Losing someone is not an easy thing. Kidnapping in the United States of America has a very high rate. There are around 17,500 people who are victims of human trafficking. In various cases of kidnapping or missing persons, the perpetrators are sometimes people closest to the victim or even people who have problems with sexual deviation or even mental disorders.
11 Ways to Find a Missing Person for Free
Being one of the countries with a high rate of mental disorders, America is one of the countries with a very bad crime rate, and one of the most recent crimes is cyber kidnapping. Cyber kidnapping is one of the trends carried out by criminals in America. The method itself is to use the telephone or send messages to the victim, and convince them that the person closest to them has become a victim of kidnapping.
If something like this happens to you, don’t panic, and don’t act rashly. There are several ways you can use to find missing people for free. Effort and remaining optimistic are two important points to have, especially when you are experiencing this kind of problem. The following are some of the best ways to find missing people easily and for free.
1. Contact the Nearest Police Station
One of the best ways to find missing people quickly and easily is to contact the nearest police station. Police usually have the best methods for finding missing people. With the connections and networks they have, it will always be much easier for the police to find the whereabouts of missing people.
Of course, note that you must also provide detailed information, such as the victim’s characteristics, the last clothes worn, the last location the victim was seen, how long the victim has been missing, and also provide the last or most recent photo of the victim. Make sure to provide detailed information, to assist the police in carrying out their duties in finding missing people.
2. Contact the Nearest Hospital and Prison
After you have filled out a missing person’s report at the police station, it would be a good idea if you now try to check with the hospital. In hospitals, there are usually people who are victims of accidents and do not have identification.
You just need to ask the receptionist at the nearest hospital in your city about the incident that recently happened, make sure you check the time of the incident with the time the person you are looking for disappeared because that will make it easier for you to find the time of the incident. right.
Apart from hospitals, you can also contact the nearest prison, because it could be that the person you are looking for has a criminal record that you don’t know about. Visiting the nearest prison and providing information about missing relatives to officials, may be very helpful. So, make sure you have a recent photo of the person you are looking for.
3. Check the Last Location of Their Phone
The next way to find a missing person is to check the last location of their cell phone. If you have access to the e-mail connected to the device they are using, you can check the last whereabouts of the missing person very easily. However, this only applies when the person’s device you are looking for is turned on.
However, even so, you can still check their e-mail, when and where the device was last turned on. This sounds easy, but if you don’t have access to the e-mail used on the device then this process cannot be done.
However, if you are looking for missing people, such as children or relatives, you can contact the telephone service provider they use, because later the provider can process your report and help you in tracing it. If you have made a police report, usually the police will help you in carrying out this tracking.
4. Posting on Social Media
This is one of the best things you can do when you are looking for missing relatives or loved ones. Social media has strong people power, it can even shake governments. With high power, social media can be your platform to make finding missing people easier.
Make a post including the characteristics of the missing person, and provide contact information so that the person who finds them can immediately contact you. Apart from that, you also have to include recent photos of the missing person and try to take photos from different angles, so that people can recognize the missing person more easily. Also include the whereabouts or last location of the victim, if you already have that information.
Then, you can also ask for help from social media accounts that already have high followers, because by posting them, it will be easier for news of this loss to reach various places and people can read the news much more easily. This will also increase the search reach even wider.
5. Contact the Local News Agency
One step you can also take is to contact your local news agency. News agencies usually have e-mails that they use to receive various kinds of reports, and this includes missing people. Contacting news agencies would be something that could benefit both parties, you could have a wider search reach and news agencies get the news for them to run.
However, it would be a good idea if you consult with the police station first, because usually, some police stations do not allow you to make news reports on criminal cases that may not necessarily have occurred. However, usually for missing person cases, there are exceptions. This will also usually help the police find missing people much more easily.
Remember, when you contact a news agency, you must provide detailed information and provide everything you know so far about the person you are looking for. This will help news agencies convey news well, without misinformation.
6. Making Fliers
One of the usual methods when you are looking for a missing person is to make fliers. Fliers are usually created to contain information about the person you are looking for. Starting from photos, and detailed information to a person box that can be contacted if people find someone with the characteristics mentioned on the fliers.
Fliers themselves will be very effective if you put them in the last place the victim was seen and you can also put them in busy areas, so there is a big opportunity for other people to read the fliers you make. You need to pay attention, before you install missing person fliers, make sure that you use good quality photos and remember, that there is the potential for fraud that could also happen to you after you create and install these fliers, so prepare everything carefully.
7. Searching the Missing Persons Database
There are many databases providing information about missing people, which are accessible and you can search for free. In the US itself, there is a platform called The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, this system is operated directly by the American government and can be used by all levels of the population for free.
First, you can search for your missing family members or relatives and see whether their names are in the database or not. If it is not found, you are first required to create a free account, which you can use to add information about your family members or relatives who are currently missing.
After you add this information, the police can carry out a more thorough search and they can also add the information they have. This can certainly help make the search process much easier.
8. Create Free Ads in Newspapers
We know that nowadays fewer and fewer people read newspapers. However, in America itself, there are still several areas where reading newspapers is still an interesting hobby. If you still live in an area where people still like to read newspapers, you can contact the local newspaper and ask them to place a free advertisement on one of their newspaper pages.
9. Search Online
The internet is a vast place and can reach anyone much more easily if we compare it to other platforms. Apart from that, the internet also has information about all the people in the world. It may be a little difficult for you to narrow down your search to just one person. However, this will be a very helpful tool for you in searching for your missing relatives or people closest to you.
For easy steps, first you can search on Google, by entering the name of the person you are looking for, in the hope that there is news about them in a different city. Then you can do a more specific search using the keyword “Jane doe found” or “Jane doe found” along with the city where you think your relative was lost.
You can also search by entering physical characteristics to see if any results come up. When searching, you may find web pages such as online directories which may include names and telephone numbers. However, you need to know that usually, this information is no longer up to date. You should focus on news stories to get information about the whereabouts of your missing relatives or family.
10. Department of Motor Vehicles
If the missing person already has a driver’s license, then you may be able to find some information about the person you are looking for through the DMV. Usually, some DMVs will release information such as address and date of birth, but it will all depend on the laws of the relevant state because in some states the laws regarding privacy will be much stricter. So most likely you will not be allowed to obtain any information from that state.
11. Request Federal Records
If you have exhausted all available options and are still unable to find the missing person, you can try visiting the United States Department of Justice website to request federal records. The Freedom of Information Act will allow you to request and view military records, IRS filings, pilot’s licenses, as well as some information on post office records. However, once you request information like the one above from a federal agency, you will likely not receive a response from them for approximately six months.
Get to Know the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System also known as NamUs, is a resource in America that aims to help people who are looking for missing people. This is a center where you can look for missing people, unidentified people, and cases of people with no clear record of life that occur throughout America.
NamUs will help investigators in the long term to solve missing person cases and provide resolution to the families concerned. Based on information, there are at least around 100,000 people reported missing in the United States and up to 600,000 missing person reports every year.
Although many of them were eventually found in good condition and alive. However, others have not been discovered for quite a long time. At the same time, federal agents and local and state investigators are still working very hard to verify the names of thousands of people who died without identification throughout the country. From the 2018 census of medical examiners, there are approximately 11,000 unidentified human remains stored in medical examiner and coroner offices throughout the U.S.
Those are 11 free ways you can use to find missing people. America itself is a country with a fairly high rate of kidnappings and missing persons. Several cases of missing people were discovered after 20 to 30 years. Although usually in some cases, the victim survives and survives, some cases end differently. Therefore, keep trying your best and contact the nearest police station as soon as possible, when you find that someone close to you has disappeared.
