Slashdot Mirror
French Police End Missing Persons Searches, Suggest Using Facebook
itwbennett writes "According to an announcement on a French government website, police have stopped current searches for missing adults and will not accept new search requests. 'Such 'searches in the interests of the family' were conducted under an administrative procedure almost a century old, introduced to help families separated during the upheavals of World War I to find missing relatives,' according to the French Ministry of the Interior. In a letter to police chiefs announcing the changes, the Ministry advised them to instead 'direct people towards social networks on the Internet, which offer interesting possibilities.'"
The problem seems to be in the phrase 'missing person', which I guess is a translation thing. When people hear 'missing person', they think of someone who has suddenly disappeared - didn't come home from work, etc. Those cases they will still investigate, of course. What they are no longer doing is helping to find a person you have lost contact with (and I can't imagine their are many police forces in the world that would help with that under normal circumstances).
So, taxpaying adults are shit out of luck
Unlike children, adults have a right to disappear and start a new life somewhere else. Unless there is a reasonable suspicion that a law has been broken, the police should not be spending tax dollars to find people that don't want to be found.
His children example was used for shockvalue, but the point is still the same - for the most part, if someone dissappears without a trace, foul play is involved. They MIGHT have just decided to skip town, but most people don't. Lets say its not your 9 year old daughter. Lets say your 23 year old daughter never comes home from work. I'd like to hear something besides "Check Facebook" from the local authorities.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain