This festive season, remind parents that their precious kids could be abducted and killed if the rescue dogs don’t find them immediately.
What better way to send happy holiday greetings than the $19.99 FindEm yznznkhiys
Kit, that preserves a child’s scent for the day they are abducted? As the website declares, “A Child Goes Missing Every 40 Seconds.”
Ok, so they forgot to add that a child going missing has nothing to do with the number of children who are actually abducted. Just like the number of children falling off swings is not the same as the number of children who fall off swings and suffer traumatic brain injuries. And speaking of swings, guess what image the kit uses on its home page?
You know, if I were a swing I would sue for character defamation. Not so long ago, an empty swing just represented a swing not currently in use. Now it represents raped and murdered children.
So, anyway, next to the photo of empty swings, the website explains:
“Scent articles have been used as a viable and dependable tool for K9 Search and Rescue teams used to locate missing persons for decades, although there has been a consistent challenge in finding a scent sample that hasn’t been cross contaminated. For example, a child’s pillowcase has been touched by their parents and siblings…creating challenges for the canine search team and wasting vital time that sometimes is the difference between life and death. The Find’em Scent Kit is much like a life insurance policy: you hope you’ll never need it, but once a need arises, it’s already too late- those that are prepared will be the ones that benefit from their investment.”
Clearly the idea here is, “Why not?” After all, you most likely won’t need it, but why not have it just in case?
The problem is “Why not?” is first cousin to, “What if????” As in, “Why not put a pot of boiling oil above every school entrance? What if a psychopath is entering the building, the school secretary can simply activate the oil to spill on the gunman.”
But of course, by the time we are putting pots of boiling oil (or their security equivalent) above school doors,we have already bought into the idea that our kids are in constant danger from the very worst of the worst. This blood-curdling fear that then seeps into every crevice of childrearing, leading us to drive the kids to school, supervise all playdates, scrutinize all school volunteers, forbid all sleepovers…and pretty worst-first all the time.
So if you’re hoping for some happy holidays, or a happy life, here’s my gift to you: Don’t buy into the idea that you’re going to need the services of a search dog team. – L
Now I’m sort of tempted to buy it as a gag gift for someone. Scare the bejeesies out of some new parent. I know my heart would skip a beat if I unwrapped that!
I went on the website because I was wondering how it works. Do you snip the kid’s hair? Do they have to rub up on something?
It doesn’t explain at all how it works, but I found something even more ludicrous. The creators/marketers/what-have-you want to put the kits into correctional facilities, so that law enforcement can find people released from prison (and they specifically identify sexual predators as an example). They call this an “all-too-common need”…? How in the world is that expected to work?
It might be the tree, look at how those branches are bent. That tree is EVIL..EVIL I tell you!
The testimonials on the site are hilarious, just statistics to bolster the missing claim (and highlight the subtext that those gone missing are abused/abducted/killed).
You can also by one for Seniors, in case you have a wandering parent in your house. They cover all the bases.
On local news last night they were proudly announcing some organization and it’s local where it would be offering finger printing for your children. They’ve done that here before and I just can’t like the idea. We have a saying and it’s actually biblical, ‘don’t speak a thing into existence’. In my humble opinion it’s a money grab aimed at exploiting parent’s fears. If you think about it, it will not prevent your child from being abducted and it probably won’t be the means of identification if the worst were to happen. There are other means for forensics to accomplish that. It’s just another money making ploy by unethical people.
I need this because… I don’t already have a constant pile of my kid’s dirty clothes or bedding somewhere in my house?
I remember reading that only 3% of the missing/abduction cases handled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were kidnapping by strangers. 75% of abductions were committed by the non-custodial divorced parent, and most of those were total bulls#!t.
Most “abductions” are: “My bastard of an ex-husband said he’s have junior home from the baseball game by 5. Maybe the game went into extra innings, or they stopped for ice cream, or it’s just bad traffic, but it’s now 5:30 so I’m going to call in an abduction and jam that son-of-a-bitch up in court for the next couple of months and then maybe agree to drop the charges in exchange for another 5% of his salary in alimony.”
I worked for a law firm, trust me, I’ve seen it time and time again.
The remaining 22% of non stranger “abductions” are either estranged family members (grandam who wants to see her grandchild but is feuding with mom) or more often the sibling or new wife/girlfriend of the ex-husband. The latter is really common. I remember one case, it was dad’s turn to pick up junior from school. He was running late so had his girlfriend do it and drop junior off at his place. The ex-wife found out dad’s young squeeze picked up the kid from school and called the cops to report a kidnapping just to get dad’s girlfriend thrown in jail. The kid was safe the entire time.
I digress, but… In all of these cases, how useful would a dog have been? Not at all, really.
At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if some company started selling RFID chips for parents to tag their children with to track them by GPS on their smart phone.
tis the season to be jolly
“I need this because… I don’t already have a constant pile of my kid’s dirty clothes or bedding somewhere in my house?”
That was my thought. The dirty socks I seem to find in every corner of my house on a daily basis won’t do?
The “scare” sites, usually selling a product or a service, have no compunction about seriously misusing statistics. We spent months dealing with one, making complaints to their BBB for false advertising, etc. To get the BBB off their backs, they agreed to remove the most egregious lies, and they did. Some months later, the same figures were back up. It appears to be a losing battle. No one else cares. It is up to the public not to be gullible, to check out claims and advertising figures. Anything focusing on stranger abductions, especially abductions by those on a sex offender registry, are a waste of time, money, and effort. Those are rare, random occurrences, and you cannot guard against random occurrences. Virtually all abductions/molestations of children are at the hands of those close to them in their lives. That is where we need to focus our resources with comprehensive education and prevention programs.
I recently did some work with US police specifically on the use of tracking subjects. Some of our staff were volunteers to be tracked down by dogs.
I was surprised that dog tracking techniques were almost nothing like what you’ve seen in movies. What they are detecting is far more complex than simply scent from a shirt in a bag. This product seems to be based on the false public perception of how tracking works, but not how its really done. And apart from that, the ‘kit’ looks to be just some latex gloves and a ziplock bag. How hard would it be to make your own kit for $2?
It looks like it has a cloth in a sealed bag that you wipe your child with and then seal it in another bag. You then put the sealed bag into the so called “vault” and use that plastic zip tie to seal the “vault”. You could get the same result by wiping your kid with an unscented Kleenex and sealing that in a Ziploc bag.
As far as the missing children statistics go, they are a joke. A coworker of mine obtained custody of his two children. He removed the children from their Mother’s house and moved out of State with them. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had their pictures on their website for years. He had to carry a copy of the court order granting him custody with him at all times.
Yes, the NCMEC uses some of the worst scare tactics of all. I don’t know what their motives are. However, if you dig deeply into the actual statistics, you can track down the fact that the number of children actually taken each year by a stranger or near-stranger for a nefarious purpose, which will occasionally include the abductor keeping and raising the child as her–usually–own averages around a 100.
Anyone that knows anything about dogs, knows that only the freshest of clothing worn will give the best results. Socks work best.
Yes, scent dogs are amazing, but they do not work miracles.
Secondly, if you are that paranoid that you need a kit like this………..DON’T HAVE KIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What works so much better is soaking their underwear in bacon drippings. The meaty scent attracts the canine search team in no time and works faster than any kit on the market.
I also sew bully sticks inside my children’s winter coats. They sometimes have to fight off coyotes and neighborhood dogs on the way to school but it’s a small price to pay when it comes to the safety of my children.
The pot of boiling water will do well to stop the Mongol Horde
If a child goes missing every 40 seconds we’ll soon be out of children.
On a serious note, law enforcement agencies that quote these statistics should be ashamed of themselves. They know they’re wildly inaccurate and yet they continue to do it in order to keep the public terrified and easily manipulated.
The grim reality is that if it’s at the point where your kid is being tracked by dogs, it’s almost certainly already too late. That’s what really makes me irate about this ad — this thing won’t protect ANY child from ANYTHING. Not only is it absurd overkill, it’s an out and out lie.
What mother doesn’t have a pile for dirty laundry at any given moment? I can look around my house right now and find a dozen “scent articles” strewn about.
Talk about “money for nothing”!
“A Child Goes Missing Every 40 Seconds.â€
Yawn. And a missing child is found every 39 and a half.
I can’t help but laugh at this kind of idiocy. Where do they sell these things? In the supermarket at the cash registers, next to the candy bars? Do people look at their grocery list, humming some song, saying, ‘tooth paste, got that, bread, check, ah, almost forgot the search dog kit in case little Johnny gets abducted from the swing tomorrow afternoon.’??
Sorry, but it’s just hilarious in its craziness.
@AmyO, I’m really confused. So someone is released from prison, presumably after their sentence is served. Why do they need to be tracked and found? And where would the track start?
The photo of the empty swings really stood out to me, because the swings (that haven’t been torn down over “safety concerns”) aren’t empty because kids are being abducted; they’re empty because too many paranoid helicopter parents don’t send their kids to the park to play……and too many would-be free-range parents are afraid to do so, because of the craziness over Debra Harrell, and other parents, getting arrested and put in jail over it. So, that’s the real reason why the swings are sitting empty.
Even in the incredibly unlikely event that you needed a scent trail for your child, wouldn’t the laundry basket, or the child’s bed, be a better place to get it than something you might have locked in a box years ago? I mean, people’s scents probably change over time, especially children.
Hmm, now I have a good excuse for why I can never really get ahead of the laundry. So I always have a good scent trail on my loved ones. Yup, that’s totally the reason…
yup, a child goes missing (as in “out of sight of their parents”) every 40 seconds.
Most of them are just in the next room, playing, and so involved in their play that they fail to respond to calls…
Most of the rest are just as innocently outside in the garden…
Don’t forget the dental impression kit. Because that’s a happy thought.
This is nonsense. If parents really cared about their children, they would hire Aboriginal trackers as household staff. Because I care so much more about my precious snowflakes than the rest of you, I hired two…expensive, but worth every penny. After all, you can never be too careful.
Below is my FaceBook exchange with this company.
It is absolutely abhorrent that you use such ridiculous and untrue scare tactics to peddle your wares. The statistic you cite has no relation whatsoever to the actual (extremely small) number of kids who are abducted and need to be “tracked.” Shameful.
Brooks
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Find’em Scent Kit I’m sorry you feel that way Mr. Adams. I don’t know your background in what you do so I’m going to keep it short and professional. I can say I do know what happens to some of our unfortunate missing children from both my partner and my on the job experiences. When it goes bad it really goes bad.
Statistics are statistics. If I can help educate our country on how effective a tool like the Find’em Scent Kit is during that unforseen event when it takes place then we might just save a life. Why don’t you talk to a family that’s had a child kidnapped and killed. Ask them if they would be interested in a kit like ours for less than .5 cents a day. Seems like a no brainer to me and everyone that hears about it. But you’re right, it is a small number as a whole; however, there is still to many lives lost though and one life lost is one to many.
Respectfully sent.
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Brooks Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I don’t have anything against your product. I view it as similar to certain kinds of insurance companies sell that won’t be used, but make people feel better. I suspect that such a product would be useful if a kids got lost in the woods, but most kids who are abducted aren’t found alive by police dogs. As you probably know from the FBI records, that most recently looked at a decade’s worth of data, that true stranger abductions account for .0068% of all kidnappings, with the majority being during a family dispute. My concern is more philosophical. Despite the fact that crime is at historic lows, most Americans believe crime is way up. They also believe abductions are up (they are not) shootings are up (they are down) and that kids are in constant danger. Everyone from the 24/7 news hysteria machine to companies selling products work tirelessly to scare the wits out of parents. Most schools in the U.S. are now prisons in permanent lock-down. You just about have to give a DNA sample to get in the door. Men are treated with great suspicion (especially middle-aged white guys like me), and all in the name of preventing every possible incident that might happen in this big, bad world.
Given the 48 day manhunt required to find this guy
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-wanted-fugitive-eric-frein-captured-alive/story?id=26587018
I wouldn’t put too much faith in the abilities of tracking dogs.
“Don’t forget the dental impression kit. Because that’s a happy thought.”
Yeah, that’s still my favorite, because at least that one assumes the kid is dead and this one cowardly allowes for a happy ending (eh… You know what I mean.). Where is the Halloween-thought in that?
(On the other hand, we Dutch just learned the hard way that, in very rare circumstances, those dental things CAN be handy… 🙁 )
It means that you get total discounts at the time of subscription.
One should keep in mind that communication lines for live support are kept
open for paid accounts, who are given top priority. The laws have been changing
and many portals that offer services are finding it harder and harder to get their word out there.