To be confused about people's priorities?

[MelonSlice]

Name changed as potentially outing.

I'm on a couple of community Facebook groups for various areas of my country.

Quite often somebody will post about a dog or cat that has gone missing. These types of posts always gain a lot of popularity with various groups going as far as to organise search parties to find these animals.

Recently, there has been a couple of posts about people who have gone missing. One being a 73 year old grandfather with dementia and another being a 35 year old suicidal female. These posts have either been ignored or in the case of the suicidal female, had critical responses about being attention seeking, etc.

Aibu to think people in general have their priorities all wrong to be putting the lives of pets above their human neighbours?

I think that part of the response is due to the fact that the police will look for missing persons, especially if they are in danger, and do it much more efficiently than people on a FB group could. There is no such help available for missing pets.

Understand what you mean but think the difference and seemingly higher concern for missing pets is because legally they're not seen as important or given any level of priority or time, attention and effort.

If someone goes missing - the police will go all out and make it their business to trace, appeal to the public in helping tracing and generally give it their top priority.

If someone is injured or involved in a serious accident, emergency services will get to you by hook or crook and have you treated immediately.

If a dog goes missing - nobody cares and the only people you can call on or rely on to help you find them are other pet owners and people that share your concern via social network and whatnot.

If a dog is hit by a car, injured out in the middle of nowhere or otherwise up shit creek you're knackered.

I cannot begin to imagine how it must feel to lose or have a dog stolen and know you're reliant entirely on the goodwill and support of people because legally, it's of no concern.

Get what you mean though but then again, I get the importance and priority level animals seem to generate via social media but don't think it's because people consider animals any more or less important than humans.

I’d like to think it’s because unlike the animals missing people warrant a professional response like the police. Also sharing details of someone’s mental health in a public Facebook group isn’t great although I understand that the family were probably desperate. Personally I’d respond to those posts only by private message and only if I saw the missing person or had helpful information. So unless they were your posts, you don’t know that they haven’t received any response. And you don’t know that people aren’t keeping an eye out even if they haven’t commented.
However, comments about the lady being attention seeking are truly terrible

Aibu to think people in general have their priorities all wrong to be putting the lives of pets above their human neighbours?

YABU. Police will look for vulnerable people. They won't look for pets, hence the public getting involved.

The missing pets may well wander into people's gardens, or down their street. This can't be said for missing people who are more difficult to find.

@JenniferJareau

Unfortunately the police nowadays, have neither the training or resources to conduct effective searches for missing people.

We’ve had a few missing people near us recently and the police response has been excellent - helicopter out and ground searches and also publishing details to get the public looking - I doubt they’d do that for the cat from next door .

I think it’s because the pets are clearly innocent, untarnished and their owners are unambiguously worthy of help and sympathy. The missing people might bring up unpleasantness in so many ways, and whatever problem caused them to be missing is going to be difficult and emotionally challenging. Pets are easy. I don’t like it either and I don’t think it says anything great about people but I do think this is why.

That, and yes the fact that the pet might wander in to your garden but none of us know how to look for a missing person. The comment about attention seeking points to the trust issue though; they just don’t want to think about it, it’s unpleasant and they don’t want to trust that the situation is true.

I think it's fairly well known that many people in UK (or just England? I'm English) prefer animals to people.

You see it in a lot of threads on here TBH with people merrily saying they hate children (certain animal threads).

My granny used to say that there'd be a lot less child abuse if babies came out covered with fur :D She was very fond of her cats. Probs she has a point.

Unfortunately the police nowadays, have neither the training or resources to conduct effective searches for missing people.

Really? I confess that's not my experience. Do you have examples?

I agree with you. I find that bizarre, although I haven’t seen that in my local fb groups where missing person posts are mostly very heavily shared and well supported.

missing white girl syndrome - article here - about how we value different sorts of people differently
www.independent.co.uk/voices/theres-an-epidemic-of-missing-children-of-colour-who-arent-photogenic-enough-to-find-a6989666.html

More missing children
metro.co.uk/2017/12/09/alarming-number-children-going-missing-london-borough-7145633/

Children missing from care, vast numbers

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/26/record-number-of-children-missing-from-care-in-uk

etc etc

The idea that the authorities are interested is nice but not always the case in reality, sadly.

I would never respond to a missing person Facebook post because who can honestly know if the person is genuinely missing or if an abusive ex is trying to track them down?

Our local police have an alert system for genuinely missing people which works well.

YANBU, OP.

If I see a missing pet or a missing person post on local FB or local paper I don't actively search for either.

I am just aware that they are missing.

Unfortunately the police nowadays, have neither the training or resources to conduct effective searches for missing people.

There have been two big searches near where I live in the last year or so. On both occassions the missing person was found. Unfortunately both were dead. One was a local, who had been missing for a day, the other was from about 10 miles away and had been missing for 3 weeks. That search was huge!

I only share such things if confirmed by the police.

Sharing can be dangerous for the “missing “ person.

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/07/facebook-users-warned-not-share-posts-missing-children/

Not just missing pets but also deceased pets too. 100s of responses to a recent post about a cat that had been run over (driver had stopped and done everything they could) compared to a trickle of responses to an announcement from family that a person had lost their life after a tragic accident.
I find it very odd.

I never share facebook posts about missing women.

Some women have very good reasons to be hiding.

"Aibu to think people in general have their priorities all wrong to be putting the lives of pets above their human neighbours?"

I think it's a bit of a leap to come to that conclusion. I'm with the poster above, our local police put a post on their page recently not to share or encourage sharing of missing people posts unless it came from them, for obvious reasons.

Really? I confess that's not my experience. Do you have examples?

I can't give specific examples, but I am a volunteer for a local Lowland Rescue team.

A lot of people do not realise that the Police will conduct initial enquiries and then classify the missing person into a category. Any that are classed as high risk/vulnerable will normally be passed on to a Lowland Rescue team to search for, simply because the Police do not have the manpower to perform searches effectively.

I've also noticed over several years that in our local asda they have a token drop to vote for which local charity should benefit from asda's fundraising. If one of them is animal related it will win. Every. Single .Time.

As above, I’m reluctant to share missing people posts unless it’s clear it’s part of a police investigation, you just don’t know the background.

Don’t police tend to say not to share missing persons on Facebook unless posted by them as it could be a less than innocent person who’s posting it not that the person is really missing.