Watson Gives New Hope in Efforts to Track Missing Children

The Interstate Association for Stolen Children (IASC) in Sacramento, California has a new high-tech tool that accelerates its investigations into cases of missing children. The same tool helps investigators present their conclusions to law enforcement officials in a clear and compelling format. The tool is Watson®. Its exclusive method, Visualization by Query, allows users to ask questions of their data and receive the answers in easy-to-read charts. These charts enable investigators to quickly uncover patterns and analyze "links" or relationships within vast amounts of data.

For the IASC, a non-profit group dedicated to finding missing children, Watson charts quickly identify relationships relevant to victims and highlight reasons for their disappearances. IASC Executive Director Greg Mengell fills in the names and other relevant data in the correct places, queries the data, and then lets Watson go to work. In moments, he has charts in his hands that illustrate the important relationships in a case. Since 1997, the IASC has used Watson to help analyze intelligence gathered from various outside sources, such as other associations joining in the search for missing children, as well as drug enforcement squads. As many as 99 percent of the IASC's cases are related to narcotics. Surprisingly, Mr. Mengell has found that the link between missing children and illegal drugs is not restricted to urban areas. Even in small, rural communities, drugs are a key factor in child disappearances.

After a decade of leading investigations into cases of missing children, Mr Mengell now anticipates a possible link between new disappearances and drugs. He starts an investigation by asking some basic questions. How did the crime happen? What is the profile of someone who would commit such a crime? Who would have access to the child? What are the traits of those individuals? Then, Mr Mengell uses Watson to correlate information about the victim and the crime with information about people who have had access to the child - and their activities. He takes a close look at illegal drug trafficking and dealing in the region where the crime took place.

"The link analysis gives me all the relationships and can indicate reasons why a child is missing," he said. "For example, there may be an abduction involved in retaliation for encroaching on a drug ring's territory." Even if a drug connection is apparent from the outset, Watson's analysis helps the IASC see all the pieces of a case in a new light, revealing information that can accelerate the investigation. "Drug rings are clearly visible in the Watson charts," he said. You may already have inklings as to what is going on, but Watson identifies links that, in turn, lead to new links."

In some cases, the relationships to be analyzed are exceedingly complex. Mr Mengell described a case in which three small drug cartels were competing for business in the same area. After one ring burned down the headquarters of another, a child was kidnapped in retaliation. In this case, one of the cartels also had connections to a pornography ring and a Satanic cult.
Such criminal associations are not uncommon. In fact, drugs, pornography and prostitution comprise the typical trio of pursuits of crime organizations, according to Mr Mengell. In cases with multiple themes and multiple suspects, Watson can be especially useful in mapping possible scenarios.

A former police officer, Mr. Mengell works closely with law enforcement officials on a local and national level to recover missing children, as well as to intervene in prostitution cases and to work with kids at risk. He uses Watson to present his findings to the police. Watson creates readily understood presentations of the complex relationships that underlie these crimes. What's more, Mr Mengell said, the inclusion of ANACAPA standards for representing investigative information in Watson enables him to produce a presentation much more easily than if he had to write the standards by hand.

Mr Mengell learned of Watson from his former criminal intelligence teacher who worked in the California State Bureau of Organized Crime and Criminal Intelligence. A few of the larger law enforcement groups with which Mr Mengell collaborates are also familiar with Watson or use it in their own departments. In fact, Watson is employed by law enforcement and government agencies throughout the world to pilot intelligence-led investigations. Using Watson, the IACP hopes to rescue missing children and to identify their abductors by restructuring data into charts and graphs that will make connections apparent to law enforcement authorities.