regard to NamUs –
the most obvious being that if you have information about a missing or
unidentified person, you should report the information to the local law
enforcement agency. Do you personally know law enforcement officials? Make sure
they are aware of NamUs. Do you know the family of a missing person? Encourage
the family to visit the NamUs website where they can create a case file.
Register to be a public user for the missing persons and unidentified persons
databases. This will allow you to input new information about cases.
One by one, with the help of NamUs, the lost are found.
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