Overreaction Fallout

Here's the overreaction:

• In the last five days, Chicago police have released 11 alerts to the media about residents who have been reported missing.
  
  [...] The seeming flurry of reports comes after questions about why no information was released to news outlets about the disappearance of 12-year-old Jahmeshia Conner, who was found strangled Nov. 30 in a South Side alley two weeks after she was reported missing.
  
  Department officials said Monday that they had slightly altered procedures on media alerts.
  
  Previously, only one shift released the alerts to news outlets, typically by e-mail.
  
  But the news affairs office has started releasing the "Critical Reach" alerts on each of its three shifts, department spokesman [...] said.

And here's the fallout:

• National experts say the media can play a critical role in locating a missing person, but discretion should be used.
  
  "If you put out an alert for every child, the alerts are not going to work anymore," said Cindy Rudometkin of the Polly Klaas Foundation.
  
  "People will become desensitized."

Why would they become desensitized?

• In 2009, there have been 16,000 people reported missing in Chicago.
  
  The clearance rate for those cases is more than 95 percent, police said.
  
  And Jahmeshia was one of 15 children age 12 and under who disappeared in November.
  
  All of the other children have returned home safely.

So our numbers of a few days ago were pretty much right on. We speculated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people went missing and the clearance rate was well over 90%. BreakingNews reports that all the other kids returned safely on their own. We aren't expecting the media to ask the next logical question - why are they returning home safe and unharmed and why aren't parents being charged with a crime?

Has anyone ever read the order on missing persons? It says that anyone can report a "victim" missing, even if they have no direct knowledge that the "victim" is actually missing. That means we could walk into any district station and report J-Fed missing and the desk crew is required by general order to fill out a missing person report. How screwy is that?