Serve and Protect? Not if Your Loved One’s Black and Missing

By Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute, and Sarah Conway, City Bureau | Word In Black This story is part four of Chicago Missing Persons, a two-year investigation by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organizations, into how Chicago police handle missing person cases reveals the disproportionate impact on Black women and girls, how police have mistreated family members or delayed cases, and how poor police data is making the problem harder to solve. (WIB) – When Latonya Moore got home from the police station just before sunrise on May 29 after reporting her daughter Shantieya Smith missing, she was exhausted but unable to sleep. She worried that police didn’t take her report seriously. “Police weren’t doing what they were supposed to do, so I had to do it on my own,” she says. RELATED: Why Don’t Police Find Missing Black Folks? She immediately organized a search with family members and friends. They put up fliers in gas stations and stores in the neighborhood and drove around, talking to as many people as they could. They even checked out the abandoned apartment building where Sadaria Davis had been found dead earlier that month. “We took off the chain. The...