The cause remains

There are many factors affecting a missing person investigation, which on first inspection does not appear to be a complex area of law enforcement. Likewise with most aspects of policing there is a relationship borne out of the transaction as these incidents suffer from competing emotive influences, expressed both rationally and irrationally.

My intention here is to expand insight by illustrating how police intelligence diversifies its approach through an abstract of societal awareness because there are multiple victims embroiled in a missing person inquiry, from central focus held on the person who has absconded (abducted), to those remaining in abject despair, anxiety or ignorance, to those persons with a guilty conscience, if not a criminal responsibility.

The College of Policing’s definition is clear: “Anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established will be considered as missing until located, and their wellbeing or otherwise confirmed.”

There is a central edict in law enforcement; priority of life over criminal offence. The Attestation declares the officer’s solemn oath to the King is to uphold each citizens human rights and prevent crimes against people and property.

Missing person investigations are treated as most serious in nature, referral to specialised departments within forces, including the allocation of family liaison officers, emphasises the gravity of the matter and the level of attention focused.

Similarly, third party ambivalence has been exorcised to a degree, while missing persons inquiries remain a retrospective action by their very nature, both the assignee and their authority’s investigative involvement have been revitalised by an acceptance of criminality.

Missing persons, however, has been a mute subject in the greater scheme of things over the years, no less illustrated by a perceived ambiguity over inquiry ownership, though this is not evidenced in the following narrative which provides a pragmatic summation.

The management of missing persons and their subsequent investigations have advanced over recent years; the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) UK Missing Persons Unit illustrates how seriously the matter is taken at the highest levels for it provides individual forces with centralised assistance and consultation services. The implementation of coordinated national support across a sphere where annually more than a third of a million calls are received by police is a testament to the magnitude of the issue (2022/23 UK figures).

Missing person inquiries are tangible, personal and intimate; in the UK they are the essence of ‘policing by consent’. Consequently, confidence in police officers, their forces and the system is critical to missing person inquiries in forging a conducive, professional, relationship borne out of responsibility.

Accordingly, Parliament published a report in October 2024: Public trust and confidence in the police. It observed: “In 2024, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services found that police forces were investing more resources into neighbourhood and community policing, which it saw as an opportunity to restore public confidence, and fundamental to police-public relations and crime prevention.”

The College of Policing in mid-January this year hosted an international symposium, ‘Confidence in policing – Serving the public in the age of disruption’. Here again an emphasis was on the importance of local policing. Rachel Tuffin OBE, director at the college, said: “We know that visible neighbourhood policing, for instance, is one of the vital foundations of maintaining trust.”

The UK Missing Persons Unit collates data provided by policing under a 2009 Code of Practice.

The NCA’s 2022/23 figures clearly illustrate the demand missing persons has on public bodies as it records the number of related UK missing calls at 330,500 for the year.

Examination provides clear evidence a context must be established when discussing statutory responsibilities as controversial it maybe, all issues are relevant, none can be diminished for in the eyes of the public, duty of care is paramount. It will ultimately reinforce, or it will diminish confidence in policing. Bear in mind, records attest 34 missing children as fatal outcomes and more than 1,000 adults in the latest year’s figures.

This concern is substantiated by a brief analysis of the data; annual missing person incidents are recorded at 319,745 and that for involved individuals as 156,454 persons. Reality is borne out of the fact that the record is constituted by 86,189 adults and 69,927 children.

Furthermore, national incident figures accurately detail a mental health classification of 18,312 children and 30,717 adults, and alarmingly, 13,700 child victims of sexual exploitation out of a figure of child incidents where harm was considered at 113,295.

The stark realism of policing the complexity of missing persons is further emphasised by the suffering experienced by those individuals while missing. Those persons who suffered injury total 26,322; more abhorrent are the figures for those defined under victim sub-categorisations: self-harm 2,753, physical injury 2,123, with more than 20,000 suffering unspecified harm and, most alarmingly, 104 adults were victims of sexual offences with 350 children experiencing the same fate.

Defended by ‘Publish and be Damned’, attributed to the 1st Duke of Wellington, I am repetitious in my assertion – an outspoken view that community safety must be shadowed by implementation of Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology (CILPM) in operational processes that dare I say are not piecemeal public relations initiatives.

A community bobby may know those on their ‘patch’ by gender, sexuality, ethnicity, colour, political persuasion, class, age; be it cultural, religious, socio-economic or race within their locality.

There are further questions demanding considered actions; the riots of summer 2024, organised criminal sexual exploitation gangs, international people smuggling operations and knife crime, are prime examples of the unprecedented pace of change that is upon us, consequently pragmatic solutions are needed to be introduced to support the much-published apolitical rhetoric.

Neighbourhood policing requires just such a fresh impetuous. There is a general, if not a detailed need for a community boost as discussion appears to be counter-productive for frontline officers and the general public alike as they become more and more disillusioned by all the talk.

The Neighbourhood Policing Pathway Programme’s pilot scheme was due to report in March, where I contributed to the debate is by suggesting adoption of the principle of a community intelligence methodology within a strategy designed to integrate the needs of both urban and rural environments.

CILPM is about a balanced understanding of an inner-city estate and that of a market hamlet. It is of both the town centre square and village life, of countryside livelihoods versus hectic city hedonism as all foster neighbourhood or community ambitions.

It may appear on first inspection as an irrelevance to missing persons, however, there is a crux in the issue; the crossover, duplication, as annual disappearance incident reports of more than a third of a million people will ultimately have multiple causes.

Omnipotent neighbourhood policing is integration, it is the embodiment of community intelligence. CILPM is the practical application of the methodology, the layers of detail, the insight and the theory. It is observation of neighbourhood cohesion; it is understanding the elements of community within a collaborative police intelligence picture.

The significance of truth, trust and understanding in a relationship is never more relevant than between the public and police in a missing person matter. Inclusion in neighbourhood strategies of intelligence-led policing will enhance the focused resourcefulness for proactive advocates of evidence-based policing. Ownership, commitment, responsibility, and assimilation of a shared duty are the elements that will reinforce the bond of trust.

Missing person incidents, reports, inquiries or investigations illustrate the functionality of CILPM. Intelligence is corroborated information; community intelligence is vigilance of patrol, relevance of communication, integration within communities and knowledge of neighbourhoods equating to acceptance.

Cognisance of the new, unknown, unattributed, indistinguishable, undefined, or irrelevant – this is community safety, this is intelligence-led policing, a structured framework for its capture, recording, process and analysis.

History teaches us the innocuous, routine, the run-of-the-mill within our neighbourhoods are not to be trivialised; Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer tortured and killed children. In The Gates of Janus, he wrote, “a friendly lady approached him and asked if he wanted a lift”; Saturday November 23, 1963 was the last time 12-year-old John Kilbride was seen alive – he was kidnapped, then murdered by Brady and Myra Hindley, his remains were exhumed off Saddleworth Moor two years later. Sixty years on we continue a mission to get policing into the hearts of our communities.

Heightened involvement of officers in communities will hold insight, foster relations and furthermore, CILPM will substantiate relationships whilst supporting antagonists on both sides as often there is a perception of opposition even though the desired outcome is the same – that of the return of the missing person.

Here is the dichotomy of CILPM, it is citizen interactions evaluated against local events. It is awareness versus the mundane, a process that restores a community’s engagement with its neighbourhood officer; a beacon, their saviour in an hour of need, a safe and reliable confidant, a source of knowledge, a support, a listening Ear.

To this very day, autonomous entities, the likes of Axel Rudakubana from Southport, or the Rotherham grooming gangs, invade our lives. The issue of youths in possession of knives roaming at will within our communities is to CILPM a communication submission: from early-door entries on individuals to generalised local observations on grooming gangs, it is legitimate community safety information. Barnaby Jameson KC, quoted on the BBC: “This is not a new threat.

“In the last decade we have seen a plethora of terrorist cases involving young males who have become self-radicalised in isolation online.”

Contemplate these facts. Professor Alexis Jay, author of the ‘Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Assault’, informed the Home Affairs Select Committee on January 21 that the average length of duration of sexual abuse a victim experiences is four years and the average time before disclosure 26 years. How many opportunities would that timeframe offer for a first chat with the local neighbourhood bobby?

Missing persons inquiries are not only a search for an individual, they are examinations of an unknown world, they can be deeply emotional investigations but are never routine cat-n-mouse incidents.

The disappearance of more than 150,000 people in one year is no aberration, this is over five per cent of a population of 59,641,829 people in England and Wales, therefore it is more than an abnormality, hence this article expanding the debate. It is not about processes, or even police powers, it is about keeping people safe. It is an all-inclusive approach emphasising where neighbourhood policing can provide critical assistance.

Take a moment to consider all those involved: Missing is missing, irrespective. An epitaph, a thought for those left behind as it is a grieving loss though hopefully transient.

In 1985 Brian Keenan went to Beirut, Lebanon to teach. On the morning of April 11, 1986, he was kidnapped by Shi’ite fundamentalist militia and held in the suburbs of the city for four-and-a-half years, beaten, traumatised, and abused, hopelessly describes the barbarity of his captivity.

He wrote as if talking to those victims left suffering a missing person loss, quoting John Milton:   “Finally to my family, who understood my need for space and time… “They also serve who only stand and wait”, was never more true’. (Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling, 1992. Hutchinson).

Steve Dodd is a retired South Wales Police detective. He is a subject matter expert on police intelligence having authored the force’s Community Intelligence Force Policy. An adviser on the College of Policing’s Intelligence Professionalisation Programme, he was deployed on the Government’s working group on the Western Balkans Serious Organised Crime strategy. An international liaison officer, he is an international airline certified extradition officer, plus National Financial Investigator qualified. He is currently writing his ‘Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology’ including the octahedron pyramid, a transtheoretical approach, and an inverted strategy thesis.