Funds sought for missing persons database

[Are_grits_groceries]

MINNEAPOLIS - A new online database promises to crack some of the nation's 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, http://www.namus.gov, offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren't aware of it, and others aren't convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.

Link: http://www.namus.gov/

<snip>
Before NamUs, families and investigators had to go through the slow process of checking with medical examiner's offices one by one. As the Smolinski family searched for clues to Billy's fate, they met a maze of federal, state and nonprofit missing person databases that weren't completely public and didn't share information well with each other.

<snip>
Smolinski said she came to see how police were often overwhelmed, but to her NamUs is a "no-brainer."

"If they find remains I'm hopeful they'll identify him through NamUs," Smolinski said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35751556/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

I don't know how much it would take to fund this, but it would be small compared to other programs I imagine. Police do have their hands full, but hopefully funding would allow them to expand the database.

I believe not knowing about someone who has disappeared has to be hell on earth. The Doe Network also works on this.
http://www.doenetwork.org/
Our Mission

The Doe Network is a volunteer organization devoted to assisting Law Enforcement in solving cold cases concerning Unexplained Disappearances and Unidentified Victims from North America, Australia and Europe. It is our mission to give the nameless back their names and return the missing to their families. We hope to accomplish this mission in three ways; by giving the cases exposure on our website, by having our volunteers search for clues on these cases as well as making possible matches between missing and unidentified persons and lastly through attempting to get media exposure for these cases that need and deserve it.

We cooperate with several Missing Person, Law Enforcement agencies and Medical Examiners and strive to work with more in the future.

Case Criteria

All disappearance cases are for longterm cold cases of persons who went missing since 1999 or before. The Unidentified Victims cases are prior to 2006. The Doe Network does include cases of unidentified victims in our main database, that were located after this time period, but death was believed to have occurred at least in 2006. For deaths occurring in 2007 and 2008, see our Hot Case Criteria

Many of the cases we feature have little evidence available. The Doe Network includes these cases regardless of the minimal clues at our disposal. For full details of our case criteria Click Here.