There is a missing child from my area from about 4 years years. There are no leads, but I'm kind of good at reading people and doing a search. What does everyone think?

cold cases
i think they are called
i think its a good idea , some people can use closer i am sure
i never had the luck of haven a kid , well other then dogs , but that has to be hard , just not knowen

There are too many missing people around the country. I was thinking that I could solve this case near me. I think he was abducted.

4 years,don't sound good but good luck

Knowing you from the forums, I think you are methodical and likely to unearth some new information. For instance the very idea of brainstorming in Mingle.

I may join in provided you eliminate category A instead of rushing us all into the 'abduction' theory (which no doubt is the very first thing that always comes to anyone's mind and from the movies).

Category A:
A1. Profile of child: his profile, parents, class friends, school and all

A2. Confirm child was not lost (in woods), had accident or ran away. A lot of this can also be eliminated from viewing his profile.

A3. Whether there have been missing children in your district in past 8 years ( 4 years before this case ). This may require trawling through district level records and categorizing missing persons by age, sex, time of day and so on.

What we forget is the decades of donkey's work the police department have done; the sheer experience & not the education that makes them professionals.

Category B:
B1. Why the search for this child motivates you?
Is it something recent alerting you?
Is there a list of suspects?

(You say, you are good at reading people; any information would motivate us)

As information grows, you may put it up in a blog and questions could be raised here, even 'foolish' ones as long as they widen the net.

conclusion:
Do you have a local buddy to work with or can you form a small local group.
Can you invest 6 months with you?

Also, do you have a license to carry a gun? if not, then you would have to depend on others for cooperation & so on; not a good idea.

Can you give us weekly reports (& monthly summaries)? (sorry, if this sounds mean but I don't think any one of us would like to be left hanging in the air)

If yes to 2 out of 3 questions; then a good place to start is the blog (in my opinion)

aah; done for today.

Inspector Cat
does have a nice ring to it

Just what makes you think you are going to be better at searching than all the other folks have been over the past four years? What special skills do you bring to the table.

My 4 year-old great niece was snatched last week at the playground,
with her Dad and big brother near by. People gave chase to the crazy
woman who had her and was dragging her off. My nephew pulled his gun
and they held her until police arrived. She appeared drugged-out.

Police wanted to know if he wanted to press charges! Der..

Scariest thing ever.

How about identifying them before they are snatched?

Sorry to hear about that soufie. There are too many of those stories.

Way too many ;-)

So sorry to hear that source - glad that they were able to stop the woman - crazy!

Not much to go on, just from this, but I am hugely in favor of applying logic to solve any situation.

The main danger I have some people get into taking on something like this themselves, is in overstepping legal boundaries in overeagerness.

There was a local mystery here many years ago, that I had a sort of instant suspicion about, which later turned out to be correct. I wish I had followed up on it when I had it, since it was over five years before the authorities worked things out.

Your safety should be of paramount importance especially as you are not working under the aegis of a law enforcement organization.

Some criminals can become desperate and try to hurt you but if there'll be no backlash that you can't handle, then you may contribute your quota to keep your town safe.

I think civilians can apply for a search warrent the same as police. Go for it!

There are a few unsolved cases of missing people that I follow. Just 15 minutes ago, on tv was an Amber alert. My phone lit up with an Amber alert. Right before all of that, I was actually on the internet trying to find out the latest on a missing young lady in Idaho Falls from 18 years ago. I lived there at that time.

Does anyone here ever get an Amber alert?

My sister tells me that she never gets Amber alerts. I've gotten a lot.

I read the OP.
I read the replies.
I understand the subject for discussion.
WHY?
Is this missing person part of your personal life?
Frankly, I just don't give a damn unless its someone I know?
Even then, how well I know them is relative to the amount of damn I give.
No matter how hard I try, I just can't work up a damn to give?

First of all you will need to check with the State you live in and find out what the requirements are ect.. Some require PI's to register in order to work with law enforcement...

Some only require a High School diploma some don't, where some require some Criminal Justice Classes...

It is always best to check to see what your State Requires in order to be Classified as a P.I...