#Findourgirls
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple weeks, then you have most likely heard about the 14 young African American girls that have went missing in Washington D.C.
What really shocked America was that the disappearance of the girls wasn’t being publicized in the news.
Celebrities such as Gabrielle Union, Zendaya, and many others were outraged when they found that there were no details being published regarding the missing teenagers. Celebrities took to twitter and Instagram to bring publicity to the story.
But did they really do their research?
Obviously, what angered thousands of people about this news was that all the girls that were reportedly missing in D.C., were of minority and many people thought that was a reason as to why the story wasn’t being publicized. However, that was not the case.
Since March 19, The district has implement a new tactic in trying to locate missing youth in D.C. Police in the D.C. area have shared 20 missing person fliers on Twitter; 10 of these people were juveniles. As of Friday, six of these juveniles had been found; four still were missing, according to nbc news.
D.C. police have said there has been no increase in the number of missing persons in their jurisdiction. They’re just sharing information in a new way.
So, what’s really true?
According to local police data, the number of missing child cases in the District dropped from 2,433 in 2015 to 2,242 in 2016. The highest total recently, 2,610, was back in 2001.
So far this year, the District has logged a total of 501 cases of missing juveniles, many of them black or Latino, according to the police department. All but a handful have been solved.
Twenty-two juvenile cases remained open as of March 24, according to the department’s website. Police only had the photos of 13 of these youth, who are considered “critical missing persons.”
According to NBC news, one of the fourteen young girls returned home and admitted to leaving voluntarily.
Many of the posts advocating #findourgirls, stated problems of sex trafficking in the District, which is how many of the girls were thought to have been kidnapped.
Police spokeswoman Karimah Bilal said many of the teens reported missing in 2017 left voluntarily.
After the more information was released to the public involving the missing teens, many of the celebrities who spoke out about the girls, found themselves biting their tongues.
Singer Kehlani deleted her angry rant she made to Twitter and Instagram and replaced it with some great advice to the public.
“When relaying information about this, we have to be careful we relay the correct info because these are all peoples little girls,” said singer Kehlani