Tax Dollars Wasted as Ohio Obstructs Missing Persons Cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operating under a state Attorney General opinion from 1998, Ohio has refused to allow dental records for missing persons to be turned over and catalogued in the National Institute of Justice database. This comes at the expense of taxpayers, who pay for these services whether they are used by Ohio agencies, or not.

[pullquote]”I’d hate to think that my dental records were so personal that they prevented my own identification.” – J. Todd Matthews[/pullquote]

This ruling is significant because it determines that coroners are not considered law enforcement officers–despite having arresting authority in Ohio–and they are therefore not permitted to submit or share dental records with NamUs. In Ohio, personal private information, such as dental records, is also not legally allowed to be published on a database.

The National Missing or Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, is a multi-faceted database used to document and search for missing or unidentified persons in the United States and despite operating as an arm of the Department of Justice, some states reserve the right to refuse to submit such documents to NamUs.

According to Todd Matthews, Director of Case Management and Communications for NamUs, this is withholding a major piece of the puzzle for proper identification of missing or unidentified persons cases, and he’s not sure why Ohio isn’t changing its law.

Matthews is adamant about NamUs simply being a tool for state and local agencies to utilize. He works closely with many states who require NamUs reporting and has an excellent success rate, bringing closure to victim’s families. The problem, he says, occurs when agencies refuse to reciprocate case information or do not reach out to NamUs for services they offer to aide in identifying or location missing persons.

“DNA is free. Everything is free. Even if your state doesn’t use it, you pay for it. You pay for it with your taxes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Ohio alone, there are currently over 979 reported missing persons cases, according to the Attorney General’s Office Clearinghouse. Roughly 779 of these are missing children. Veronica Scherbauer, Programs and Development Specialist for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office described the unclear collaboration between their office and other investigatory agencies.

According to the NamUs website, “as NIJ investigated the challenges of missing persons and unidentified decedent cases, another problem was more fully revealed: the reporting of missing persons cases. Cases of missing persons 18 years old and younger must be reported, but reporting adult missing persons cases is voluntary. Only a handful of States have laws that require law enforcement agencies to prepare missing person reports on adults. Overall, there is a low rate of reporting these cases through NCIC. One of the major goals of NamUs is to meet this challenge. For example, NamUs will work with State clearinghouses and the public to ensure that data is included in NamUs and other national-level databases.”

“Ohio is the only state out of the other 49 I interact with that has this policy. They are by far the most difficult and I can’t understand why. I’m more benefited by saying we work together.” – J. Todd Matthews

Matthews hopes that widespread public awareness in Ohio is the key to enacting change and allowing NamUs full access to the records they need, so that families across the state can be put at ease.