Public Meeting Notice

Public Meeting Notice  Missing Persons Task Force Meeting

Tuesday, October 29, 2019
11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
  • Posted: October 16, 2019 4:27 p.m.
  • Last Updated: August 19, 2020 10:19 a.m.

Address

1 Ashburton Place, Charles River Conference Room, 10th Floor, Boston, MA 02108

Contact   for Missing Persons Task Force Meeting

Executive Office of Public Safety and Security

Address

1 Ashburton Place, Suite 2133, Boston, MA 02108

Overview   of Missing Persons Task Force Meeting

The Missing Persons Task Force will meet on October 29th, 2019 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108 in the Charles River Conference Room, 10th Floor.

Meeting Minutes

Missing Persons Task Force

Meeting Minutes

 

Date: October 29, 2019

Time: 11:00AM-1:00PM

Place: McCormack Building

1 Ashburton Place

Charles River Conference Room

Boston, MA 02133
 

1. Welcome and Introductions

The meeting was called to order at 11:02am. Chair Davis welcomed Heather Bish and the other members of the Task Force. Heather spoke about her sister’s murder and the Molly Bish Center at Anna Maria College that was established in her honor. She shared her current work with the legislature on a bill relating to DNA.

 

2. Review/Approval of Meeting Minutes from September 4, 2019

Sarah Kiley proposed a revision to the previous meeting minutes to add wording to say “we should support it with amendments returned to the bill” regarding Billy’s Law. A motion was made to adopt this revision by Sarah and was seconded by Heather Bish. All were in favor. The motion carried unanimously.

 

3. Review of Recommendations for Report

Chair Davis mentioned that she would like Heather to submit any recommendations for the final report if she has any to add now that she is a member of the Task Force. Chair Davis suggested going through the recommendations one by one and taking feedback on them from the Task Force. She began with Chief Wojnar’s recommendation to share and enter data on a customer friendly platform. There was some discussion on NamUs and NCIC and which might have a more customer friendly platform for users. Dan H. mentioned the importance of using both since one is geared toward law enforcement while another is for the public. The public does not have access to NCIC. Sarah said that both would be good because there is no mandate for NamUs so it may not always have the most up to date information whereas NCIC is mandated and has information that is more accurate. NCIC information gets updated by local law enforcement while NamUs gets updated by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and members of the public. Sarah mentioned that there should be a technical expert to validate the information and do the data entry. Dan H. mentioned the validation process that occurs when looking at the record and making sure the information is correct and verifying that the person is still missing. He mentioned being a part of the audit done on these agencies in the past. Spencer asked if there was any benefit to having both systems in place. Sarah and Dan said that would be a good way to go. The Task Force then discussed Chief Wojnar’s other recommendation regarding relaxing information sharing laws with respect to juveniles. Melissa said we should be cautious of throwing a wide net and that CPCS should be intimately involved in protections with juveniles and that when they are court-involved, their rights should be protected just as any adult. Melissa mentioned that we need to look at where they are in the court process. She referenced a case with the Boston Police Department where there may have been a miscommunication between DCF and the Boston Police Department where a child was not told they had a right to counsel which created an issue. She said this recommendation is difficult to embrace coming from her perspective. Melissa suggested looking at where this information sharing would occur and seeing if they can firm up the recommendations in those areas.

 

Tara M. entered the meeting at 11:15am.

 

Moving to Sarah’s recommendations, Chair Davis started with Sarah’s recommendation having to do with House Bill 2132 (Billy’s Law). She acknowledged that there is no reference to information sharing, which has been identified as a best practice. Reporting gender, hair color, blood type, and other biological profile information was removed from the bill as well. The timeframe for DNA collection was another important piece that was removed. Chair Davis recommended reaching out to Legislative Affairs to see if we could get the rationale behind taking out certain seemingly important aspects of the bill.

 

The next recommendation from Sarah dealt with supporting the facilitation of data sharing of missing persons and unidentified persons data to NamUs following the Ohio model. She spoke about the structure in Ohio and the maintaining of the system and data entry involved. She mentioned the importance of having a long-term role of a forensic anthropologist inputting information into the NamUs system. She said that she envisioned having one or two forensic anthropologists working on clearing the backlog and continuing the work. Sarah said that having someone at the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS) overseeing the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) reporting to the Undersecretary of Forensic Science and work with the State Police and other law enforcement would be a good idea.

 

Her last recommendation was regarding diversification of at staff at the OCME. Sarah mentioned following up with OCME about this recommendation would be a good idea and Chair Davis agreed. Heather mentioned the value of having a forensic anthropological methodology applied to the investigation and her own experience with that. Chair Davis spoke about perhaps having a pool of potential technical experts available to the OCME if they so choose to call on them. Chair Davis also suggested recommending a couple FTEs for supporting this work. Sarah said there is a national shortage of forensic pathologists (OCME) but a surplus of forensic anthropologists and that these folks could be of value to the OCME as a resource. Sarah said these folks are also able to work on bone analysis after the post-72 hour period. She pointed to the Baby Doe case as an example, and said if a forensic anthropologist had been at the scene, they could have immediately determined the time of death, and looked further into the waterways, which would have completely changed the initial direction of the investigation. Chair Davis said having contracted resources available might be a good route to go.

 

Next, the group looked at Sarah’s best practices model for how missing persons and unidentified persons case data should be shared in NamUs. Chair Davis said we could look further into whether there is a process already in place for this. Dan H. mentioned that a recommendation could be to have it to be electronically available and have law enforcement check and update both databases. He mentioned the challenge of having information in NCIC that is not in NamUs due to identity theft reasons. Sarah recommended having an Executive Level person working to integrate both systems.

 

For the last recommendation, Chair Davis noted that it is very similar to Chief Wojnar’s recommendation.

 

Dan H. explained his recommendations and for helping to standardize forms across departments to make sure everyone is using the same information and to make it easier for families. He also mentioned the 20-30 page form for NCIC entries that could be given to family members to fill out. He explained the process of how to enter the information. Sarah said the investigating agency will usually be notified of a record being entered and prompted to validate the entry. He also explained his recommendation relating to HB2132 (Billy’s Law). He spoke about the challenge of workplace and residence and police departments being an issue and changing policies around who owns the case depending on when they receive the call as opposed to where the person lives.

 

Lastly, Angela read the recommendations provided by OCME. She mentioned that OCME refers families to NamUs as well. Heather said that seems like a very good idea given her experience and that they did not necessarily have the victim advocate or resource they wanted or the skills to deal with families. She touched on the recommendation regarding development of a burial plot/cemetery for unknown and unclaimed descendants. Sarah said she did not have any concerns about it but she would like to learn more from OCME about the cloud-based piece and dentition and about how they are handling these cases before a burial plot is created. She wanted to know more about whether or not DNA was being taken and sent to the crime lab to have the information uploaded to NamUs.

 

 

 

 

4. Comments on Draft Report Outline and Open Session for Topics not Reasonably Anticipated within 48 Hours of the Meeting

 

Chair Davis said she will begin to work on the draft report and will get a final draft in place very soon. Chair Davis mentioned a geo-map that was sent by Cliff G. and that she had difficulty getting the map into the draft outline but will do that for some visualization. Sarah asked Cliff is he could aggregate some annual data for the Task Force. She said that Dan H. had put together a lot of the data included in the mandate but that there are other things that have not been addressed. She said that right now the data is in a substantial excel so it would be very helpful to have Cliff translate the data to another format especially focusing on the year 2011 when the law changed. After 2006, they don’t have annual data anymore just monthly which is difficult for us to read and it would be helpful to put those into annual data points. Potentially the State Police or Coplink would be able to help as well to look at all of these cases on an annual basis.

 

Chair Davis asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting at 12:27pm. Sarah Kiley made a motion to adjourn and Tara Maguire seconded the motion.

Agenda

October Meeting Agenda

  1. Welcome and Introductions
  2. Review/Approval of Meeting Minutes from September 4, 2019
  3. Review of Recommendations for Report
  4. Comments on Draft Report Outline
  5. Open Session for Topics not Reasonably Anticipated within 48 Hours of the Meeting

Contact   for Missing Persons Task Force Meeting

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