by Derek Snow

Created on: March 06, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

LAW ENFORCEMENT BELIEVES YOUR CHILD IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR CAR OR YOUR DOG!

As a retired law enforcement officer it is hard for me to make such a statement and in this first paragraph let me be clear that individual officers and departments care more about the safety of your children than any other person or thing they are sworn to protect. This seems to be a paradox but it is far from a conflicting concept.

The technology exists to inject, under the skin of your child, a tiny homing device with all of the medical and contact information necessary to return a lost or kidnapped child to parents quickly. Should they so choose, upon reaching the age of majority the chip can be deactivated. This technology has been used successfully in our pets for years but not our children, our most precious asset. Are we really so distrustful of our government that we would sacrifice the life of a child to protect it's civil liberties?

There are portable police watch towers that are driven from parking lot to parking lot of malls and large shopping centers so that the consumer can be protected from harm by police observing the lots and quickly taking enforcement action against actual or even suspected violators. At the same time, school grounds go unobserved and crimes against our children go unabated daily by criminals simply walking into the school houses.

So what is the problem? The problem is the political backfire against the National Law Enforcement Establishment by people objecting to their children being "tagged" for return or "observed" at school. Until the public relations folks can figure a way to make these child life saving technologies palatable to the general public, we will remain trapped in the technology of the 19th Century for protecting our children.

If you ask John Walsh if he would tag his son Adam if he had a second chance or the mother of "Amber" for whom the alert system is named, what do you suppose they would say? A child is going to be kidnapped and abused and murdered somewhere this month, unnecessarily. Ask yourself, "Why?"

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