Agencies Participate in Child Abduction Response

A group of people standing next to a fence - Playground
Detectives collect evidence in last year’s CART exercise.
Detectives collect evidence in last year’s CART exercise.

Law Enforcement agencies in the Keys, headed up by the Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, will be getting together next Wednesday, May 25th, for a Child Abduction Response Team exercise. The exercise will allow agencies that participate in the CART team to work together on a mock child abduction. The exercise will help all the agencies to see how such an incident will unfold, what resources are needed and will allow everyone to iron out any issues that arise prior to a real event taking place.

Residents of Stock Island and the Key West area may notice an increased police presence and police activity beginning at 9 a.m. Do not be alarmed, and do not call Sheriff’s dispatchers to find out what is happening. The activity will be related to the exercise.

The event will begin at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters building on Stock Island. There will be an initial briefing, after which there will be an announcement of a missing child. Teams of investigators, and others who participate on CART, will then deploy and perform the same types of activities they would perform in a real event, including evidence collection, and searches using both law enforcement officers and Police K-9 teams.

There was a similar exercise in 2010, in the upper Keys. If you would like to see photographic examples of what happened in that exercise, visit the Sheriff’s Office web site.