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U.S. likes abduction reaction strategy

Rapid response teams formed in Florida after Carlie Brucia's slaying will be copied in federal training sessions.

FORT MYERS - A Florida plan for quick, coordinated police responses to child abductions - developed after the 2004 abduction and murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia of Sarasota - is being taken nationwide, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The Child Abduction Response Teams program, devised by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, will be used as a model for training law enforcement personnel around the country beginning in January, Justice Department and FDLE officials said.

The concept is to put together regional law enforcement resources, from bloodhounds to helicopters to forensics experts, in advance so they can be deployed rapidly when a child is abducted.

Since the initial team was created by the FDLE in Orlando in early 2005, the teams have been activated 13 times in Florida, with 11 successful child recoveries.

"We're in synch before we arrive at the scene," said FDLE Commissioner Guy Tunnell. "In a missing-child case, time is of the essence."

The Justice Department is adopting "something that exists that has been very, very successful," said Cybele Daley, an acting assistant attorney general.

Daley said federally financed training sessions will augment such programs as Amber alert announcements and a national child sex offender registry. The first national training session will be Jan. 23-27 in San Diego.

The announcement was made at the FDLE operations center in Fort Myers, during a regional Child Abduction Response Teams training session. Among those making presentations were Don and Claudine Ryce, parents of 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce, who in 1995 was abducted at gunpoint from outside his home in rural Miami-Dade County, sexually assaulted and murdered.

Claudine Ryce said her son was alive for more than four hours after he was abducted and was found less than a mile from home. "If we'd had CART in place, Jimmy would have been found," she said. "He needed us to get to him in time. That's what CART does."

[Last modified December 1, 2005, 01:06:06]