CLEVELAND — The City of Cleveland held a virtual news conference to “address misleading information that recently appeared in national news stories” about missing children and human trafficking; the city's top cop said the vast majority of missing juveniles are runaways, and his department has not seen any indications of widespread human trafficking in Cleveland.
On Tuesday, Cleveland faith leaders put Northeast Ohio on notice that the recent increase in children reported as missing is at the top of mind for them and their respective congregations.
Cleveland Police Chief Wayne Drummond said during a virtual news conference Wednesday that it's important to put context to the number of missing children the city has seen this year.
Drummond said there have been 1,072 missing juveniles reported year-to-date. Of those, the number returned is 1,020.
"So we have obviously outstanding missing juveniles," Drummond said. "The vast majority of those missing juveniles...are actually runaways."
Drummond said he didn't want to minimize the missing juveniles, just add context. Each missing person case is being investigated and is something the department takes seriously.
Each police district has multiple detectives that work missing person cases, and every case that comes across their desks is investigated thoroughly, Drummond said. If a case is suspicious and it looks like a serious kidnapping, the city also brings in the FBI to assist in those cases.
"So we have resources available that we bring to bear in these particular cases," Drummond said.
Missing Persons Liaison Detective Kevin Callahan reiterated the chief's comments about the detectives who are available to work on each missing person case. Additionally, each district has a designated zone car that is used to follow up on any missing person reports, he said.
According to Callahan, there is no time limit to file a missing person report. You don't have to wait 24 or 48 hours; they can be missing for just a short time for police to investigate.
"We will never turn down a missing person report," he said. "We do follow up on all missing person reports regardless of how they're titled. We treat them all the same — whether it's an adult or elderly or juvenile, they all get followed up on."
In cases where more manpower is needed, Callahan said the FBI is brought in, as well as the human trafficking task force.
Northeast Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force Chief Investigator Larry Henderhan said the human trafficking task force investigates cases across multiple counties in Northeast Ohio and stressed the agency has not seen a rise in human trafficking incidents with missing juveniles in the area.
"We work hand in hand with Cleveland PD in the event that a missing juvenile comes on the radar that we can assist in recovering. We do go out and try to locate those juveniles, but as of currently, we have not seen a rise in that other than what appears, as, you know, recidivism with some of the juveniles," Henderhan said. "It's becoming summer months, a lot of kids getting antsy. The lack of supervision at home and they want to be out with their friends and, you know, go out into the streets and enjoy themselves in the summer. That's what we're seeing."
However, Henderhan affirmed that if authorities have any indications of human trafficking, they act on it immediately.
"It doesn't appear that there's that, you know, there's this mass amounts of children that are being taken and exploited for human trafficking," he said.
You can watch Wednesday's complete news conference with Drummond, Callahan and Henderhan in the player below:
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