ASP Hosts Child Abduction Response Team Seminar

By Staff, 03/28/17 2:40 PM

HOPE – A Child Abduction Response Team training seminar was held Tuesday at the Arkansas State Police Troop G headquarters in Hope.

The Child Abduction Response Team (CART) is a team of law enforcement officials – FBI, U.S. Marshalls, State Police, Game and Fish officers, County officers and City officers – as well as non-law enforcement professionals from the community. All members are hand-picked to be on the team, which has about 25 members. The team is a specialized, rapid-response team who can be called in to assist other area agencies in the case of a missing child.

The seminar was led by FBI officials and featured a tabletop child abduction case, a pseudo-case to give participants a realistic idea of what happens during a CART response, starting with the initial 911 call. Those attending  broke up into multi-disciplinary groups to understand their role and how the groups – investigation, data analysis, etc. – interact with each other and the requesting agency.

CART is a nation-wide program and there are roughly 140 certified members through Arkansas. The goal of the Arkansas CART leaders is to have a certified team in every Arkansas State Police Troop location, bringing it to the first state to have such, nationwide.

The Troop G CART team covers Hempstead, Nevada, Miller, Lafayette, Columbia, Howard, Little River and Sevier counties.