from WND:
Don’t know if ‘they’re being trafficked or whether they’re involved in gang activity or drugs’
An area police chief said that the number of 12- to 17-year-old children who went missing in the vicinity of Cleveland last month is “troubling.”
“For some reason, in 2023, we’ve seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because 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,” Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy told Fox News.
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“It’s a silent crime that happens right under our noses,” he said. “The problem is where are they? Where do they go? They can be in a drug house or farmed to prostitution or caught up in drug trafficking or gangs.”
Majoy is also the board president of Cleveland Missing, a nonprofit “offering direct support for families and friends searching for their missing loved ones,” according to its website.
“There’s always peaks and valleys with missing persons, but this year it seems like an extraordinary year,” Majoy, a 33-year police veteran, told Fox.
Fox reported that 27 area residents under the age of 18 went missing between May 2 and May 16.
Cleveland Police records show another 25 youths on its missing persons roster who disappeared between May 17 and May 31.
Fox said most of the missing children were more likely to be runaways than victims of kidnapping, but that didn’t necessarily make them any safer.
Vulnerable teens may find themselves susceptible to predators and be too naive to recognize their danger.
They may also join gangs, become involved in prostitution to get by or become dependent on drugs.
Majoy said social media can be law enforcement’s “greatest asset” when it comes to locating missing children. Unfortunately, that tool is less useful when photographs of the juvenile aren’t available, which is often the case.
Scrolling through Cleveland Police Missing Persons index, it’s easy to note that fewer than half of the persons under 18 listed there had pictures on record.
