Civil liberties groups are asking Massachusetts lawmakers to limit when police use license plate readers so they can’t be used for surveillance, dragnet monitoring or other civil rights harms. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said data collected from plate readers can be used to pry into people’s private lives. Law enforcement groups say an outright ban on plate reading technology would compromise their work, including crucial cases like AMBER Alerts.

In June 2000, 16-year-old Molly Bish was abducted and murdered in Massachusetts. Her killer has never been found. Twenty years later, her sister Heather Bish continues to pursue justice by advocating for legislation that allows law enforcement to search for violent criminals on DNA databases, using familial searches. “The beauty of familial testing is, it’s science. It doesn’t wrongly convict anyone,” Heather Bish said.

Police in Malden, Massachusetts, issued a warning about a possible scam after learning a person was going door-to-door and asking homeowners if they ordered AMBER Alert ID Kits from the police union. After the warning was issued, police identified and questioned the man. The individual was working for a life insurance company and said he misspoke about being affiliated with a police organization. Police advised him to change his sales pitch.

Child Abduction Response Team in an operations room with laptops and whiteboards filled with info.

Two more Child Abduction Response Teams (CART) have received national certification from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council (MetroLEC) CART of Massachusetts and the Tacoma, Washington Police Department CART received the honors after meeting 47 standards of identified best practices and an onsite assessment of a mock child abduction exercise.

“These agencies are sending a message to the community that they are committed to recovering missing children,” said Alan Wolochuk, CART Certification Manager. “They are also sending a message to the bad guys that the children in this community have the best protection available.”

The MetroLEC is made up of law enforcement officers from several cities, towns and sheriff's offices. On July 23-24, 2013, MetroLEC members conducted a mock child abduction drill in the Town of Norwood. The exercise was used to assess the team, but it was also helpful to make their protocols stronger. “They did really well,” said Wolochuk. In February 2014, the MetroLEC CART became the second team in the northeast to earn the national certification from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Tacoma Police Department CART responded to a mock abduction on September 11-12, 2013. More than 150 law enforcement officers and civilian personnel did their best to find a 14-year-old girl who had been taken from a bus stop near a park. A witness saw the struggle and called for help. “The Tacoma CART's response was professional, coordinated and excellently managed,” said Wolochuk.

On December 20, 2013, the Tacoma Police Department received official notification from the U.S. Department of Justice of its certification, becoming the first CART to earn that distinction in the state of Washington. The U.S. now has 19 certified teams.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are considering adding symbols to license plates to make it easier to identify cars and find missing and abducted children. Magi Bish, the mother of 16-year-old Molly Bish, who was murdered in 2000, is championing the effort. Bish said she was unable to remember the license plate number of a suspicious car she saw near the pond where her daughter disappeared. “Molly's Bill” would change the license plates to have five characters with a symbol, which advocates say can be easily identified, even by a 2-year-old child.