State officials have a new resource to help them deal with child abduction cases in Iowa.

In response to the kidnapping and murders of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook-Morrissey in Evansdale in 2012 and Kathlynn Shepard in Dayton in 2013, the Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS) has formed a Child Abduction Response Team (CART) that will be better trained and better equipped to respond to child abduction cases in the future across the state.

For the past several months, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) has been working closely with AMBER Alert, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the U.S. Department of Justice, and nationally established CART programs across the county to identify the best ways to investigate these types of incidents. The Iowa CART program’s sole mission and main goal is recovering and returning abducted children to their caregivers.

The purpose of the CART program and the goal of DPS is to have readily trained experts in the field of child abduction investigations able to respond to the abduction immediately, assist the local law enforcement agencies for the duration of the event, and bring additional resources to the region to aid in the recovery effort.

CART programs are multidisciplinary teams made up of state, county and local law enforcement investigators, forensic experts, AMBER Alert coordinators, search and rescue professionals, prosecutors, criminal intelligence analysts, sex offender investigators, mental health professionals, emergency managers and victim service providers.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety announced the new program in conjunction with a daylong training session involving more than 120 law enforcement officials from across the state. There will be six regional CART offices that will help boost the manpower law enforcement has when an abduction is reported.

CART deployment can be used for all missing children cases and is not dependent of an Amber Alert being issued. Local law enforcement is encouraged to request DPS assistance immediately in cases of suspected child abductions.

CART can respond to these incidents only when local law enforcement agencies request that a team be deployed. Citizens are encouraged to contact their local police or sheriff’s department if they wish to have CART respond to an incident.

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