= new reply since forum marked as read
then maybe they should start covering those stories! 
True but ....
Why people of color get less attention than whites when they go missing
“When a person of color disappears, people get the assumption that they must have done something to deserve it," one expert said.
By Jessica HillCape Cod Times
Donald Changeau, Maxberly Zapata, Donald Sampson, Angel Viera, Kency Diaz-Siguaque and Charles McCurdy all went missing from the greater South Shore area. Zapata, McCurdy and Changeau have been found.
Missing-person cases involving people of color in the U.S. are less likely to be solved.
Oftentimes, when a person of color or a child of color is reported missing, they are classified as a runaway.
Cases involving African Americans remain open and unresolved four times longer than cases involving white and Hispanic people.
When friends and family failed to hear from Jalajhia Finklea a day after she went missing, they contacted police and media outlets — anybody who could help spread the word and help them find her.
Finklea, a pregnant 18-year-old member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, was last seen on Oct. 20 getting into a car with Luis Zaragoza on Coggeshall Street in New Bedford.
After more than a month of interstate investigations by police in New Bedford, Mashpee and Florida, Finklea's body, with two shotgun wounds, was found in a field off Route 95 in Fellsmere, Florida. Her death was ruled a homicide, and Zaragoza, her suspected killer, died in a police shootout.
Finklea's story, although heart-wrenching, offered closure so her family, friends and the tribal community could begin to heal.
But her case is the exception, not the rule. For many families whose missing loved one is a person of color, that opportunity for closure is rare.
Weymouth's Angel Viera, 14, was last seen Dec. 22, 2020. Donald Sampson was reported missing by his sister in Randolph 10 years ago and hasn't been found. Kency Diaz-Siguaque, who would now be 20, has been missing from Attleboro since Nov. 16, 2017.
In Quincy, Hispanic 17-year-old Maxberly Zapata went missing in June. She was found shortly after.
More:Missing Mashpee teen last seen in New Bedford
Missing-person cases involving people of color in the U.S. are less likely to be solved compared with cases involving white people. Additionally, the number of missing people of color is disproportionately higher and their stories are oftenunderrepresentedin national conversations and mainstream media, according to theBlack and Missing Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about missing people of color across the country.
Jalajhia Finklea, an 18-year-old member if the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, has been missing since October.
Before she was found, Finklea was the fifth missing woman of color in Massachusetts reported to the foundation's website, joining the unsolved disappearances of Lisa Lvette Hall, Rosa Ramos, Savannah Whitney Canada and Jennifer Kabura Mbugua. Another Native American woman, Mykilee Driver, who lived in Mashpee for about eight years, went missing in November during a visit with her mother in Portland, Oregon and has yet to be found.
More
olice report: Missing teen with Mashpee ties was pregnant
"Our women and girls are treated much like our Mother Earth," said Jessie "Little Doe" Baird, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council vice chair, in a statement. "They are stolen and violated, with very few giving voice to either the occurrence or expressing any outrage or solutions."
Police in Portland, Orgeon, are seeking information as to the whereabouts of Mykilee Driver.
Of all missing persons recorded in the U.S. in 2019, 33.7 percent were Black and 59 percent were white and Hispanic/Latino, according to the National Crime Information Center within the FBI. A total of 205,802 Black people and 359,768 white people, including Hispanic/Latino, went missing last year. The FBI counts white and Hispanic/Latino people together.
In 2017, Native American women represented 0.7 percent (633) of the FBI's missing-person cases.
More:Mashpee tribe offers reward in search for missing teen
For comparison,13.4 percent of the national population is Black, while 60.1 percent is white, 18.5 percent is Hispanic/Latino and 2.4 percent is Native American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Black women make up fewer than 7 percent of the total population, yet represent nearly 10 percent of all missing Americans, according to the crime information center. Native American women represent about 1.3 percent of the total population, according to the Census Bureau.
When Finklea disappeared, the Black and Missing Foundation used its social media platform to raise awareness about her, said Natalie Wilson, co-founder and director of public relations. The foundation also provided support for her mother, Amanda Costa.
Classified as runaways
Oftentimes, she said, when a person of color or a child of color is reported missing, they are classified as a runaway.
“If you’re classified as a runaway, you do not receive the Amber Alert or any type of media coverage,” Wilson said. “And awareness is key in finding our missing.”
After Finklea went missing, for example, rumors raged on social media platforms and blogs purporting that she ran away.
More:Suspect linked to missing Mashpee teen shot and killed in Florida
People of color who go missing are also often deemed as being involved in criminal activity, Wilson said, and “therefore they are not deemed worthy enough to be found.”
For instance, before 11 women were found on the property of serial killer Anthony Sowell in Cleveland in 2009, when families went to law enforcement asking for help to find their loved ones, they were told that the women were on drugs or ran away, Wilson said. And they failed to do anything to find them.
The case of Kristopher Lewis also sticks out in Wilson's mind. At 13 years old, he disappeared in 2014 from Boston after getting off a school bus. He never made it home and has never been found, she said.
“When a person of color disappears, people get the assumption that they must have done something to deserve it,” said Meaghan Good, founder of the Charley Project, a website that publicizes cold missing person cases across the country.
It is especially true with Black men, Good said. They are among the most common demographic of missing adults, but they are often notcovered in the news, she said.
More:Body found in Florida ID'd as missing Mashpee teen
Wealth and social status also play a role in finding people, Good said. When Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped in Utah in 2002, for instance, her father was able to hire a publicist and she was eventually found after a stranger recognized her at a fast-food restaurant, she said.
But if a member of an immigrant family who does not speak English goes missing, they may not have the resources to publicize the case, she said.
Falmouth Police Chief Edward Dunne, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said he does not think race plays a role in how police in Massachusetts investigate a missing person’s case.
Police departments try to find as much information as possible, he said. They enter the missing person into national databases, follow up on leads, but sometimes people associated with the missing person do not want to talk with them, such as if they have a criminal background, Dunne said. At some point, police run out of leads and cases go cold.
News organizations must reassess
Still, cases involving African Americans remain open and unresolved four times longer than cases involving white and Hispanic people, according to a College of William and Mary study published in 2019.
“Blacks on average remain missing longer and are more likely to still be missing by the end of our observation period than non-Black children,” according to a study by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health published in 2018.
The 2018 study concluded that the greater media attention missing white girls receive may aid search efforts, whereas resources available for search efforts involving Black children are more limited, and that law enforcement may put more effort into cases involving missing white boys.
“These mechanisms unequivocally imply lower daily chances for Black children to be found,” according to the study.
More:Missing Mashpee woman last seen in Oregon
Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a nonprofit organization that works to help newsrooms reflect the diversity of the United States, said the problem in how news organizations cover missing people stems from a long-term, systemic approach in covering communities of color.
And to fix that problem requires deep, soul-searching assessments on the part of the news organizations, he said. When an organization’s coverage of people of color hovers around only crime and violence, or people of color being impoverished, navigating addiction or being a drain on society, there is a devaluation that subconsciously emerges.
So, when a person of color goes missing, he said, the urgency and the value placed on those members of the community are not present.
“If we’re not saying why this matters to us as news organizations, to our society, and to our communities,” Reynolds said, “we’re not going to come up with solutions that often stick.”
'It takes all of us'
“It takes all of us — law enforcement, the community as well as the media — to bring awareness to our missing and to help us find them,” Wilson said. “We all play an important role. And oftentimes these missing individuals are faceless and voiceless.
"We need to remember that these are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents, cousins, friends, neighbors that are missing. And they deserve to be found. Or, their families deserve closure after what happened to them.”
The discovery of Finklea's body, while not the outcome her family and friends had hoped for, allows them to start the healing process.
"This is a terrible tragedy for the family, and my heart goes out to them," Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said.
Jessica Hill can be reached at jhill@capecodtimes.com Follow her on Twitter: @jhill_yeah. Gwyneth Burns contributed to this story.
Because it really was up in the air.
Want those people ever shut up about it?
