Saturday 25 May, on the occasion of the International Missing Children’s Daythe police, the Penelope Toscana association and the students of the Florentine Council meet at the Santa Maria Novella station to raise citizens’ awareness of a phenomenon that has already been identified by the railway police only in Tuscany since the beginning of 2024 200 minors who ran away from home.
The Anti-Crime Police Division will meet representatives of the Student Council and some schools at the Police Headquarters, to also address the theme of youth hardship on the day dedicated to the day established to remember Etan Patz, just 6 years old, of whom all trace was lost in New York that day in 1979.
The phenomenon naturally also affects Italy with important numbers which since 2007, the year of its establishment in Rome, have been collected and analyzed by the office of Government Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons. The initiative, carried out in collaboration with the Penelope Toscana Association, will also involve students from secondary schools in the province.
The stage for the first part of this information campaign will be the sSanta Maria Novella stationwithin which the agents of the Florence Police Headquarters, the railway police and the scientific police will set up an information stand where, among other things, a booklet and a bookmark will be distributed, created for the occasion by the Central Anti-Crime Service, in collaboration with the Postal and Communications Police Service of the Department of Public Security.
For the little ones there will be a small one demonstration of the efficiency of police dogs, a fundamental resource for security as well as for the search for missing persons. Also present is the «Poli012», the now famous wooden reproduction of a small police helicopter, which the little ones can climb on board.
The station was chosen to host the event because it is precisely in this place of continuous passage that every year the Railway Police finds several missing minors, thus putting an end to the anguish of entire families, already followed, in many cases, by Penelope Italia Odv Association of families and friends of missing persons.
This year Polfer has already tracked down over 200 minors in Tuscan stationsa figure which, naturally not definitive, could end at the end of the year with a significant increase compared to 2023, a period closed with around 240 young people found in the railway areas of our region.
Institutions and students will also discuss the youthful discomfort, often the cause of disappearance of those who experience concrete problems in solitude every day. The debate will be moderated by sector specialists belonging to the anti-crime police division of the Florence Police Headquarters, with its manager, Dr. Maria Cristina Papa and the chief commissioner in charge of the Minors and Vulnerable Victims Office, Dr. Nadia Giannattasio. Then through the testimony of an expert from the Operations Room of the Florence Police Headquarters (where the very first emergency call arrives and from which all the necessary operations are activated) and from the Scientific Police (specialised in all types of surveys aimed at discovering any sort of trace), the procedures implemented as soon as a missing minor is reported will be illustrated.
