In the span of two weeks, nearly 30 children have vanished in Cleveland, sparking concern from a local police chief who said he hasn’t seen anything like this in his 33-year career. As many as 27 children have been reported missing in the greater Cleveland area, according to Newburgh Heights police chief John Majoy.
Majoy also serves as the board president of Cleveland Missing, an Ohio nonprofit that offers direct support for friends and families that are searching for a missing loved one.
He called the number of missing children, whose ages range from 12 to 17, unprecedented when speaking to reporters. “There’s always peaks and valleys with missing persons, but this year it seems like an extraordinary year,” he told Fox News Digital.
“For some reason, in 2023, we’ve seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don’t know what’s going on with some of these kids, whether they’re being trafficked or whether they’re involved in gang activity or drugs.”
As of mid-May, there were a total of 56 active missing children cases in Cleveland, meaning almost half of the cases were reported in May. Majoy emphasized that he has never seen such high numbers of missing children in his 33-year career.
While Majoy claimed that it’s likely the majority of cases are runaways and not abductions, he added that teenagers are naïve when it comes to predators, who he can be ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing.’
The 27 missing children were reported between May 2 and May 16. And, unfortunately, most missing children don’t make the news, because there is usually no Amber Alert, said Majoy, describing the cases as ‘silent crimes happening right under our noses.’
There is a strict criteria for an Amber Alert – police have to have reasonable belief there has been an abduction, and that the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death. There also has to be enough descriptive information about the victim and the abduction.
‘The problem is where are they? Where do they go? They can be in a drug house or farmed to prostitution or caught up in drug trafficking or gangs.’
Finding the missing children is even more difficult when considering that most of the cases listed on the website for missing Cleveland children don’t include a photo. Last year, more than 15,000 children were reported in Ohio, with four that were found dead.
Abductions amounted to 8,525 of the cases, with 34 cases stemming from abductions by a noncustodial parent. Only five of the children had a stranger kidnap them, according to a report by the state’s attorney general Dave Yost.
Police were able to find 36 percent of the children, but 615 went into 2023 still missing. DailyMail.com has reached out to the Cleveland Police Department’s missing persons division for comment on this story.