Even rural areas are not immune to abducted children, and a training workshop put on by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children focused on strategies agencies can use in responding to missing children.

About 35 people, representing two states and 10 agencies, attended the workshop at the Heritage Senior Center in McCook last week.

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On a per capita basis, the risk of child abduction is just as great in rural areas as it is in urban areas, maybe even more so because of the fewer resources in small towns, said Ike Brown, McCook Police Chief.

"Rural areas present some unique challenges in responding to crisis and it's important for us to receive the same quality of training as those in metro areas."

The training received Tuesday will help put polices and procedures in place, he added.

"Sometimes it's difficult to get high-quality training in McCook," he said, as it's hard for agencies with a small number of people to leave work to attend workshops at other locations. "These guys are the best in the game and have been doing it longer and better than anyone else."

Wayne Sheppard, Associate Director of Training and Outreach for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based in Alexandria, Va. covered a variety of topics, including society's expectations, rates of occurence, types of missing child incidents, intra-agency response and federal and state support.

Of the 2,000 kids that are reported missing each day, "some come home and some do not," he said. Of those, a majority are those who are lost, injured or missing and are found later with no criminal circumstances involved,.

In responding to missing children calls, it's critical to use resources available in other agencies, Sheppard said, such as those at schools, other law enforcement agencies, the media and health departments.

"Creating an awareness of missing children is important," he said. But most of all, he stressed, "Get a plan now before it happens. Knowledge is power."

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, every year in America an estimated 800,000 children are reported missing, more than 2,000 children each day. Of that number, 200,000 are abducted by family members and 58,000 are abducted by non-family members, for which the primary motive is sexual. Each year, 115 children are the victims of the most serious abductions; they are taken by non-family members and either murdered, ransomed or taken with the intent to keep. An analysis of attempted abduction cases by NCMEC found that in 88 percent of the cases, the child escaped would-be abductors through their own actions. 41 percent actively resisted (yelling, kicking, pulling away, running away or attracting attention) while 47 percent recognized something was not right and responded by walking or running away.

Sheppard challenged those attending to take the information they learned to implement change, such as planning a mock abduction or some other kind of drill. These practices help agencies identify strengths and weaknesses before an emergency happens, he said.

He also had kind words for the community and its efforts in keeping kids safe. The day before Tuesday's training, Sheppard said, he drove around McCook with Randall Datus of the McCook Police Department to get a feel for the community and was impressed with what he saw.

He cited how McCook Elementary is let out earlier than the junior and senior high, a good practice as smaller children are not mingling with older students.

"The proactive measures you're taking are quite impressive and that's not an embellishment," he said.

Sheppard assists local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in areas such as violent crime analysis and investigations, and provides training and design of policies for response procedures.

He is an international speaker on behavioral crime scene assessments in murder and rape studies. Prior to working for the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, he was the supervisor of the Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit for the Pennsylvannia State Police,where he was responsible for the investigation and coordination of psychosexual homicide, serial rape and other behaviorally based crimes.

Those attending the training included representatives from: the McCook Police, Red Willow County Sheriff's Office, Gothenburg Police, Garden County Sheriff's Office, North Platte Police, Buffalo County Sheriff's Office, Gosper County Sheriff's Office, Oberlin Police, North Platte Child Advocacy Center, Hitchcock County Sheriff's Office and McCook Schools.