Runaways are police dilemma

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ther figure is drastically different from the year before, police said.

In the city and the suburbs, police said runaway children usually

Return home-on their own-after about a week. In most cases, the runaway left home after a fight with parents and never left the city, preferring to stay with neigh-

bors or friends.

Habitual runaways swell police statistics until officials tire of returning them home and finally send them to court for a stay in the detention home, police said.

"This is quite common," Trammel said. "There's nothing we as police can do with a kid hellbent on staying away from home. What are you going to do with a kid who runs away from home? You catch him

and he says, "Take me home, but I'm going to run away again and you can't keep me there.' Our hands are tied.”

Police do not search for girls under 12 years old because "we just don't have the time or the manpower to find them," Sgt. Rose Mary Holmes said.

Trammell does not agree with Houston authorities, who said police cannot catch runaways.

"If we really want a kid for example if we get a report a boy is involved in breaking and entering or various sex activities we make a determined effort to get the kid, and we get him," he said.

Trammeil said "there is some truth" to reports of prostitution and homosexual games among runaways and older persons who give them money.

Trammell said such things aren't extensive. but J. C. Williams, who heads his own investigating agency, disagrees.

Williams. who said he has been "swamped" with pleas for help from parents since the Houston story broke last week, said "chicken-hawks" are preying on young runaways in hamburger stands here.

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"This stuff is really going on here,' Williams said. "Kids hang around the hamburger joints because there are a lot of other kids around. When they get hungry, the chicken-hawks who are usually two males in a big car come in and buy them something to eat."

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"After the kids eat, these chickenhawks tell them they can get much more money if they come along with them," Williams said. "The kids become male prostitutes. They go to some suburban high rise and take part in homosexual perversions."

Another private investigator, John Christopher, who heads Confidential Secret Investigations, said he has also heard reports of chicken-hawks in Cleveland.

Christopher said he handles 30 to 50 runaway cases a year. He said criticism of police is unfair because it is so hard to find runaways who are determined to hide.

"A big difficulty that we have today and this is rather sobering and astonishing

is that kids can run now and get lost because somehow or other they can find people who can shelter them and don't feel they have to report them. It's much easier for kids to disappear today," said Laurence A. Grossner, associate director of Bellefaire, a University Heights residential treatment center.

A congressional effort to provide cenwas also knocked by police.

"All the kids need is encouragement like that," Lakewood Detective Edward G. Patrick said. "We won't have any kids left in Lakewood if that passes.

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