Black lawmakers across the city and state are pushing for the creation of a task force to investigate the disproportionately high number of missing Black, indigenous, and other women and girls of color.
Legislation pending in Albany would create a nine-person state panel charged with addressing the “lack of care and concern” for BIPOC girls, and also develop policies for keeping them out of harm’s way. Black lawmakers from New York City have been among those championing the effort.
The issue of missing BIPOC women and girls has gained increasing attention, spurring a two-hour hearing in Congress last year titled “The Neglected Epidemic of Missing BIPOC Women and Girls.” The hearing followed fresh criticism of what long has been viewed by critics as the media’s hyperfixation on cases of missing white women, like vlogger Gabby Petito in 2021.
The numbers keep rising over time, but nothing is being done. The lack of awareness and effort to address this ongoing silent epidemic is what motivated sponsoring this resolution.
About 40% of the more than 250,000 women and girls reported missing in 2020 were people of color, and mostly Black, according to data from the National Crime Information Center, orNCIC. And in New York state, despite representing less than 15% of minors, Black youth made up the majority of missing children, with Black girls over 13 comprising the largest group of disappearance, according to the 2020 Missing Persons Clearinghouse Annual Report.
The disparity in disappearances is compounded by a lack of attention and resources dedicated to finding missing BIPOC women and girls, in the media and elsewhere, said state Sen. Lea Webb of Western New York, chair of the women’s issues committee and the main Senate sponsor of state bill S426AA to create the taskforce. Such disappearances are often typecast as runaways, rather than victims of abduction or human trafficking, leaving some families resorting to hiring bounty hunters for answers, Webb said.
“When you see numbers like this, this task force would help to bridge a gap in addressing this very pervasive challenge that exists not only at a national level but especially here in our state,” said Webb, adding that New York is a “major gateway state” for human trafficking and related issues.
Under Webb’s bill and its companion, A5088A in the Assembly, sponsored by Assemblymember Karines Reyes of the Bronx, a nine-person group of state commissioners and legislative appointees would work to develop policy changes to address "the lack of care and concern" for women and girls of color. The task force would also educate and train communities of color to prevent disappearances, and identify major hubs where such abductions occur.
A model wears a design by Jason Christopher Peters that reads, "Find missing Black girls," during New York Fashion Week, in February 2022.
City Councilmember Althea Stevens and 11 others have sponsored a resolution– to be heard in a hearing next week – calling for the passage of the state-level measure. Passing the bill also topped the list of 17 last-minute state budget requests from a coalition of Black local lawmakers, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson.
“This life and death issue has not received the attention it deserves,” the lawmakers wrote in a joint letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Senate and Assembly leaders.
“The numbers keep rising over time, but nothing is being done,” Councilmember Stevens, of the Bronx, said in a statement. “The lack of awareness and effort to address this ongoing silent epidemic is what motivated sponsoring this resolution.”
After dying in the state Senate last year, the bill – with a $1 million price tag – passed the state Senate at the end of last month but remains stalled in the Assembly.
If the measure passes, New York would join a growing number of states that have created similar task forces, for indigenous residents in Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin, and African American women in Minnesota in 2021.
