News Update: Finally, the IGP get’s it!!!! Just popped into my blog for a quick check for updates and I find this in The Star. My heart is crying “Why didn’t you do this months ago Tuan IGP, after Nurin???”. But we had to learn the hard way. Nevetheless, I am grateful for small mercies. Only, let’s take a really serious view of missing children. This is no longer an isolated incident that is to be blamed solely on the parents. Hey, blame is easy but why don’t we do something about it instead. Then maybe we can go to bed and get some sleep for a change. Our children deserve to be protected from the fate of Nurin and Nini. The responsibility lies with us all!
IGP: Act fast on reports of minors who go missing
KUALA LUMPUR: Policemen must commence investigations immediately if there is any report of anyone below 18 years missing. Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan, who issued this directive, said: “We must act fast. It does not matter if they went to a friend’s house or somewhere without informing their parents or relatives before returning. “The whole idea is to ensure they are located and found safe. We cannot afford to wait and see if they return before commencing investigations. It might be too late.” On Sharlinie Mohd Nashar, Musa still hoped the girl would be found unharmed and urged the public to continue providing information about her. He said police operations were ongoing and there would be no let-up in the search for the girl, who turned five yesterday.
I am really tired today. Can’t say much except the police may be missing something in the way they executed the NURIN Alert. Watch this video above that shows how the Utah police handle the search for a missing child. After each AMBER Alert, regardless of the outcome, an extensive review is conducted to insure that mistakes aren’t repeated and that their AMBER Alert plan continues to improve the chances that the next child will come home safely.
This video above reports on how one school stepped up police patrol after a young girl fought off a would be kidnapper and another showing Baltimore County police investigating an attempted kidnapping after a man allegedly tried to grab a 12-year-old girl as she walked to her school bus stop. Police need to take a serious view of abduction attempts as I had blogged about earlier here. This video below shows safety tips on prevention which are useful for parents and teachers to teach children.
Attempted Abductions
What Parents & Guardians Need to Know
The numbers are surprising: forty-nine percent of parents or guardians believe that their neighborhood is safe, and therefore are not concerned that their child will go missing1. The same research indicates that over half of parents and guardians do not have a recent photo of their child – one updated within the last six months – for emergency purposes. Yet preliminary analysis2 conducted by NCMEC’s Attempted Abduction Program indicates that child safety remains of paramount importance. Initial findings show that attempted non-family3 abductions:
- Occur more often when a child is going to and from school or a school-related activity
- More often involve children between the ages of 10 to 14
- Happen to more female children than male
- More often entail a suspect that uses a vehicle
Nearly 450 confirmed, attempted abductions were foiled when the victims:
- Yelled, kicked or pulled away (56%)
- Walked or ran away (32%)
- Got help from an adult (12%)
In light of these findings, NCMEC encourages parents and guardians now more than ever to discuss safety with their families and to update children’s photo IDs.
My dear Tembam,I can ‘feel’ your tiredness just by reading this blog. With Ninie nowhere to be found and a teeny weeny news on the attempted abduction of another 5 year old in Star, it’s all getting into our system. Unfortunately again there is nothing that we can do, but it will be great if the police can work on more prevention programmes. Go shcool to school to talk about safety issues, like all schools have annual dentist coming to check on the kiddies. Children look up to people in uniform and it will be quite awesome for them. Afterall, our Police force are not exactly busy patrolling or doing much on crime prevention and it will do them good the extra exercise rather than just waiting for people to file in reports. Cant really tell you to take a break as I know many will be visiting yr site, but do take it easy though. This is also the reason why the C4NA website need to be up and fast so there’s a central website for everyone. Sorry, we are all camping here at the moment, take care my dear and have a good day.
Yes lah Mary Kate. Been a hectic week and will be a hectic year. Since we’ve been blogging about this issue of missing children, I am sure you share my frustration that Malaysians seem so oblivious to the dangers children face. I hate to bring politics into this because children do not vote and no child is spared from potential danger, no matter which poltical party their parents subscribe to. If neglecting to address this issue is clouded by politics as the opposition parties would like to make it out to be, I really don’t care. I wish I could offer more help but blogging is one way to reach out to people and to spread the message of how to deal with the problem. The newspapers have shown that they don’t care to write about the issue until a dead body turns up and half the time they are clueless anyway. The level of ignorance at the highest levels is what tires me out. That and not finding Nini, not because of my blog readers. I am honoured to have visitors to my blog. I hope we learn something and if the IGP gets his men and women in blue to read the articles, I’d be very glad. Let’s learn from others on the best way to handle this! We have no time to lose.
Helo Kak,
Hope 2day u r feeling ok. Have to hang on for Nini…
There r so many policemen and women in the force. I am sure more than half already have children of their on.
May be they lived in Police compound so can be consider ’safe’…but they should think of ‘what if’….what if their own children are taken..how would this policemen and women feel?
They should have come up with something or suggested something to their heads or supervisors….rather then waiting for IGP to make the suggestions.
I m glad this time round, the police are all out in trying to find Nini. Keep it up Man/Woman in blue.
Just glad tomorrow is a holiday for us in KL as it is Federal Territory day. Really exhausted from work and blogging too much I guess.
The sad part Nightwing is that it took them so long to realise that child abduction is serious business, after another little girl went missing without a trace. I cannot imagine how many more abduction attempts have gone unreported. It seems thieves who snatch handbags get more police attention than snatched children.
Cheers!
I posted this on both of the Nurin groups on Facebook:
Will pop by later. I have to run for my crime scene practical.
Good post! Am researching on attempted child abductions and what other countries do in prevention. Imagine, no real campaign to enforce this on the public psyche except for some odd TV adverts about knowing who your child is with and a little girl on a swing who then fades off the screen that mean nothing to viewers as it was too abstract. Wasted public funds really.
Keep spreading the message Munira. For what it’s worth, we need to prevent more Nurins and Ninis.
We’re totally gunning this.
My mind is quite lucid right now, probably because I was on too much espresso this morning.
I supposed it never really did occur to any of us the significance of failed and/or attempted abductions. Most of us are just relieved that our child was saved, so perhaps it never really occured to some of us to do a sensible thing such as reporting it to prevent it from happening to other people. Again, it’s all due to mentality (I’m getting really tired of this word, it’s like a broken record).
People generally dislike the trouble of going through the trouble of reporting the incident to the police. I think it goes both ways – police need to upgrade their efficiency level and PR standard, and the civillians need to understand the importance of this issue, even the most minute detail. Too often we take things for granted, that is the Malaysian way indeed if you’ll pardon my frankness, and we often veer towards regret and finger-pointing when tragedy falls. Not many are willing to study the core of the very problem, it’s so much easier to emit a knee-jerk reaction and solve it with short-term solutions. Again, I believe this requires some heavy-duty awareness campaign, unless someone else has better suggestions.
It also requires some study of our social strata. We forget that the Malaysian society is not like most countries in the world. Some have the luxury of being exposed to a wealth of information. Some don’t. Sure, most of us have access to the terestrial television and Internet, but how many of us are fully utilizing this access? At the end of the day, half of us are still ignorant to reality.
The question remains: Are the victims and their parents truly negligent? Are they really in the wrong? Or are they actually the victim of the system – the system that neglects to focus on enforcing awareness and education on its own nation?
Let’s face it. Nearly everyone is pretty much bias in the things they do. As long as the issue has not affected them, they have no concern in it. Furthermore, what’s aggravating is that we actually have a very forceful media that also neglects to spare a small party to do some heavy researching in serious issues, other than politics that is. So whose fault is it really?
Is it any wonder why the authorities take baby steps and are slow at finding solutions? It’s pretty much obvious how the system works – we lack proper and careful research, we lack the manpower that are truly interested to initiate and mobilise things.
Understanding is the first step to awareness.
Munira, I am soo sleepy that my typing iis turning into inchoherent mumbo jumbo now. Gotta get some sleep. Will chat later!
Munira, just woke up from a good sleep. Today is FT Day and hurray it is a public holiday!! To pick up where I left off, this paragrah you wrote:
To asnwer you question, try giving these articles a read. These are columnists in the UK, who have taken the time to do a bit of research and to touch on many different viewpoints with an intelligent written discourse. Some of those recent editorials in New Straits Times are just a jumble fo cold, meant to impress words with utterly no bearing on the issues at hand. Just a release of arty farty hot air in writing that stinks of constipation!
The column by Tim Black in “Spiked”, which in journo-speak means the story that gets thrown in the bin. Tim writes in “This is more than a case of ‘media Maddieness’:
Read more at:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4460/
Other comments on the media madness:
“I hang my head in shame at what my trade has made of the McCann story” by Max Hastings in Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2165699,00.html
“McCanns and the Media” in POLIS, a London School of Economics and London College of Communications joint initiative: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/polis/ and at http://www.charliebeckett.org/
“Madeleine: Information Or Entertainment?” in Sky News
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91248-1303317,00.html
The debate on making a movie about Maddie:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2249694,00.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/479681/how-soon-is-too-soon.thtml