Tim Williams, center, manager of the New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse (NYSMP) checks progress with David Fallon, retired FBI investigator and NCJTC-AATTAP Associate.
: Intelligence Analyst Joy Johnston of the New York State Police answers questions during a rescue operation to locate children reported missing as runaways.
Samuel Lizzio and Mark Baney, New York State Police senior investigators, work a case. In 2024, New York closed 12,310 cases involving children reported missing as runaways, according to the Division of Criminal Justice Services.
Alan Lapage, NYSMPC investigative supervisor, rings a bell to signal a missing child was safely located.
By Jody Garlock
It’s an early morning in March, and about 100 law enforcement officials, social services professionals, legal experts, and others are gathered in a hotel ballroom in Latham, New York. Wearing lanyards with name tags and sitting at tables with laptops and papers in front of them, they seem poised for a routine conference. But there’s a seriousness in the air and laser focus as they work on their computers or huddle into small groups.
Eventually, the ringing of a bell sounds across the room. Heads turn toward a man holding a brass school bellas the realization sets in: A missing child has been located.
By the end of the three-day Capital Region Missing Child Rescue Operation, that bell will have been rung an impressive 63 times. Simultaneously, a computer screen projected onto a wall showed the number in big, bold lettering. Both served as uplifting motivators for the agencies and experts who united for a goal of finding missing children at risk of endangerment, exploitation, or harm. “After the first or second bell ring, everyone gets it—it’s powerful,” says Tim Williams, manager of the New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse (NYSMPC), one of organizers. “You could feel the energy in the room continue to increase.”
More than 60 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private partners came together to explore new leads, review case notes, and leverage technology to find at-risk youth reported missing as runaways.
The 63 children and teens located during the first-ever rescue operation for the Albany, Schenectady, and Troy areas ranged in age from 2 to 17 years old when they were reported
missing, and from 6 to 22 when found, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). And the overall number of those safely located continued to climb, as work that was started wrapped up after the event. Williams says 71 missing children have now been located as a direct result of the rescue operation.
“These are emotional events,” says Kevin Branzetti (shown below right under quote), CEO of the National Child Protection Task Force (NCPTF), which partnered with NYSMPC on the operation and has similar recovery missions scheduled in other states.
“We know these cases can be emotional roller coasters. You see a lot of tears.”
To drive home the importance of such ventures, Branzetti and Williams point to statistics. At the end of 2024, New York had slightly more than 1,000 active missing children cases. The majority of the 12,000-plus cases annually—95 percent— are reported as runaways.
“Every missing child is an endangered missing child,” Williams says. “Our focus was the runaway population because it’s often overlooked.”
Strategic Teamwork
The Capital Region event grew out of training sessions between NYSMPC and the Arkansas-based NCPTF. “We started to think ‘Could we put all these people in the same room with the sole mission of finding kids and closing cases?’ “ Williams says.
In October 2024, NYSMPC and NCPTF spearheaded their first joint rescue operation. That venture in the Buffalo area safely located 47 children reported missing as runways. Branzetti and Clearinghouse staffers, including Williams and Cindy Neff, who recently retired as NYSMPC manager, applied lessons they learned from the Buffalo operation. Comparatively, the Capital Region operation was more complex, involving coordination among three police departments, three district attorney’s offices, and three county social services agencies, along with many other entities.
“One of the most critical components is securing full buy-in from local partners, law enforcement, social services, district attorneys, and child advocacy centers,” Neff says. “Their collaboration is essential because these operations go beyond just locating missing youth. It’s also about understanding the underlying reasons they went missing and identifying the support needed to help prevent it from happening again.” (For more on Neff see the sidebar that follows this feature.)
The Capital Region operation required months of planning and meetings to review cases with agencies and coordinate logistics. Participants were ultimately organized into four teams— two for Albany and one each for Schenectady and Troy. A pre-operation meeting was held for all the teams prior to the operation.
Each team had a similar composition: a Clearinghouse representative who acted as the organizer, a crime analyst who had access to local police records, at least one detective from the agency working the case, representatives from NCTPF and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a probation official, someone from social services, and various other law enforcement officials. The goal was to ensure that each team had a variety of resources and skill sets, be it public records searching, tracking a cell phone, understanding social media work, or open-source intelligence. “No two police departments have the same sets of tools,” Branzetti says. “Everyone brings their tools to the game, and we get to share them.”
Adding a social services component—and having those professionals in the room prepared to go out when a child was recovered—was one of the lessons learned from the prior operation. Branzetti, Williams, and Neff note that the goal wasn’t just to find the child, but also to try to ensure the child doesn’t go missing again. “What we promote deeply is ‘Find. Listen. Help,’ “ Branzetti says. “It takes more than police to do that. It’s a society problem.”
The state’s Office of Children and Family Services coordinated with nonprofit organizations and victim assistance programs to assist the investigations and provide services and support for recovered children. “There was a whole support-service side of this ready to go and available—and put into action many times,” Williams says. If a child already had an assigned case worker, that person was notified.
A unique component was providing gift cards to ensure a child or teen had essentials, such as food, clothing, or haircare services. In some cases, the gift cards became an outreach opportunity for the social services worker to schedule a follow-up to take a teen shopping. “We wanted her to see that something is different today,” says Branzetti, whose organization secured donations to provide the gift cards. “We wanted her to understand that this isn’t the same old story. It’s about changing the trajectory.”
Additionally, the rescue operation also helps destigmatize the word “runaway.” “It’s a matter of changing the mindset of what that means,” Williams says.
“Everyone in the room is getting a better sense of the word as they work on the cases and realize that we can’t treat a runaway as ‘I’ll get to it when I get to it’ and instead say ‘Let’s make sure we’re doing something.’ “
‘Remarkable’ Collaboration
Heading into the rescue operation, the organizers didn’t have a set goal for the number of children they wanted to find. “If we can find even one missing child, that’s a positive,” Williams says. Because team members had started pre-work, some of the cases were able to be swiftly closed. A side benefit, Branzetti says, is that the rescue operation helps broaden or hone skills, and participants leave with added knowledge they can apply to their own cases. “These rescue operations turn into partial training events,” he says. “You actually may be writing a first search warrant or doing a first cell tower dump, or someone is walking you through how to track an IP address. You can’t beat that.”
The organizers also note that it’s heartening to see the camaraderie develop on the mixed teams, where members typically start out the rescue operation as strangers.
Williams says the operation proved to him how beneficial it is to bring together diverse groups. “We all tend to fall into the silo that we’re comfortable in, but we hear so many times, ‘Oh I wish I had reached out to you sooner,’ ” he says. “Sitting down at the same table, talking through cases, and sharing resources that are available is so important. Don’t be afraid to have those difficult conversations or continue to talk weekly or monthly to stay on top of things.”
For Neff, the rescue operation was a gratifying culmination to her long career. “When professionals from different agencies are brought together in the same room with a shared mission,” she says, “remarkable things can happen.”
Every time a child runs away, it’s a cry for help. That child is screaming out for our help, and it’s our job to do something.
Kevin Branzetti CEO, National Child Protection Task Force
Empathy & Respect: Hallmarks of Cindy Neff's Child Protection Career
'Force of Nature': Cindy Neff recently retired after two decades of remarkable work.
For Cindy Neff, the Capital Region Missing Child Rescue Operation was a fitting end to a long career of helping children. In April, Neff retired from the New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse, where she worked for 20 years—the past 11 years as manager. “She’s a force of nature,” says Kevin Branzetti, CEO of the National Child Protection Task Force who worked with Neff on the New York rescue operations and various other initiatives.
Over the years, Neff has been a familiar face at national AMBER Alert symposiums, serving as an Associate for NCJTC-AATTAP. She also led the charge for establishing the New York State Cold Case Review Panel and developing the Find Them web application to support law enforcement working missing persons cases.
The issue of children with multiple missing episodes has always been close to her heart. In New York, about half of the missing children classified as runaways involve repeat episodes. Neff likens it to her personal experience of her mother being shuffled from one nursing home to another until she landed in a place where she was treated with compassion and dignity. Like with her mother, she feels runaway children are placed wherever there is an open bed, not necessarily where they will receive the care and services they need.
To address the issue, she helped form a statewide partnership that promotes a systems-based approach to supporting vulnerable children. This led to launching RIPSTOP (Runaway Intervention Program: Services, Training, Opportunity, Prevention), which identifies root causes and connects youth to targeted services. The hope is that RIPSTOP becomes a model for the state.
“I believe it represents the future of how we must address missing child cases: with empathy, data-driven solutions, and collaboration across systems,” Neff says. “We must reject the mindset of ‘They’re just a runaway—they’ll come back.’ Every missing child is at risk until proven otherwise, and every case deserves our full attention.”
In her immediate retirement, Neff is recharging and enjoying time with her grandchildren. She also plans to thoughtfully consider how she may stay involved in the field in the future. She encourages fellow Clearinghouse managers and AMBER Alert Coordinators to carry on the mission on behalf of missing children by setting clear goals, regularly assessing priorities, and building strong partnerships at every level. “This work cannot be done in isolation,” she says.
Forty-seven missing and endangered children were reunited with their families in a first-of-its-kind rescue operation in New York. More than 55 experts, including 22 law enforcement agencies, collaborated in the mission to locate missing Erie County children who had been taken by non-custodial parents or had run away. “I have 30 years of doing this, and this has been the proudest, most impactful moment of my career,” said Kevin Branzetti, co-founder and CEO of the National Child Protection Task Force. Branzetti and Cindy Neff, manager of New York’s Missing Persons Clearinghouse (and AATTAP/NCJTC Associate), spearheaded the initiative in which law enforcement provided investigative support to Amherst and Buffalo police departments. Investigators gained valuable knowledge and now have “more tools in our toolbox” to tackle future cases of missing children, Branzetti said.
By Denise Gee Peacock
The United States’ 14 territories—three in the Caribbean, 11 in the Pacific—play a key role in ensuring our collective national security. In turn, the U.S. ensures each homeland has the security it needs to protect its own—especially its children. That’s because the need for AMBER Alerts resonates in every language.
In the past 30 years, AMBER Alert programs have helped law enforcement safely recover 1,200 missing children. Those successes—and lessons learned from not having plans and resources in place to quickly mobilize when a child goes missing—have prompted other countries to seek guidance from the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP).
As a U.S. Department of Justice initiative, the AATTAP—part of the National Criminal Justice Training Center of Fox Valley Technical College—provides free training and technical assistance to U.S. territories, Indian Country, and other countries with Department of Justice (DOJ) funding. Trainings improve law enforcement’s response to cases of endangered missing and abducted children. They also address endangerment dynamics that often are not well understood: high-risk victims, children in crisis, and the commercial sexual exploitation of youth.
Since all U.S. territories are islands, careful consideration of weather is always in play, with hurricanes and typhoons threatening both travel and infrastructure.
AATTAP’s work with each territory includes first conducting high-level needs assessment meetings to learn and understand the important considerations unique to each territory’s cultural, geographic, and technological needs and challenges—to ensure these dynamics are addressed in training and resource efforts. AATTAP’s Child Abduction Response Team (CART) training is also delivered to key partners who will be part of their comprehensive response.
“Each territory’s capabilities and needs can be very different, so we spend the bulk of our time initially listening and learning about the issues they face,” says AATTAP Administrator Janell Rasmussen. “Puerto Rico, for instance, has an AMBER Alert Coordinator and AMBER Alert system in operation. But that’s currently not the case in American Samoa, Guam, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. They’re all at very different places in terms of how they’re responding to cases involving missing children.
“Geographically some of the islands are closer to other countries than they are to us, so these issues have to be considered before we prepare training plans for them,” Rasmussen explains. “Our work has to be developed to address the specific problems they face—whether it’s child sex trafficking or a lack of resources, such as high-speed Internet access.”
Many territories, for instance, do not have access to Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) or the Internet Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS). They also lack road signs for public alerting. Additionally, “their children are often taken to a different country, which adds a whole new layer of complexity for collaboration and contact expectations,” Rasmussen explains.
Knowing this, AATTAP leaders and subject matter experts have flown tens of thousands of miles to ensure U.S. territories’ needs can be met. “It’s important they know we offer the same level of training and technical assistance as we do in the States.”
Here are some of the regions where AATTAP partnerships are helping save lives.
American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands
From the U.S. mainland, travel to American Samoa, Guam, or the Northern Mariana Islands in the south-central Pacific Ocean requires nearly 24 hours of flying time. American Samoa, for instance—the only inhabited territory south of the Equator—is 2,200 miles from Hawaii to the northeast, and 1,600 miles from New Zealand to the southwest.
For nearly two years, the federal government has been working to uphold National Defense Authorization Act provisions that ensure U.S. territories have the training and technical assistance needed to protect their citizens and children. This includes challenges related to integrating and facilitating AMBER Alert programs.
In February of this year, the team conducted two days of needs-assessment meetings in Pago Pago, American Samoa. Then in July, the team visited Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands to do the same.
As is the case on the U.S. mainland, each needs-assessment meeting involves facilitated discussions about law enforcement procedures, the territory’s needs for fully and quickly investigating missing child incidents, their emergency messaging capabilities, and ultimately what AATTAP training and technical assistance they would like to have.
Reception to the visits was warm and enthusiastic. Often present were U.S. congressional delegates, local and federal law enforcement and telecommunicators, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to child protection.
“Our partners are appreciative that we’re willing to go to great lengths to work with them where they live,” says AATTAP Project Coordinator Yesenia “Jesi” Leon-Baron, who manages territorial, international, and Southern/Northern Border Initiatives. “Doing so helps us see what their challenges are in safely recovering endangered and missing children.”
This support is a lifeline to the islands. As Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Department of Public Safety Commissioner Anthony Macaranas told the Saipan Tribune, “One of our biggest challenges is that we’re far away from the United States mainland.” Thus, creating or strengthening AMBER Alert plans will help the CNMI build relationships with key members of law enforcement “and help us progressively move forward,” he said.
One case in the Northern Marianas that people would like to see resolved involves missing elementary-school-age sisters Maleina and Faloma Q. Luhk, who mysteriously disappeared while waiting for a school bus near their home in May 2011.
“All of these things we’re getting [from the AATTAP and others] are to prepare us, and the long-term plan is to finally sit down and come up with a strategic plan” on implementing AMBER Alerts, Macaranas said. “It involves a lot of manpower, data, and of course funding … but in the end, we’re going to have this program here.”
Trafficking “is one of the greatest crimes imaginable,” said High Chief Uifa’atali Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa. To address that, James Moylan of Guam co-sponsored the Combating Human-Trafficking of Innocent Lives Daily (C.H.I.L.D.) Act of 2023, which raises convicted child traffickers’ mandatory minimum jail time from 15 to 25 years.
“Before we left American Samoa, the Governor’s Office presented each of us with a framed ‘warrior’s weapon’—calling us warriors for the missing and abducted children in the territory,” Leon-Baron says.
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is the only U.S. territory with an AMBER Alert plan and program coordinator fully in place at the time of this reporting. Their ongoing goal is to continually refine their existing plan and provide a coordinated and sustainable law enforcement response.
AATTAP has been involved in ongoing assistance with Puerto Rico since holding the first in-person training session there in January 2023. Team members delivered the Child Abduction Response Team (CART) training, along with Rescue, Recovery, and Reunification field-training exercises for CART members and other law enforcement in Puerto Rico.
In May 2024, the AATTAP team returned for a needs assessment visit to discuss Puerto Rico’s ongoing challenges, emerging trends, and the training and technical assistance needed to bolster response readiness.
Puerto Rico’s law enforcement leaders intend to continue CART training, Leon-Baron says. They also plan to participate in such courses as AMBER Alert Activation Best Practices (AAABP), Initial Response Strategies & Tactics When Responding to Missing Children Incidents (IRST), and Search and Canvass Operations in Child Abductions (SCOCA).
Southern Border Initiative (Mexico) and Northern Border Initiative (Canada)
AATTAP’s well-established Southern Border Initiative (SBI) is focused on building preparedness for effective response to cases of endangered missing and abducted children in Mexico and the U.S. through cross-border collaboration and planning. Meetings AATTAP has held with federal and state partners in the last two years have underscored the impact of this type of collaboration.
The most recent meeting—held August 1 in Chula Vista, California (across the border from Tijuana, Mexico)—drew more than 100 law enforcement and NGO members who rely on cross-border collaboration to bring missing children safely home. AATTAP piloted a full-day version of its Cross-Border Abduction training, with some participants leaving their homes at 2 a.m. to attend, Leon-Baron says.
AATTAP Associate David Camacho recalled the impact of the event: “We were thankful to have them all there; they had amazing questions, and we reviewed them carefully.”
One conversation “was tough to even consider,” Leon-Baron says. “Some shared with us that in Tijuana, there’s a movement to allow a child of age 9 to consent to sex.”
This is one of many cultural issues that need to be addressed, Leon-Baron says. “We know their laws and judicial processes do not mirror ours. But what does align is our shared commitment to collaboration and cooperation. Thankfully state and federal U.S. and Mexico law enforcement, are developing critically important working relationships.”
The power of relationship-building was especially apparent at an Alerta AMBER Regional Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, hosted by the DOJ’s Overseas Proprietorial Development Assistance and Training Section (OPDAT) in late August 2023.
Mexico's Alerta AMBER for baby Angela was quickly broadcast throughout the country.
As the three-day conference began, a 1-year-old girl, Angela, was abducted August 28 after her parents were murdered during an invasion of their Ciudad Juarez home.
Yubia Yumiko Ayala Narvaez, Regional Coordinator of the Gender-Based Violence Unit/Chihuahua North Prosecutor’s Office, and Mexico’s National AMBER Alert Coordinator, Carlos Morales Rojas, were at the conference. They worked together to release national and state alerts for Angela.
Media and public response to both alerts came swiftly. (See photo above.) By the next day, the kidnappers, likely aware the case was receiving national attention, abandoned Angela in a Ciudad Juarez doorway. A woman found the infant and immediately called 911. And less than 30 hours after the issuance of the state AMBER Alert, the child was safely recovered.
“Narvaez and Rojas met for the first time as they arrived for the conference. This was just one of so many examples of how incredibly important regional events like this are to the ongoing work to build preparedness for effective response to cases of endangered missing and abducted children—in Mexico and the U.S.—through cross-border planning,” Leon-Baron says.
AATTAP’s Northern Border Initiative (NBI) also relies heavily on collaboration between Canadian provinces’ child protection officials and U.S. counterparts. Like Mexico, Canada also has Tribal components. “But the dynamics are different,” Leon-Baron explains. The professionals’ work often involves family abductions of children, either taken into or out of one country to another.
AATTAP visits have included Canadian AMBER Alert Coordinators and members of both the U.S. Customs & Border Patrol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Tribal law enforcement (such as the St. Regis Mohawk Police Department). And the next NBI event—a focus group meeting—was held this September in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
Serbia and Argentina
One of AATTAP’s highest-profile international endeavors was working with officials from the Bureau of Narcotics and International Law Enforcement (INL) and the Republic of Serbia to help that country launch its AMBER Alert-style program “Pronadji Me” (“Find Me”) in June 2023. The AATTAP-INL-New York-Virginia team also advised Bosnia-Herzegovina on their AMBER Alert-style plan.
The meeting, held at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., also featured insight from Virginia and New York child protection officers. Virginia State Police AMBER Alert Coordinators Sergeant Connie Brooks and Lieutenant Robbie Goodrich outlined how their state AMBER Alert activations are decided and disseminated. Additionally, New York State Police AMBER Alert Coordinator Erika Hock, New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse (NYSMPC) Manager Cindy Neff, and NYSMPC Investigative Supervisor Timothy Williams participated virtually to discuss their state’s AMBER Alert program requirements.
In March 2024—nine months after the U.S. meeting—Serbia activated its first “Find Me” Alert after a 2-year-old girl Dana Ilic disappeared in the town of Bor. Television and radio stations interrupted their programs to share details about Dana, including the time and place of her disappearance, and her clothes and age. Citizens also received SMS (short message service) alerts.
“Though Serbia’s first AMBER Alert sadly did not result in Dana’s safe return, the country is learning from the alert’s implementation, which will help other children who go missing,” Rasmussen says.
Serbia’s "Find Me" Alert is modeled on U.S. AMBER Alerts.
Although in-person meetings are always preferred, virtual meetings do have their advantages. Consider AATTAP’s one-day CART Virtual Instructor-Led Training with Argentina—an event in which AATTAP collaborated with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.
“The response was overwhelming,” Leon-Baron says. “We had hundreds on our call, with many more wanting to join.” AATTAP’s next trainings with Argentina were in October.
Dominican Republic, U.S. Virgin Islands, and beyond
Meetings with child protection and government officials in the Dominican Republic and U.S. Virgin Islands have been delayed due to hurricanes, but the AATTAP planned to visit this fall.
“Our work is really just beginning,” Rasmussen says. “Now that we’ve assessed the territories’ needs, we plan to go back and help them get their AMBER Alert programs where they need to be. There is a lot of training ahead—focusing on on investigative strategies, first responders, search and rescue teams—and all of it will be informed by the geographical and cultural considerations that we have seen firsthand.”
