Content/trigger warning: discussion of murder, kidnapping, and abuse
This ties into my post about the Gabby Petito case, so if you haven't read that one, you should. I mentioned the case of Jelani Day who is still missing and was last seen in Bloomington, Illinois. Again, if you have any information about him, please contact Crime Stoppers or the Bloomington Police Department. I don't want to rehash what I've already talked about, but this is an important topic that needs to be addressed
Disparities in Reporting of Missing People
Did you know police can choose to not take a missing person report? They can refuse to take it. If they do take the report, if they deem it unnecessary, they can drag their feet about investigating it. For example, if someone reports a transient person missing, police are much less likely to take the report seriously because they think that person isn't actually missing. This is how Robert Pickton was able to kill as many women as he did. Because they were sex workers, they were viewed as transient, and therefore, not actually missing.
For anyone that doesn't know who Robert Pickton is, let me enlighten you. He was a serial killer active in British Columbia, Canada. He targeted sex workers in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, a very poor area of the city. His confirmed victims were Sereena Abotsway, Mona Lee Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda ann Wolfe, Marnie Lee Frey, and Georgina Faith Papin. Please keep in mind, there were only the confirmed victims. Pickton says he killed nearly 50 women. These are just the women that could be concreted proven that he took their lives. I believe, and this belief is widely held by many, that he was able to kill that many women because they were a) sex workers and b) poor. I would argue that race/ethnicity played a role, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything about race/ethnicity of the victims. Sadly, a lot of cases in which sex workers go missing are largely underinvestigated because there is little pressure on the police by the public because a lot of people dehumanize sex workers. They're viewed as lesser than just because of their profession.
Another major issue is the lack of federal reporting for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirited people (MMIWG2S, more commonly MMIW). The National Crime Information Center found that there were 5,712 reports of MMIWG2S, but the Department of Justice only logged 116 cases (https://www.nativehope.org/en-us/understanding-the-issue-of-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women). This is a huge problem because how can we expect local police to take the cases seriously when the government won't even properly report them?
One estimate believes that Native/Indigenous women face homicide rates 10 times that of the national average (https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw), but I believe the number might be higher than that. If you look at the number of cases actually reported, imagine how many go unreported. Many of the women Pickton killed were not reported missing because police wouldn't take the report because they didn't think these women were actually missing.
Disparities of Investigation by Law Enforcement
Because of the differentials in actual reporting of missing people, this affects the investigation of those cases.
One of the biggest factors that influence media coverage of missing person cases is missing white woman syndrome. This refers to the disproportionate media coverage whenever a young, upper-middle-class, white woman or girl compared to missing person cases involving women of color, poor women, and missing men and boys. One of the things that help investigators solve cases is information from the public. If the public doesn't know someone is missing, how could they know they might have information about it? If the media doesn't cover it, there is a high chance the public doesn't even know the case is ongoing unless they know that person. For example, I grew up in a really small town where word spreads quickly. If someone went missing, everyone knew. However, I noticed that when I moved to San Antonio, people barely talk to their neighbors. If I didn't see something on social media about a missing person, I wouldn't know they were missing even if they lived next door to me. Unless someone close to me was the missing person, I probably would have no idea. That's the issue with missing white woman syndrome. If the public does not know someone is missing, they would not know if they had information that could help solve the case. Lack of information is one of the main reasons cases go cold. The police run out of leads, so they have nowhere to go, nothing to investigate.
One estimate believes that nearly 40% of missing person cases are people of color (https://www.wbaltv.com/article/examining-racial-disparities-in-the-search-for-missing-people-in-united-states/37681909#). One study found that cases of missing people of color were less rigorously investigated by law enforcement (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207742), but cases involving Black perpetrators received harsher penalties. In essence, if someone back happens to them, police take it less seriously than when a Black person does something bad. That does not sit right with me, and that isn't how our "justice" system should work. In fact, sexual assault cases where the victim is a woman of color have lower clearance rates than when the victim is a white woman. This contributes to a lack of cooperation with police, making people less likely to report victimhood in the future. I can't blame them. If that were me, I would probably not want to cooperate with the police after that either. The same study found that missing Black children were twice as likely to remain missing than non-Black children. This needs to change. This is why I want to talk about this. If people don't know it's an issue, how can they speak out about it?
Jelani Day went missing August 24, 2021, and Daniel Robinson went missing June 23rd, and I only recently became aware of their cases because Black women on social media were posting about it. Not a drop of it was in the news. However, every day I see new updates about Gabby Petito. I want her family to get justice, but Jelani and Daniel are still missing and no one is talking about it. Their families deserve justice too.
Comentarii