By Glenroy Sinclair,
Staff Reporter
THE POLICE are to set up a Missing Persons Unit to better investigate reports of people who have gone missing over extended periods.
This is being done against the background of hundreds of such reports since 1995 and a request to United States authorities by Police Commissioner Francis Forbes during a recent visit to Washington, D.C., for assistance to train members of the Jamaica Constabulary.
The police say that frequently people reported missing turn up alive later without their relatives who made the initial report, informing the police. Such people remain in the police statistics as a missing.
Commissioner Forbes noted that while most of the persons reported missing were eventually found, the true figure was not known. Some people, he said, genuinely want "to be missing".
Police records show that between 1995 and 1999 there has been a significant increase in the number of persons reported missing. The figure grew from 805 in 1995 to 834 the following year; it increased to 850 in 1997 and grew to 938 in 1998, then to 1,140 in 1999. Last year it stood at 1,104.
Up to January 20 this year, the police had received 48 missing person cases.
Police sources say that while people assume that someone is dead once the person has been reported missing for more than 48 hours, in most cases this was not so. For example, in October, Carlene Gifford reported to the police that her 14-year-old daughter, Tamara Fraser, was missing.
"She went back home in December, but never said where she had been. The police interrogated her and she was supposed to report twice per week at the Hunt's Bay police station. On Christmas Day she disappeared again and since then we have not heard anything about her," Miss Gifford said.
Shelly-Ann Ellis, 14, left her Elmwood Terrace home in St. Andrew last Saturday for the Tom Redcam Library, Cross Roads, Kingston, but has not returned home since.
There is the case of taxi driver, Clifton Dixon, 56, of Campden Road, Kingston who has been missing since April 18, 1997. Several months later his metalic grey Nissan Sunny car was found. Investigations by the police revealed that in the period since he went missing and the car was found, the vehicle had been sold four times.
"The police said they were able trace three of the persons who bought the car, but cannot locate the other person," said Hilary Dixon, the missing man's wife.
"I still remember the day he disappeared. It was Friday and it began raining in the afternoon. I didn't bother to wait on him to carry me home, because earlier in the day he had told me that he had a passenger to take somewhere. He didn't say anything more," said Mrs. Dixon who still hopes to see her husband alive again.
Miss Gloria Pryce reports that her 69-year-old brother, Kenneth Francis, went missing a year ago.
"I don't know what has happened to him. We have never heard or seen him again. He married three times without divorcing his first wife. I don't know if that has something to with his disappearance," Miss Pryce said.
Carol Small told The Gleaner that her mother, Linnette Wilson, 70, walked out of their home eight months ago. "We have been searching the 14 parishes and can't locate her," Miss Small said.
Doreth Sewell said she is willing to a pay hefty sum in reward to anybody who can find her stepfather, Jasper "Renford" Pinnock who has been missing since December 13, 2000.
The ailing and elderly, Mr. Pinnock wandered off and was last seen on Marescaux Road, central Kingston.
"I think he is one of the best stepfathers in the world and I will pay anything just to even get his body," Miss Sewell said.
Four years ago, a returning resident, Robert Graham, otherwise known as "Scotty", and his sister-in-law, Icylyn Graham, went missing. Reports are that they left Woodpecker Avenue, Kingston, on November 10, 1997 to go to a hardware store on Marcus Garvey Drive to sell a van which Mr. Graham had advertised.
It is understood that a prospective buyer saw the advertisement and invited him to Marcus Garvey Drive to show the van to the interested parties. Both Mr. Graham and his sister-in-law have been missing since then.
Their van was later found abandoned and wrecked, with its interior partly burnt in a Caymanas canefield, St. Catherine. Family members have offered a $100,000 reward to persons with information leading to the Grahams' whereabouts.
Up to yesterday, checks with close friends of the family indicated they have not had any news of them.
The police believed that some missing persons, especially teenagers, are lured by narcotics traffickers who send them overseas with drugs. Some of them are caught and are serving prison terms in foreign jails and their families do not know about it.
Some may have been killed and their bodies either burnt or dumped in sink-holes throughout the island or buried in remote areas. The police say that on occasions, the bodies of unknown persons have been found in the hills of Plantation Heights and Ferry, St. Catherine.
