Associated Press
CLEVELAND -- The discovery of 11 victims of an alleged serial killer, most of them poor, drug-addicted black women, has prompted calls for Cleveland police to respond faster and devote more resources to missing-persons cases.
Police, however, say they already have a comprehensive system for finding the lost and can't be held accountable for people they don't know are missing. Confounding the current tragedy, only three of the victims had been reported missing.
The case has raised anew the issues of how and how fast police should react when adults are reported missing -- especially departments stretched thin by slashed budgets and stymied by the likelihood that many people go missing voluntarily and have not met foul play.
Encouraged by the U.S. Justice Department in 2005, some states have passed stronger laws requiring police to be more aggressive in searching for missing adults. Just Thursday, authorities in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, home to Cleveland, said they are considering creating a countywide missing-persons unit, in response to the serial killer case.
Authorities say Anthony Sowell lured women into his house in a tough Cleveland neighborhood with the promise of getting high, then strangled them and left their bodies inside or buried in the backyard.
Prosecutors have indicated they may seek the death penalty against Sowell, who remains in jail on five preliminary charges of aggravated murder.
Advocates in Cleveland say a missing-person's bureau might encourage people to come forward when someone disappears. They say some disappearances may go unreported out of a community perception that police wouldn't take seriously the disappearance of a black woman, especially a person struggling with poverty and drugs.
"Maybe black women are not the most important thing in this community to them," said Donnie Pastard of the group Black on Black Crime. "Something's wrong with the police attitude."
Cleveland police dispute such allegations and point to their detailed missing person's policy, updated in August, and say they hope to expand it to a countywide system.
