Are more than 1,000 children really missing in Cleveland?

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Headlines emerged this week claiming that the names of over a thousand children in the Cleveland area filled an alarmingly increasing list. The reports alleged that authorities in the city of more than 360,000 were grappling with a chilling epidemic of missing children that had surged throughout the year.

But the Cleveland Police Department has since warned about what the chief of police described as false information and the harm that it may cause in active missing persons investigations, especially those involving minors. The articles dubbed “misleading” by law enforcement cited data from the website of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and noted that 1,072 children had gone missing in 2023 alone in the “Cleveland-Akron area.”

A review of the website by The Independent showed over 890 cases as of Friday, but the number varies as information is updated throughout the day by several agencies. The reports in question failed to note that the cases covered missing children cases across Ohio and, more importantly, dated back to 1928 — when then-four-year-old Melvin Horst went missing in what remains the state’s oldest unsolved missing persons case.

Cleveland Police said in a statement that the department is currently investigating a total of 137 missing persons cases — 65 juveniles and 67 adults. Fourteen of those minors are habitual runaways and two others are in the process of being removed from that list, while 16 are considered endangered.

Police Chief Wayne Drummond said in June that although missing children cases have spiked 20 per cent this year in Cleveland, 1,020 of the 1,072 children reported missing in 2023 have been found safe and returned to their homes. The department issued a statement on Thursday decrying the misinformation surrounding the recent reports, and adding that the department does not investigate cases in the Akron area.

“Sharing false information is a direct threat to public safety and causes an immense amount of harm to the family members of the persons that we are tirelessly working to bring home,” the statement read. “We encourage our citizens to check their sources of information and stay informed with credible outlets.”

In an interview with News 5 Cleveland published on Monday, AG Yost admitted that the state faced several challenges when it came to tracking information about missing minors and updating it in a timely manner.

That report did not make mention of the supposed 1,000 missing children in Cleveland but did include that 35 children had gone missing in the Northern Ohio area in August, and 45 others vanished in September. The information on the AG’s website appears to corroborate those numbers.

The Independent has reached out to the Ohio AG’s office for comment.

The family of 15-year-old Keshaun Williams is among those coping with the uncertainty and left tracking his last known steps. The teen was last seen on 20 June following a house party but his whereabouts remain unknown despite several searches led by law enforcement and loved ones of Keshaun.

Mr Yost said a large number of the children reported missing on the state website are runaways or minors who have already been found but the information has not been updated. The AG added that the spike in cases, even if they are being solved in a timely manner, continues to be alarming.

“Now, what we know is when we look behind the numbers, some of those represent repeated runaways and local police have talked about that,” Mr Yost told News 5. “ I am fearful of all kinds of things that fall through the cracks that include missing children. I rely on the tenacity of a worried parent more than I do a harried bureaucrat whose job it is to put data into a computer.”

Mr Yost said that state officials along with experts at the University of Toledo are actively working to determine what local offices need more support to collect and identify evidence in abduction, sex assault or trafficking cases. He emphasised that amid staff shortages in law enforcement departments across the state, the public’s help is pivotal in solving missing children cases.

“We do our best to encourage compliance and improve assistance to remove barriers, but at the end of the day, we have to rely on our local partners that we don’t control,” Mr Yost said. “We rely on the people, the population because we have 11.7 million pairs of eyes out there that can keep an eye out.”

Meanwhile, the families of the children who are part of the missing list continue searching for answers and hoping they’ll get a chance to see their loved ones again.

“If it’s beyond that and something unthinkable has happened, I know that God is there,” Keshaun Williams’ grandmother Mary Williams Williams told News 5 Cleveland during a search last weekend. “God is with him and he’s protected and wherever he is, god is, I know that.”