We, the
comrades of Unit 1012, will remember Polly Klaas every year on October 1 and
also January 3. We will show our love and support to her father, Marc Klaas. We
urged
everybody to donate money to the KlaasKids Foundation to learn more about
protecting your children from pedophiles.
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Polly Klaas
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Let us remember how Polly lived on
this earth, by presenting this article from her father, Marc Klaas:
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://www.klaaskids.org/blog/?p=1248
Polly Klaas –
Jan. 3, 1981 – Oct. 1, 1993
Posted on October 1, 2013
by Marc Klaas
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Marc
Klaas with his daughter, Polly.
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.klaaskids.org/blog/?p=1248]
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In 1993, 868,345 persons were reported
missing in the United States of America. I wish to write about, remember, and
honor one of them.
1993 sometimes seems so near that I
can reach out and grab it, and sometimes so distant that the details are
blurred memories, but since very few people who were touched by her plight ever
met Polly, I will do my best to tell you about her. She was a very pretty,
smart, cheerful and engaging girl who was just beginning to realize life’s
potential. She was a skilled actor who could nail the first read through of a
script. She could ride a bike, had mastered swimming and wanted me to teach her
how to play baseball, so that she could ‘play with the boys.’ On Sunday
evenings I enjoyed sitting on the couch with Polly on one side and Violet on
the other. Polly and I would cackle at Homer and Bart Simpson’s mindless antics
while Violet looked at us quizzically and asked what was so funny? Even in life
we thought of Polly as an old soul because of the depth of her compassion and
capacity for love. She was the kind of a girl who would make her presence known
when she entered the room. When she left it would be with an unspoken, “Hey,
remember me!”
Polly lived with her mom in Petaluma,
but we had joint custody. She would spend 2-days a week with Violet and me,
take vacations and spend most Holiday’s with us. We talked on the phone almost
every night. The last time we spoke was on October 1. She was very enthusiastic
about the slumber party she was hosting for her girlfriends. Before we hung up
I told her that I loved her. “I love you too Daddy,” she replied.
If Polly were kidnapped in 2013
instead of 1993, things would have played out very differently. In 1993, when
the authorities issued an APB with the stipulation that Polly’s kidnapping was
“Not for press release,” that led to a series of systematic failures that might
have cost Polly her life. Two Sheriff’s deputies that confronted the killer
about an hour after she was kidnapped had no idea who they were dealing with
and sent him on his way instead of arresting him on the spot. Today we have
inter-agency cooperation, written protocols, computer system interoperability,
and a much greater awareness of the issue. The two deputies who helped a killer
pull his car out of a ditch would have been informed and might have been able
to solve the case much more quickly. Also, there is no doubt in my mind that
today the killer would be a third striker which means that he wouldn’t have had
the opportunity to kidnap, rape and kill because he would already be
incarcerated. We simply don’t revolve recidivist offenders through the
turnstile as quickly as we did in 1993. Finally, today we have the Amber Alert
which was originally designed for this type of scenario. Unfortunately, as it
became institutionalized its effectiveness was substantially diminished.
Ironically, I don’t know how many of
those changes would have occurred if it had not been for Polly. She had become
the face of American victimization as quickly as her killer had become the face
of crime in America. She was the symbol, first of hope and then of loss. She
was the impetus, but certainly not the inspiration, for California’s hugely
successful 3-strikes law. The FBI wrote the first predatory abduction protocol
based on her crime, she was the Internet’s first missing child, and all future
community responses and volunteer search efforts have been measured against
Petaluma’s heroic effort.
I think that the work the KlaasKids
Foundation has done on Polly’s behalf has had an influence on our cause. One of
the reasons that Polly’s situation received so much attention is because my
family and I were unrelenting in our desire to bring her home alive. Prior to
Polly’s kidnapping there had been a rash of predatory abductions in the Bay
Area. They would all begin with a roar and end shortly thereafter in a whimper.
We embraced the media as partners, not adversaries and did everything that we
could to keep her story alive, because we knew that if the media went home
people would stop caring. If the people stopped caring there would come a time
when law enforcement would stop investigating. I feared that we would join the
ranks of those caught in the limbo of “not knowing”.
Also, throughout the past 20-years
KlaasKids has been there for the families of the missing. We are invested in
preventing future abductions, but are also ready to respond if a child is
missing. To date, KlaasKids SAR has helped 866-families of missing children
throughout the United States, including numerous high profile abduction cases.
We’ve conducted 273 searches for missing persons around the country; trained
over 1100 professional search and rescue volunteers; and assisted in the
recovery of 39 women and children involved in sex trafficking throughout the
United States.
With BeyondMissing our flyer creation
and distribution technology was utilized by registered law enforcement in 35
states in the search for 340 abducted/missing children. BeyondMissing tools had
a 95% recovery rate and to date registered users have recovered 323 children.
BeyondMissing was utilized by law enforcement to issue 174 Amber Alerts, 56
Local Amber Alerts, 16 Abduction Alerts and 94 Missing Child Alerts.
Collectively, BeyondMissing has distribution 1,231,500 emails, 34,400 text
messages and initiated distribution to 1,721,800 faxes to “targeted” recipients
on behalf of law enforcement. The BeyondMissing Parent Flyer Tool has been
accessed and utilized over 3,560 times by families and organizations searching
for a missing child.
Our community outreach program, the
Print-A-Thon, has enabled us to travel to more than 40-states where we have
interacted with young families, fingerprinted/photographed and provided
comprehensive suites of child safety materials to more than 1,000,000 children
without ever charging a family for the service or database personal or private
information.
We were front line soldiers in the
effort to provide interoperability between government computer systems,
truth-in-sentencing, Megan’s Law, the Adam Walsh Act and prevention funding for
at risk youth so that they would have options in life beyond drugs and crime.
We did not help to get 3-strikes passed, but have defended it passionately in
the years since. During the last election cycle we took a leadership role in
Prop.35, which targets human traffickers, provides much needed services for
victims of human trafficking and passed by a greater margin than any other
ballot initiative in California history.
Our website, KlaasKids.org is nearing
the completion of a major overhaul that will make our suite of online services
even more powerful, vibrant and excellent than they already are. Our popular
comparative analysis of each state’s Megan’s Law has been updated and
redesigned with the latest data.
We believe that the future of child
safety exists in technology. There are documented cases of FB & Twitter
having been instrumental in the recovery of missing kids. There is
thousands of missing child pages on FB & numerous communities dedicated to
recovering the missing. Each of those pages provides multiple pictures, video,
links to articles, & testimonials thereby making organizations like NCMEC
virtually obsolete as far as the public is concerned.
Smart phone alert apps like PGA can
bypass government bureaucracy and distribute missing child information in
minutes instead of hours. Free child friendly web browsers like Cocoon for
KlaasKids protects children from rogue marketers and other dangers that exist
online. We anticipate that GPS technology is on the cusp of great changes that
will be protective of kids. Database technology and computer system
interoperability are fully realized concepts. Technology’s dream is fast
catching up to technology’s reality and KlaasKids will continue to explore how
it can prevent, respond to and recover child abduction.
Unlike other, much better funded child
locater NPO’s the KlaasKids Foundation staff and volunteers do more than sit
behind our desks answering phones and posting flyers on our website. We
innovate, we advocate, we search, we educate, and we take a stand where others
remain silent.
Late at night on October 1, 1993, when
Polly was being forced into the night at knifepoint, under the threat of death
she said, “Please don’t hurt my mother and sister.” At that moment in time she
was the bravest little girl in the world. She remains our beacon, our
inspiration and the reason that we will continue to focus on the fight for
America’s children until we draw our last breath.
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Marc
Klaas with his daughter, Polly.
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://klaaskids.org/]
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CHECK THESE THREE PREVIOUS BLOG POSTS:
1. Polly
Klaas’s story
2. Quotes by
Marc Klaas
3. THE 20TH
ANNIVERSARY OF POLLY KLAAS’S MURDER
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