Police will be careful not to overuse the Missing Child Alert Plan. Before sounding the alarm, investigators carefully evaluate the circumstances of a missing child report. All the police departments in the First Congressional District have agreed to participate. The Missing Child Alert Program is tremendously popular in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has frequently been successful in recovering missing children. Activating the alert often receives considerable press attention, which increases the reach of the emergency announcement - enlisting hundreds of thousands of people in their search parties.
Leads usually pour into police departments within hours.
Visclosky has been active in his struggle to find missing children. Visclosky has put a picture of a missing child from or very near the First Congressional District on each of his congressional envelopes. The first set features five children, one each from Gary and Hebron, and three from Hammond. Visclosky answers 60,000 pieces of constituent mail each year, so these envelopes will reach a large number of residents living in Northwest Indiana. Less than three percent of congressional offices currently post pictures of missing children on their envelopes.