DENVER — When someone is reported missing, you don't always see their photos blasted on air and posted media websites.
Why?
At 9NEWS, we often get emailed tips of missing people or teens that haven't been seen all day.
Tuesday morning, we received a tip with a link to a Facebook page, letting us know that a pregnant mom and her two kids were missing. That alone is not enough for us to publicize their disappearance.
Our morning assignment editor, Richard Cote, then reached out to Frederick Police to see if there was a search happening or if police had been notified at all. He immediately found out that Frederick Police were working on notifying the media about the missing woman and her kids.
Since this morning, media outlets and social media have been filled with photos of Shanann Watts and her 3- and 4-year-old girls.
"The self-initiated activity of searching for someone, I think that's fantastic, at least you're getting the word out. For us to have the ability to do that and put resources to it, we're going to need just a little bit higher level," said Arvada Police Det. Dave Snelling.
At the end of July, Arvada Police put out a notice about three missing kids. The 14-year-old, 10-year-old and 6-year-old siblings had not been seen since the night before. An "endangered missing advisory" notification from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation revealed that they had also taken "personal items and the family dog."
"The classification on the decision is made fairly quickly in some cases because if you have a missing child at a young age, we're going to throw a lot of resources at it - a lot of people," said Snelling. "No matter what the background is of that person, we're going to treat that case as if it were one of our own family members. If we suspect any suspicious foul play, we're going to look for that person, we're going to make an effort to bring them home."
The 10-year-old and 6-year-old were found at a relative's home. The 14-year-old is considered a runaway and the police search and the plea for public's help stopped.
"If it's a missing kid, we're still doing an active investigation," Snelling said. "If it's a runaway, they willingly left, that's a status offense in our eyes, not necessarily a criminal act."
CBI is responsible for tracking missing child reports for the state of Colorado. In 2017, CBI statistics showed that 39 children were reported missing daily, with the majority being runaways.
Last year, 9,122 kids were reported missing, and only 143 -- or one-and-a-half percent -- were considered suspicious. We want to be careful that when we ask for your attention about a missing person, it's because we're almost certain it's really needed.
