Mispers

Mispers. This is a Police term for Missing Persons and, as the name suggests, refers to a person who has disappeared, normally unexpectedly, and has been reported to the Police as such.
It then becomes our responsabilty to find them. They are graded as to the level of risk attached to them going missing.
We recently had a report of a three year old girl missing from her home where her grandmother had been looking after her. This immediately received the highest possible grading. Within a couple of minutes of the call there were more than a dozen Police officers, plus the Force helicoptor and a dog handler involved in helping to find her. Officers were conducting house to house enquiries to establish whether any neighbours had seen her wander off or whether, more worryingly, anybody unknown to them had been seen near her house. This is vital in the first minutes because if the child has been abducted we need to know if any vehicles have been seen leaving the area. Other officers were searching the surrounding streets, gardens etc in case the girl had just decided to widen her horizons and go exploring. Again, this happens a lot and doesn't necessarily mean that the adult looking after them is at fault. I've learned from experience that small children can make themselves disappear in a way that Houdini could only have dreamed of.
Another officer went to speak to the grandmother to get details of what the girl was wearing, where she might have gone to (favour park etc) and to help search the house again.
The officer, who clearly had been to this sort of job before, went straight to the girls bedroom, pulled back the duvet which was completely flat and found the girl sound asleep in the space between the bed and the wall, totally oblivous to all the comotion outside.
The grandmother and the girls' parents were so relieved and completely apologetic about wasting our time. All those officers, all that money spent on finding their girl who hadn't been missing all along.
And we didn't care about all that. Because they needed our help, they called us and we did what was asked of us. Every single officer was bouncing along happily after the good news. Not one grumble about having our time wasted. (Though there were a few jokes about whether toddlers should wear little bells so they're easier to find).
This job was the reason that we joined the Police and the look of relief and gratitude on the faces of the girls family was priceless.
Now compare this to the fourteen or fifteen year old who is, for whatever reason, rebelling against their parents or carers. We have a number on our patch who habitually "go missing" to the extent that they have their own files so it's easier to find their paperwork the next time we get the phone call.
We had one such report a few weeks ago. The mother of this chap had phoned us up to say her son (14 years old) had gone missing. The circumstances were that he didn't want to get into his taxi to go to school, had punched the car window and then run off down the street. I phoned her up to get a better idea of what was going on. Whilst talking to her, I asked if she was going to go and look for him. Her reply was, "no, I've had it up to here with him. I can't be bothered any more". It took real restraint not to point out that it was her son that was missing, not the car keys, and that perhaps she might drag herself away from the telly for ten minutes to help us find her flesh and blood. Instead, rather than get into a counter-productive arguement, I made some sort of non-commital grunt and made my excuses. This was the latest of more than a dozen such reports from his mother since the start of the year.
Reaching for his file I saw that he was likely to turn up at one of a few different places. Because of his age (and hence his vulnerability) we had to actively search for him so I sent a car out to look for him. Thanks to his file, he was found quite quickly and returned to the loving embrace of his mum. Job done.
Until about half an hour later. Mrs X phones the Control Room to report her son missing. Apparently he still didn't want to go to school! Considering the lack of staff at the moment, I wanted to phone her back and report a load of coppers missing, and would she mind awfully helping me to find them? Instead I just reached for the file...