 Hello everybody and welcome to Denver Police News. I'm Sergeant Steve Warnicke. One of the things that we're able to do here is provide more information to the public than ever before and we're also able today to give you an opportunity to hear things that you couldn't normally have heard. We're here with Detective Ted Benet of the Denver Police Department missing and exploited persons unit. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So there's been a tremendous amount of national interest regarding missing person cases lately and I was hoping you could walk us through the anatomy of a case and how it works and I'd like to make note that we're not talking about any case in particular that this is an opportunity to tell the public how a detective works a missing person's case from beginning to end. So walk us through that. What is our obligation when we get the report of a missing person? So first of all there is no minimum period of time which a person must wait in order to report someone missing and so when I get the report from the patrol of a missing person my first job is to get them on it's called the National Crime Information Computer and that's the computer database by which law enforcement securely talks to each other and once I've done that then I look for leads in the case. I check all the different databases to which we have access and I and the other missing person detective look for things places that we might find this person readily maybe they've been incarcerated maybe they're in a hospital a lot of our missing people end up in hospitals. So detective work once you find you want to follow up on every lead. Yes sir. When that comes to an end or you've exhausted your leads at what point do we turn to the public the media for help? Every case is different but the public can be a great tool in having eyes everywhere of course in calling in leads to us so if there is a if we get a case that has circumstances that leads to believe that maybe this person is out and about or that leads from the public would help us in finding that person then we can go to to the media or put something out as a department requesting tips leads any information that people might have found. One of the tricky cases involves the distinction between juveniles and adults talk about the investigative differences or the protocol differences in those two cases. It's not a crime for an adult to go missing and so the reason is because people have a right to privacy and people have the right not to be found. There are several circumstances like maybe a domestic violence situation where someone is fleeing an abusive relationship in which in which case they don't want to be found by certain people but we have to balance that with the the reporting person's right to know that their loved one is okay. So the distinction between adults and juveniles and it runs the gambit of age then there's a vulnerability issue and so if we get a case of let's say a 16 or 17 year old who you know if they don't have any reported disabilities we will approach that case differently than we would let's say a case of an 11 year old who may or may not have some some issues with disability but it would be by virtue of their age more vulnerable to to danger. Let's say we find somebody and they're okay what then is our job at that point what do we do? So we have a duty to make sure that they're okay make sure that they're alert they know who they are where they are they're not a danger to themselves or others and but then we also have a duty to respect their right to privacy so law enforcement when they contact someone who's been reported missing and they're an adult law enforcement will ask for their permission to locate them to the reporting person and they will also offer that reporting person's phone number information to that missing person if the missing person gives their permission great then that law enforcement will call the reporting person and make the reunion and let them know that everything's okay and where they're at if the person who's been reported missing declines or does not give permission to be found then we still respect the reporting person's right to know that they're okay but we do not disclose their location to the reporting person because we are over and above respecting the missing person's right to privacy I mean Ted can we find somebody detain them demand to know what they've been up to question them any of those things not without probable cause that crime has been committed or reasonable suspicion that that there is some reason to believe that we need to dig further that this is more than just a straightforward missing person's case how many cases do you work on an average day on average maybe 10 new cases a day by and large they are found okay I think roughly on average about half are located within the first three days any of them turned into homicides I mean if you obviously not hard and fast numbers here but if you had to guess how many of them turn into something really serious like a homicide maybe between one to three a year will end up being being a homicide in each case we will partner with the homicide unit to investigate it so what's a great day for you with the missing person's unit so our goal is to reunite people and that's a good feeling when we're able to bring the missing people and the reporting people together people that have been worried about them and we enjoy that and we strive to do that in in every case with all the attention national tension on missing person cases we hope this shed some light on our process and protocol and how we work a case as well as gives you information that you've never had before thanks for watching I'm sergeant Steve Warnick here for Denver police news