Introducing our series on police MISPER searches
All police officers—from PolSAs and the newly formed Initial Missing Person Search Advisors (IMPSA), through all ranks to Chief Constables, and Police and Crime Commissioners—want to optimise the efficiency of missing person searches. The problem is, a high proportion of those either directly involved in MISPER or responsible for operational performance still have little alternative to largely manual processes that don’t optimise efficiency or create time savings.
Increase in High Risk Missing Persons requires a more advanced approach
Of the 170,000*-plus people reported missing in the UK every year (and the nearly 350,000* reported missing incidents per year), thankfully only a small proportion are categorised as ‘High Risk’. But this still represents a significant workload for many forces.
Indeed, the IMPSA role has been established to alleviate the pressure on PolSAs caused by the growing number of High Risk Missing Persons. These cases often result in high resource demands and attract significant media attention, further intensifying the strain on staff across all levels.
This increase in demand begs the question: Are we working as quickly and as effectively as we can to find those at high risk, or is there a better way of working?
Finding a way to dramatically reduce search timescales and risk
Every second counts in a High Risk search operation. If an advanced solution were available that could dramatically reduce search timescales and risk by optimising the efficiency of missing person searches, then it would have to be explored, wouldn’t it?
Now, such an advanced solution is available. It’s called Search-PRAS from Cunning Running, and it’s a development of CTS-PRAS, our unique Counter Terrorism and Search analysis system, as used by government Counter Terrorism agencies nationwide.
How satisfying is it when everything comes together operationally?
Specifically developed and optimised for police missing persons operations, Search-PRAS is an integrated, highly automated ‘best of the best’ solution that combines planning, 2D and 3D mapping, aerial photography and visualisation.
At the same time you get integrated behavioural and statistical data sets, as well as built-in police procedural structure and templates. So, altogether in a single, integrated, advanced tool, you get accelerated planning and decision-making, and optimum execution of rapid, reduced-risk missing person searches.
The benefits of a similar advanced approach have been demonstrated across the Counter Terrorism community, but the Search-PRAS variant is not yet widely known in wider policing. In this series of articles we aim to start to change that.
That “Eureka moment”, in the words of a highly experienced Lead PolSA…
When police search advisors do experience Search-PRAS and see what it can do, it’s typically a revelation. As one Lead PolSA of 20-plus years’ experience attests:
“Seeing what Search-PRAS could do was an absolute Eureka moment for me. Everything’s connected and highly automated: 2D and 3D mapping and visualisation, data sets and procedural structure, all together and all connected. Using it was ‘chalk and cheese’ compared to the traditional, manual and very time-consuming ways of setting up, planning out and running a search. Search-PRAS immediately made us far more efficient and enabled us to use available resources to best effect. Perhaps most importantly, it very significantly cut timescales—and not only in the really critical early stages, but throughout the search operation.”
Introducing our extended series of MISPER educational articles
So, against the above backdrop, we’re delighted to introduce an extended series of articles on the key operational issues for police forces in the planning and execution of missing person searches.
In each instalment of this series, we will explore a particular MISPER search challenge or issue and outline how the special capabilities of Search-PRAS provide the solution. The aim is that, at the end of the series, anyone unfamiliar with best practice in integrated, technology-enabled missing person searches will have a very clear picture of the ‘art of the possible’.
Follow the developing search story
The first of these 12 articles, written in collaboration with experienced PolSAs, goes live early in the New Year.
We hope you find the whole series informative and insightful. More than that, we want to get the Search-PRAS story out there and shared as widely as possible across all ranks in the UK’s police forces. In that way, we trust that together we can, and will, find missing people faster and thereby reduce the risk of them coming to harm.
To receive notification when each article goes live, please follow the Cunning Running company page on LinkedIn, or the LinkedIn pages of Stephen Mallon or Phil Cowell.
*Statistics developed by Missing People using statistics in the National Crime Agency report 2022–23. The figures used are 1. the number of individuals (“the number of individual adults and children reported missing, which does not reflect repeat missing”), and 2. “The number of incidents (“the total number of reports of someone going missing, including missing incidents”). Missing People (www.missingpeople.org.uk) is the only UK charity providing a lifeline to those affected by a disappearance or thinking of going missing.
