Sure.
For every missing person in our community, law enforcement is involved. If I am contacted directly by a community member saying that his or her loved one is missing and asking if we can send an alert, I say, “Did you contact the police?” The reason for that is that I want to make sure there is a record, and I want to make sure that the said person is not over at auntie's place.
It needs to be a true missing person. We don't want to cause alert fatigue, so we don't want to be sending out alerts for missing people who are not truly missing. We have sent out alerts for people who have threatened self-harm. Again, law enforcement is involved.
It took a lot to get their buy-in, and some of the things they said to me were not the most pleasant. It was nothing but pure persistence on my end, knocking on their door and sending them phone calls and emails asking them to please utilize our system. I would tell them, “It's a tool in your tool box that you can utilize to assist in your own investigations.”
Once they caught on.... It's a lot different now. They call me all the time.