Did You Know...

11-01-07 If you haven't had a chance to see our Vernonia Fall sports teams in action you have missed something. Between the all of the football, volleyball, cross-country, and the youth soccer teams there has been some great action. More than that though, all of these teams exhibit great sportsmanship and have to be tops in the area for this quality. They also have great pride in their teams and support for the younger athletes'. The VHS varsity volleyball team recently attended the 7th & 8th game where they showed enthusiastic support which was greatly appreciated by all of the girls. The Vernonia Police Department will soon be participating in a wonderful program called "A Child Is Missing" alert (ACIM). ACIM a privately sponsored, grant funded organization that offers a mass-calling alert that can generate up to 1000 phone calls per minute to saturate a target area with vital information. ACIM provides a valuable took to law enforcement in the vital first hours of cases such as; lost, abducted, wander-offs, or run aways as well as missing elderly subjects, mentally challenged, or disabled individuals. The ACIM program will provide an invaluable tool to the VPD. Though we are fortunate enough to have less missing cases than other jurisdictions we still have missing people cases on a regular basis. Several of the cases have necessitated the activation of search and rescue teams and the use of numerous volunteers like the Vernonia CERT. Often times the key to missing people cases is an alert citizen who sees the missing subject or something out of place then reports it to authorities. Obviously, the alert citizen would never be an alert citizen if they did not have any information or details about the missing person case. ACIM will help us get the vital information out so that the VPD will now have thousands of eyes looking for our missing person. The ACIM should not be confused with the AMBER Alert program. ACIM is an additional tool that works in concert with an AMBER Alert. The ACIM program provides leads back to law enforcement and does not take the place of the investigation strategies. The best part of all is that the entire program is FREE to law enforcement. For more information you can go to ACIM's website at <www.achildismissing.org> or you can follow the link on the front page of the VPD website at <vpd.vernonia-or.gov>