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?

In my area there's usually a lot of press coverage of missing people, especially children, vulnerable and elderly.

My granny used to say that there'd be a lot less child abuse if babies came out covered with fur

Your granny clearly had no idea how much animal cruelty goes on, even in this supposedly animal-loving country.

In supermarkets I tend to pick the animal or play area option. Our local children’s charity is displayed as a huge wonderful thing it was even on diy sos but honestly it has some terrible things behind the scenes and has pushed other groups to shut so they would never get my token or 1p of my money.

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

We have asked the police for help quite a few times for missing young people ( work related , not personal!) over the last few years, the last time was in February and we have always had an excellent response from the police.
We have to establish if they are MFH ( missing from home ) or absent. After giving verbal descriptions we get a follow up visit from officers.
We have never been fobbed off.
Police also use face book to put out appeals as well and follow up with what has happened.

The not wanting to do a huge search for someone (or e the post etc etc) is one thing. The lack of care is another (see comment about them just being attention seekers).

I think it’s symptomatic of the way people react tbh. See for example that many people think it’s cruel to leave a dog in their own for more than a few hours but think nothing about elderly/disabled people been left in their own for days in end with no one to talk to.....

Police officer here, we certainly don’t pass high risk missing people onto other rescue services. Just last week we had a high risk elderly female with dementia, we had numerous patrols out, helicopter and a drone up, cctv being checked etc. Found within a couple of hours by officers on the ground.

It’s a regular occurrence.

YABVU. I hate all this virtue signalling bs where people can't seem to discuss one cause or issue without playing down another, see Notre Dame for a recent example when people were whining about Grenfell or poverty or whatever which had little relation to the others. Of course Grenfell, poverty etc matter but there's no need to dismiss other issues that matter to people in order to raise awareness. We all have different priorities and issues that mean more to us, and I'm sure that yours could be equally criticised if you're going to play top trumps.

It's the attitude that only humans are the only species that matter that's gotten us and the planet into this bloody mess.

Besides I wouldn't know where to begin looking for a person. If there was a missing person, I'd look out for them, or join an organised search in my area,but spotting a specific individual that you're not familiar with in an area that may be full of people would be an extremely difficult task for me, especially with no sense of direction and poor facial recognition.

Also. It is entirely possible to care about more than one issue.

Plus as others mentioned the police exist to find missing people. There was a missing child and a missing pensioner with dementia in my area in the past year and the police found both within a few hours. They certainly didn't rest on their laurels.

"My granny used to say that there'd be a lot less child abuse if babies came out covered with fur

Your granny clearly had no idea how much animal cruelty goes on, even in this supposedly animal-loving country."

More than child abuse? And with the same response?
Come off it.

Look at the authorities response to what went on in Rotherham and other areas.
Animals are always seen as "innocent". Not so humans.

"It's the attitude that only humans are the only species that matter that's gotten us and the planet into this bloody mess."

Most humans dont' think other humans matter.
They think the humans they like / are in a group with / etc are important but not so much the other ones miles away that they don't know etc.

And then of course you have war, religious groups trying to annihilate each other, a litany of abuses of children , women and men all over the place including various types of slavery, + genocide and so on....

I think probably we're tribal and evolved to be in relatively smallish groupings and it's too much to try and process what's going on all over the world.

However, it is definitely not true that humans are the only species that matter as if it were we wouldn't be killing raping torturing each other all over the place all the time.

Anyway yes can see lots will argue :D

I've seen enough times on here posters saying that they hate children, on animal threads, to not know that lots of people do indeed prefer animals to people.

I mean did anyone even read the links

eg

"Data obtained through a parliamentary question by the MP shows an increase of 1,000 children going missing from care homes since 2015, after being moved to new areas often miles from their homes, known as an “out of area placement”.

Numbers have more than doubled from 990 in 2015, to 1,990 in 2018. This compares with a 31% increase for children who go missing from homes within their own borough.

Coffey said: “It shames us all that thousands of vulnerable children continue to be farmed out to live miles and miles away from home despite a government promise to clampdown on numbers.

“Isolated and alone without family, friends or local social workers to help protect them, they become sitting ducks for those who wish to prey on them. They are targeted by paedophiles and drugs gangs and can become trapped in a brutal world.”"

The claims that humans are well provided for is untrue. Some are. Others are not. Depending on their perceived value.

You should have read the posts when the M53 was closed due to some poor woman threatening to jump
Off a bridge - which she did - the milk of human kindness was not flowing that day

Obviously I know that there's major conflict between groups of people and people murdering one another (see the horrific terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka) and that's a major issue to, that people who aren't like 'us' don't matter so much or at all, but likewise too many people have the attitude that any species that isn't human doesn't matter either, and it's one of the issues that's gotten us and the planet into such a disastrous situation.

Yes true I've been on a tube train years ago where everyone as shouting just fucking jump.

It was late at night and they kept getting out every stop and threatening. In the end people got pissed off and said get on with it then.

@MenuPlant my younger brother works in a care home and has chased men in cars pulling up to “collect” these children down the street. It’s terrifying

I do agree that humans are tribal and it can be difficult to an extent to try to override that.

Yes flowers would agree with that.

I'd say it's down to humans being too successful, expansionist and v tribal.

It's the same lunacy that has people pledging millions to fix and old building but are never vocal when people are dying following a natural disaster.

That's awful inLiverpool1

People can and do, do both lunar.

Same as some people care about both animals and people.

But, animals are less complicated and always seen as innocent. There is also a function of guilt maybe in looking away when children are harmed, or anyone really, facing up to it means difficult questions about our society, our authorities, our values etc,

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

Most certainly not the case here. High risk & vulnerable missing persons are an absolute priority & will never be offloaded to 3rd parties. There will be officers working on them 24/7

3rd parties might be asked for assistance in a search of a specific area but the Police will do a damn sight more than just initial enquiries.

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

I’d definitely put my pets above my immediate next door neighbours.

I rarely share missing posts, because quite often the person has already been found, if they’re local. I’ve seen things doing the rounds for years after the person or pet has been found.

Our local police ( outer London ) post on Twitter regularly about missing, vulnerable people, which then gets retweeted by local groups. They also post updates if they are found. A friend’s mother, with dementia, was spotted this way.

I'm always a little skeptical of sharing missing person posts - I read an article once on how an abusive ex tracked down his wife by posting missing person pics online etc. I was actually thinking about it earlier today and thought that it's a little sad in this current world that we can't just accept at face value a missing person post is about a genuine missing person and not a ploy to find someone who has a good reason for not wishing to be found. With animals I think it's easier to still consider it a genuine lost pet.