Changing the way we look at missing people
Missing person cases must be viewed as a wide-reaching social issue in order for the problem to improve, according to those who work on the front lines.
Insp. Roberta McKale, who supervises RCMP missing person investigations in northern Saskatchewan, said many of the biggest advances in missing person investigations have resulted from the public beginning to treat the problem as an issue affecting society as a whole. The wide-reaching public response when a person is reported missing is extremely helpful, she said, and simply did not exist as recently as 10 years ago. The Amber Alert system and the creation of victim services units also resulted from the shift in public perception, she said, and missing person cases are now widely shared across social media.
“We do have to change the way we look at our missing people,” she said. “Everyone is affected.”
McKale said disappearances affect more than just the missing individual and their immediate family. Everyone is touched, she said, from the local communities to the police officers who investigate the cases. It would be almost impossible to find a community in the North that has not experienced the pain of a missing person, she said.