SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Salt Lake City Police and School District teamed up to create 20,000 child ID Kits on Monday.
More than 2000 children go missing every day in the United States. And every year about 800,000 children disappear. Here in Utah we see our share of these missing children cases. In fact, when ABC 4 checked some of the missing and exploited web sites they showed 9 missing children in our state.
Obviously, preventing a child from disappearing or being taken is priority number one, but Salt Lake City Police say if one goes missing they want to have all the tools and information they need to try to find the child and find him or her quickly. That leads us to an announcement today. The SLC Police Department, the Salt Lake City School District and the school photography company Lifetouch have joined forces to create 20,000 child ID kits – one for every single elementary student here. While the idea is not new - the approach is. You see, the company that takes school pictures is providing those pictures to every elementary student for their kits.
Carley Price has a kindergartener at Washington Elementary. She has make kits for her daughter Sofia in the past, but loves the idea of the widespread approach. "Things happen, and there are people everywhere and you just never know, so any safety measure we take, I think, is great."
Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank says the kits truly increase the odds of finding a missing child. "That's what this is all about. Getting good information in a timely fashion and being prepared if anything comes our way."
The kits will include the photo and information like hair color, eye color, height, weight, birthday, unique physical characteristics, fingerprints and a DNA hair sample.
For more information, go to:
www.missingchildren.com
www.missingkids.com
