Campaign for the Missing 2006

Hello,

I have started a campaign to recruit interested persons to take steps to enact legislation in the state in which they live. This effort is called Campaign for the Missing 2006. As we are close to this cause personally, I want to ask you to consider being a part of this drive.

What is Campaign for the Missing 2006?

Campaign for the Missing 2006 is a grassroots effort to pass legislation in each state that will serve to improve the law enforcement community's ability to locate and ensure a safe return of missing persons. It will address the national problems of missing persons and the identification of human remains and provide the framework for improving law enforcement's response. It will also improve the collection of critical information about missing persons, prioritize high-risk missing persons cases, and ensure prompt dissemination of critical information to other law enforcement agencies and the public that can improve the likelihood of a safe return.

The Department of Justice, working with Federal, State, and local law enforcement; coroners and medical examiners; victim advocates; forensic scientists; key policymakers; and family members who have lived through this tragic experience, developed the model to be presented in each state’s legislature.

What do I need to do?

The campaign seeks persons in each state who are willing to write to their own district’s elected official to ask for sponsorship.

These are some of the initial steps involved:

1) If you are interested in helping make a difference in the lives of thousands of missing persons and their families, send an email to campaign2006@projectjason.org Give us your name and the state in which you live.
2) Look up the name and contact information for your state senator. This is the official who works with state law rather than federal. You may look up your representative here http://www.ncsl.org/public/leglinks.cfm
3) Send either via email or US mail the prepared letter you will find included on the blog (in the link below) to that representative. You are asking them to sponsor this bill and to present it to the senate.
4) If you get a negative response, write to other senators until sponsorship is obtained. (My hope is that there will be more than one person in each state working on this, so that no one person is working on it.)

Please read the following for additional information: http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2005/12/121305-campaign-for-missing-2006.html

This link also provides detailed information about the model legislation.

Please consider joining us in this effort. Thank you.

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
Kelly.jolkowski@projectjason.org
http://www.projectjason.org
Read our Voice for the Missing Blog
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

Still seeking serious volunteers..........

I guess this is the correct thread to ensure my posts are in the correct forum, instead of the Information and Support I was advised to post my comments on the Missing/Located Forum Discussion.

Thanks Kelly, I look forward to posting my thoughts here..........

Best regards.........and again I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours..........

Kelly, I will look at the links you provide and take action this coming week. My apologies for neglecting this thread until now.

Thanks, Gardenmom. We are now up to 32 states and 63 volunteers. I believe you are the 1st WS member to step up.

Kelly,
I live in GA and will gladly volunteer. I'll will email my name and state to you in a little bit and get started asap.

Thank you! Email coming back to you!

Kelly said:

Thanks, Gardenmom. We are now up to 32 states and 63 volunteers. I believe you are the 1st WS member to step up.

Click to expand...

nope Kelly,I joined the campaign from the link from WS but I emailed you from my home email.Tina Howard from Georgia

Again Kelly I have to ask:

If a State senator even seriously takes up your causes, before anything is done, he will have to answer others question about the "cost effectiveness" of this "new law".

Is going to be 50 million a state, 10 million, a 100 million. No elected official in his right mind is going to propose anything without being able to answer the question of: Sir, we sympathize with the plight of "missing adults", but how much is this going to cost the taxpayers and the consituents of this state.

Well I don't know.....just pass the law, we will figure that out later.

Uh, I don't think so as I am an elected official, my main concern is not raising taxes of my consituents and how this is going to effect other areas of tax revenue in this state.

Well again, I don't know how much this is going to cost. Just pass the new law.

What do you think the chances of the law being passed with no dollar figure set forth.

The chances of that would be none.

The proposed "law" sounds very expensive to me with all of the added work that is being put forth at a state level.

Epecially if that state is not a well off one.

Will you "propose" that money be taken out of health care, education, or other social services that benefits all of the "consituents" of the state.

Or are you going to ask this senator to be the one that "proposes" that there will be a significant increase in taxes to pay for it. That is the akin to the kiss of political death.

People will look at the bottom line, as they always do and the Senator will not want to be seen as irresponsible to others in the state for proposing a law that has no dollar sign to it.

Heck in my city, people want tons of stuff for their neighbour and areas, but they don't want to pay for it, nor do they want their taxes to increase.

A street light cost 150K, and everyone wants a crosswalk replaced with a streetlight. But that is not going to happen.

Senators are responsible to the people who elected them, not people who are proposing a law.

So the best thing for you to do, is to sit down with someone to figure out how much this is going to cost and the clear plan of how it will be implemented. Then you will have to figure out if the people who have to implement this "law" are are directly effected by it will also co-operate.

So when asked you can actually answer this query. Because that will be the most important concern to any Senator, as they will be asked this question by others before anything is done.

Now if they do a cost anaysis of this and the state feels that they can't afford it, don't want to afford it, do not see this as a "valuable" law in terms of taxpayers money, taxes will increase each year to pay for this law which only effects some people, maybe at some time, then there is no way anyone will seriously "entertain" even looking at this law.

Oh by the way: I came across a website in which a women is using her talent and skills to I.D. people's remains. She does not use DNA because it is way too expensive. She sketches the "drawing" of what she thinks a dead person looks like.

A man was missing from Florida. He left voluntarly, and ended up in a small town in Kentucky. He purposely did not want to be found. Went to great measure not to be found, changed his name, his look, lost weight, lied about his past, and settled into a brand new life.

To be fair: Police do prioritize high priority cases, they are called vulnerable and endangered adults. Or adults missing under "suspicion of foul play". Or children.......

But again, the wall you will be up against is that LE will definately be consulted on this and I do feel that they will say: We have enough on our plates, looking for missing children, children that have been abducted, taken in a custody dispute, we of course will put children in the first priority over voluntarly missing adults, or adults who have gone missing where there is no foul play suspected and now you want us to look for a man who left his wife to go and live on a beach in Hawaii. If the family has not idea where this man is, how the heck are we surpose to find him out of 300 million people in the USA. Especially if he does not want to be found.

The Police cannot even prosecute if a person is suspected of being a victim of foul play, but no evidence exists to surport that.

So again, I wish you the best of luck. But I do hope you have answers for all of the assorted questions that may be asked.

It reminds me of one of my employees. He had a great idea. Wonderful idea. But he had no idea how to fully implement this idea, how much it was going to cost and if other employees would agree with it. He just assumed that others will be as keen on this idea as he was. He just assumed that others will co-operate because he asked them to. All the while, causing them a lot more work, without proposing an increase in pay.

He lost all credability......with me.....as he did not fully think through his proposal and was unprepared to the implementation, details, and cost.

I told him to come back when he can answer my questions and had a "draft" proposal that can fully be reviewed, as to the stages of implementation, if the proposal has any aspect of duplication, the aspects of other employees and the cost. He just assumed that since he thought this was a "great" idea that other will to. What a surprise he had...........

I guess he looked at it in a tunnel vision mode.

But again Kelly, I wish you the best of luck.......really I do.

The cost of the model will vary state to state, depending on how much of it is already in place, or if the groundwork has already been laid to test DNA, etc, etc. The typical citizen will not have a way to do a valid cost analysis before asking for sponsorship. We'll leave that up to state officials to do that, so we are basing decisions on facts, not guesses. Any bills which have a fiscal impact are NOT presented without the cost analysis.

When a Senator decides to sponsor a bill, or at least take it into consideration, then his/her office and/or designated officials will do the cost analysis. After that, there will be some negotiating with the citizen(s) who want to pass the bill. The Senator may recommend to remove certain items that he/she feels will not pass for various reasons, typically cost. Grants and other means of finding funding can be researched. (The DOJ grants in relation to the model for fiscal year 2006 have not yet been released.)

The model in its entirety may not be passed the 1st time around. It may have to passed piecemeal in certain states. As long as it eventually is in place, that is the ultimate goal. It may take several years to accomplish this.

In the meantime, we are forging ahead, getting meetings arranged and educating the lawmakers. There is already sponsorship in more than one state, and we've barely begun.

How about a campaign to educate law enforcement officials that web sites such as the

National Center for Missing Adults
www.theyaremissed.org

and

The North American Missing Person's Network
http://www.nampn.doenetwork.us/

exist!

Even a small flyer, in a pad, with information on how to contact the agencies would be a help.

I keep reading about people that have been missing a year AND THERE IS NOTHING ON THE INTERNET ABOUT THEM!

Its something people can do locally. Go to your local copy shop... make a small "donation" to get a few pads reproduced - it would be nice if there was a downloadable generic flyer with the agencies contact info, and a place for the police to put in their agency number, investigator & phone number etc..

Stop by and donate the flyers/forms to your local police department!

That way, when a missing person's family comes in to make a report, the police can say... we are going to do all we can... this is what YOU can do.