DECATUR, GA. – Georgia’s Child Abduction Response Team (CART) will be involved in a full-scale exercise  tomorrow in Rockdale County in an effort to test and evaluate CART’s response to a reported child abduction.  The exercise is part of Georgia CART’s effort to earn national certification.  Georgia CART will be the 8th team in the nation to receive such certification and will be the 4th State Team behind Tennessee, Utah and South Dakota.

For the exercise tomorrow, Georgia CART will be activated at 8:30am at the request of the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office who receives a call reporting the abduction of a teen-age girl.  The exercise will include actual road checks by the Georgia State Patrol, neighborhood canvassing by the GBI, ground searches by the Department of Natural Resources, canine searches by the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency; sex offender tracking by DOC and the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and investigative support by the Department of Human Services and the Department of Juvenile Justice. The exercise should end by 12:00pm. See attached flow chart for the duties and responsibilities of each of the participating state agencies.

As part of the CART certification, the policies and procedures for all participating member agencies will be evaluated by a three member assessor team.  The assessors are from California, Florida and New Jersey. The prestigious certification will come from Fox Valley Technical College, which critiques and monitors agencies working to earn the certification. The certification is a cooperative effort through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Fox Valley Technical College, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

Georgia CART is a team of individuals from various state agencies who are trained and prepared to respond to a missing/endangered or abducted child.  CART pulls together State resources to aid in the search and rescue effort and to assist the agency of jurisdiction in its investigation. 

Georgia CART creates a mutual aid resource inventory and allows for the rapid and organized response required in missing children investigations.  Agencies participating in the CART include:

• Georgia Bureau of Investigation
• Georgia State Patrol
• Georgia Department of Natural Resources
• Georgia Emergency Management Agency
• Georgia Department of Corrections
• Georgia Department of Human Services
• Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice
• Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
• Georgia Department of Transportation

Assistance and support in this full-scale exercise is also being provided by the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office.

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Contact Information:

John Bankhead - 404-270-8330

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