State Representative Kevin Ritter announced on March 27 that the Ohio House of Representatives passed House Bill 217, known as Andy Chapman’s Act and formerly the F.I.N.D. Act. The legislation aims to improve efforts to locate missing persons and provide support for their families.
The bill, sponsored by Ritter and Representative Christine Cockley, requires law enforcement agencies in Ohio to enter information from a missing child report into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) if the child is not found within 30 days.
“When the tools exist to help families find answers for their missing loved ones, we should use them,” said Representative Ritter. “HB 217 ensures when a person is reported missing in Ohio, the relevant information will be entered into the national NamUs system to coordinate with other states across the country.”
The act seeks to better integrate Ohio’s current missing persons reporting systems with NamUs, which was created in 2003 as a centralized database for cases involving missing, unidentified, and unclaimed individuals. NamUs is already used by several states and has helped identify and recover hundreds of people.
With this new requirement for participation in NamUs, House Bill 217 gives law enforcement agencies an additional resource for solving missing persons cases while improving cooperation with authorities in other states. The legislation now moves forward to the Ohio Senate for further consideration.
