Expert: Jack Toomey - 1/3/2005

Question
Jack, thanks so much for your information, it is very helpful. A couple of followup questions:

You indicated that the police could break into the house if there was a reason, like mail piling up, a car in the driveway, etc.

So let's assume the family requested the post office to re-route their mail to another address, so there would be no mail piling up. Let's also assume that the family car is gone, so it would be like they were on vacation. The only thing that is odd is that the school-age child stopped going to school and the school was never notified.

Following your suggestion about a "family specialist" being sent from the school to the home to visit, and that person finding no one home and no indication of any foul play, if the person made a report to the police, would that report all by itself be enough for the average suburban police dept to break into the house? Would it be realistic for the police to take that report and decide to do nothing, waiting for some evidence of a problem before breaking in or investigating further?

In my plot, the house really is empty, the family left in the middle of the night. My main character finds the disappearance of the child (a classmate of his own child) strange, and I want to make it so that the dissapearance is not enough for the police to do more than a quick, superficial investigation. This way, my main character (who is just an average guy, not in law enforcement or anything like that) tries to investigate this himself.

Let me know what you think. Thanks again very much,
Chris
-------------------------
Followup To
Question -
I am attempting to write my first novel, and I have a couple of questions relating to the plot I am thinking of. Assume a family (father, mother, and an elementary school-age child) living in a suburban community suddenly disappeared. I am wondering how this would typically play out: the child's absence from school without any contact from the parents would be noted by the teacher, who would try to call the family, then eventually alert school personnel. After approx. how many days would the school personnel take some kind of action? I'm assuming they would probably notify local police, is this right? If the police did a driveby, observed no evidence of any problem and had no other missing person report, how would the police handle this? Perhaps interview the neighbors? The home shows no sign of foul play, doors are locked, lights are off, utilities are on, phone goes to answering machine, house appears empty, neighbors did not see or hear anything suspicious, neighbors only say that the mssing family seemed pleasant. Would the police have reason or legal authority to break into the house after a certain length of time? Let's assume the father is self-employed and mother is a homemaker, so there is no employer to contact. Newly delivered mail is not being picked up. I am assuming that the police would not take much action without a missing person report or other evidence of a crime (bad odor, etc). I'd like my story to be realistic, so any information about how the police would typically respond to a situation like this would be greatly appreciated.
Answer -
Hello,

    You have to understand that are thousands of police departments and even more school systems and each would handle this type of situation in a different way because we don't have a national policy on police procedure.  But you would be safe to assume that after a period of time the school system would make inquiries about the missing students.  I have never heard of a school system notifiying the police about a missing student unless there is an abuse issue but in your scenario the first call to the police would probably come from the neighbors or the mailman.  That is how a lot of unattended deaths are usually found.  A neigbbor notices inactivity or the mail and newspapers piling up they fear the worst and they call the police and the body is found.

    So in your story if the school system has to be involved there is what is called "family specialists" or "family counselers" or social services (all depending on the termonolgy of the area) who might be assigned to make a home visit and they could be the ones who discover the pileup of mail and newspapers and they could call the police.  Now whether the police would break in immediately is in doubt.  They would probably interview neighbors and look for other signs of foul play and I would imagine that eventually they would break in.  The police do have that right under the basic rule that they are in existence to protect life and property and there could easily be someone injured inside or there could be a dead body. I can't tell you how many times I have done the exact same thing based on accumulation of mail, newspapers, car in the driveway, etc.

  So to sum up....no there does not have to a missing person report to break into a house.  All you need is a police supervisor with some brains.  

   If you need any more help please let me know.

Answer
    Well if the police went to the post office and verified that the mail had been rerouted then that would be more than enough to dismiss the whole thing as an irresponsible family that did not bother to withdraw their child from school or even notify the school that the child would not be attending.  So with that information in hand the police would basically clear the call and move on to the next thing.  It would not be the business of the police to worry about why or where the family had gone since it is certainly not against the law to move without notifying the school......just a responsible thing to do so they would not be breaking into any houses if all these facts were present.

   So it would be very believable if the police found no mail, went to the post office and found that the mail had been forwarded, told the school that the family had apparentely moved and then cleared the call and then your civilian could do his thing.