What Happens When Your Friend, Sister, or Daughter Goes Missing?

MISSINGPERSONS: LaTonya Moore poses with her daughter’s urn, Shantieya Smith, inside her home 150 miles away from Chicago. May 11th, 2023. Smith was reported missing and later found murdered near her home in North Lawndale in 2019. Her cases was among the 99.9% percent of missing person cases of Black women and girls between 2000 and 2022 the Chicago Police Department labeled cold or showed noncriminal. Smith lives through her only daughter and mother, LaTonya Moore, both struggle with grief over the unanswered questions. Photo by Sebastián Hidalgo for City Bureau By Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute, and Sarah Conway, City Bureau This story is part seven 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. Why do people go missing in Chicago? Missingness is embedded in social conditions such as gun violence, intimate partner abuse, inadequate housing, and lack of safe space for teens — issues related to structural racism that city officials...