Department of Justice, Justice

Will Sessions's Justice Department Help With #MissingDCGirls?

Are these white men going to care about #MissingDCGirls?

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Nope, I couldn't find a stock photo of a missing persons milk carton with a black face on the carton. I looked. (Photo by Taro Yamasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

Nope, I couldn’t find a stock photo of a missing persons milk carton with a black face on the carton. I looked. (Photo by Taro Yamasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, in black America, this has been happening. From The Root’s Yesha Callahan:

Over the last week, my timeline on Twitter has been inundated with retweets from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., with photos of missing black and Latinx teens. Within the last week, 10 teens have gone missing in D.C. But you wouldn’t know about this unless a) You follow the Metro Police Department’s Twitter feed, b) You’re a relative of one of the missing or c) You watch the local news. And even with c), I can’t say that I’ve seen news reports of all these teenagers.

Callahan has updated her post to say that there were 22 open cases of missing teens, predominately black or brown women, logged since the first of the year.

D.C. police say that these numbers are not unusual. They say that what’s different is that they’ve started putting their open missing teens cases on social media.

Which is kind of like saying: Oh, I never shower, I just ran out of deodorant.

Now that people are aware of the problem, people are concerned. Well… black people are concerned. As Callahan explains:

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On Wednesday, there was a town hall meeting held in D.C. in response to the missing girls. The room was filled with black men and women who wanted answers. But of course, even in a city noted for its rising gentrification, there was not one white face in the crowd.

The black/white split over whether missing minority women is an issue is kind of important. Lawmakers have now asked the Justice Department and the FBI for help in finding these women. This seems like a good time to mention that FBI director James Comey seemed to purposely sabotage the campaign of the first major party female nominee for president, and that the Justice Department is currently run by Jeff Sessions, who has been accused of being a KKK sympathizer.

Are these white men going to care about #MissingDCGirls? From NBC:

Black members of Congress are calling for the Justice Department to help police investigate a large number of missing children in Washington, D.C…

The letter, dated Tuesday and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, was sent by Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond, D-La., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District in Congress. They called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey to “devote the resources necessary to determine whether these developments are an anomaly or whether they are indicative of an underlying trend that must be addressed.”

An email sent to the Justice Department seeking comment was not immediately answered Thursday.

Don’t hold your breath.

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The FBI can find you, if they want to. But it’s hard for me to imagine that Sessions and Comey will make this a priority.

Does Anyone Care About DC’s Missing Black and Latinx Teens? [The Root]
#MissingDCGirls Finally Caught People’s Attention, but How Do You Bring Them Home? [The Root]
Black Lawmakers Call on FBI to Help on Missing Black Girls [NBC]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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