INDIANAPOLIS — Recently, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) hosted representatives from more than 50 Central Indiana law enforcement agencies to explore the creation of a regional Child Abduction Response Team (CART).
Developed by the Department of Justice, CART teams help to foster collaboration between law enforcement agencies to assist in the safe and swift recovery of missing children. The CART certification process sets a standard for participating jurisdictions through annual, unified training on best practices in such areas as incident command and investigative techniques. If established in Central Indiana, CART would help to formalize a network of law enforcement agencies across the region working together to bring children home safe.
Exploring the establishment of a CART team comes as part of IMPD’s ongoing efforts to strengthen strategic collaboration with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. In 2017, IMPD helped to re-establish the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership (IVRP), a program that brings investigators together to identify high-risk chronic offenders for law enforcement or community resource intervention. Earlier this year, IMPD and the ATF led the establishment of the Indianapolis Crime Gun Intelligence Center (CGIC), a multi-agency collaboration that leverages technology to analyze crime gun evidence in order to identify serial shooters and their sources of crime guns.