Missing Girls Update: DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Announces Task Force, Celebrities Join Cause

Last weekend, celebrities such as Olivia Wilde, Taraji P. Henson and Sophia Bush took to Instagram and Twitter to publicize recent news about missing black and Latina girls in Washington, D.C., sharing information that claimed 14 girls had gone missing within 24 hours.

Except that information wasn’t true.

Actually, since March 19, police in Washington, D.C., shared 22 missing person fliers on Twitter. Half of those missing persons were juveniles. As of Sunday, six of the juveniles had been found, while five were still missing.

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In fact, the number of missing children in the city declined from 2015 to 2016. Police said 2,433 children were reported missing in 2015, and 2,242 were reported missing last year.

Despite the misinformation, there was a reason it seemed like more girls were missing than normal. The Washington, D.C., police force changed up its strategies for finding missing persons. Last week, the police department began tweeting out a flier for every missing person in the city whose case was labeled “critical,” said Peter Newsham, the city’s police chief.

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Not only did outcry spread across the public, but the Congressional Black Caucus called on the FBI Thursday to help D.C. police to find the missing children.

“This is what the [social media] policy was intended to do,” said Kevin Harris, a spokesman for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “It was intended to get these teens’ faces out there. It was intended to provoke conversation. We don’t ever want this to become the norm.”

After the increased attention on the number of missing people in the nation’s capital, Bowser announced Friday the creation of a special task force meant to ascertain what social services are needed to help teenagers who feel the impulse to run away.

The city will also increase the number of police officers dedicated to investigating missing children, and it would give money to nonprofit organizations who work with at-risk teenagers, according to a statement from Bowser’s office.