Chickasaw County Sheriff breaks down the process of filing a missing persons report

CHICKASAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) –  It can be a traumatic time for loved ones, filing a missing person report.

Hours can turn to days, days can turn to months, and months can turn to years.

Chickasaw County Sheriff James Meyers explained that each case was different, but there were mandatory steps they must take to track down that missing person.

“Normally what we do in every case when somebody does call it a missing person, it is taken very seriously and we just start from the very start,” said Sheriff Meyers. “We try to find all their contacts friends, family members especially with today’s age with multimedia like Facebook and the apps we find a lot of information out on that.”

Meyers added that social media has played a major part in solving cases as well.

“It’s like a three-legged stool is what I call it,” said Sheriff Meyers. “You have the public, you have the media and you have law enforcement. And with all three of those working together, it just makes it a whole lot easier. Because TV and radio can get the word out there so fast and especially with Facebook. Every news agency now has a Facebook page, and a lot of folks now that’s how they find out everything on Facebook. Just like us, we have a web page for our sheriff’s department. We put a lot of information on there and it helps us tremendously.”

Meyers said when a missing person has dementia or other illnesses, the challenges were different, so they must handle it with caution.

“A lot of times we have to call in our search and rescue,” said Sheriff Meyers. “Which fire departments help us a lot on that. There’s a lot of training involved in that as far as how to talk to people because a lot of times you have to, every case is different you know, some of them get very violent where some of them revert back to being just like a child.”