Queen Creek police efforts to find missing teens may become state model

As concerns grow for teens who go missing from care in Queen Creek, town leaders are stepping up to provide information and action.

Since 2022, the Queen Creek Police Department has handled the cases of 1,063 missing children and teens. Of those, 764 have gone missing from group homes, the vast majority from Desert Canyon Academy and Desert Lily Academy. Eight are still missing.

“We’ve actually had amazing success when you look at over 1,000 kids and we only have eight outstanding right now. Not that those eight aren’t important. They’re terribly important, and we’re working hard on it. But when you look at the numbers, that’s an impressive track record,” Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice said in an interview. “Now, that doesn’t mean we rest on our laurels. I want this to continue to be better. That’s why we’re making all these efforts to do that.”

The fear is that many of the teens in the larger group homes are traumatized, and if they leave, they risk more trauma in the form of human trafficking.

Because most teens at the larger group homes do not come from Queen Creek, finding them right away is paramount so they do not slip into other cities and even states where the danger to them rises exponentially, officials said.

In 2024, 18% of the children who were reported missing from social services were likely victims of child sex trafficking, according to QCPD.

Brice said his department averages about one week in finding the missing teens even if they are outside of Queen Creek or even the state.

“To me, a week is too long because of the things that happened to them. We’re finding them in other states, other cities, hidden in motel rooms, other residences,” Brice said during a recent Queen Creek Town Council meeting where he provided an update on missing teens and what is being done to keep them safe. “Two kids were found in a motel room, and I won’t get into the details of what was happening, but it was not good.”

Queen Creek Council Member Leah Martineau works for the Arizona Anti-Trafficking Network, which is aimed at raising awareness, reducing demand and fostering prevention efforts with youth in pursuit of eliminating human trafficking in Arizona. She said these stories are hard to hear, but they cannot be ignored.

“This is the dark world that we live in right now. Talking about this, it’s hard to hear but we have to because we have to know what really is happening in our society — not sugarcoating it or turning a blind eye to this,” Martineau said at the meeting.

One effort to help find teens missing from care is a bill that would allocate $1.2 million to QCPD to create a pilot program that could be expanded statewide to help improve finding children who go missing from group homes.

The bill, making it’s way through the state Senate, is being championed by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who announced in December the legislation was in response to “the growing issue of runaway and missing youth from group homes.”

Under Senate Bill 1550, the pilot program would develop specialized law enforcement focusing on:

• Prevention of incidents of runaway youth.
• Protection of at-risk youth from exploitation.
• Enhancement of the investigative capability of the police department.
• Strengthening collaboration with care providers and state agencies.
• Production of a model framework for statewide replication.

“This is a program we’ve actually started developing already, but we see the benefit of regionalizing it and making this a model for the rest of the state because of the things that we’re discovering as we continue to ramp this program up,” Brice said.

Called “Missing from Care,” the QCPD’s program is a “coordinated community effort built on prevention, rapid collaboration and thorough investigation,” according to a staff report.

Through the program, QCPD works with group homes, the Arizona Department of Child Safety, nongovernmental organizations, schools and advocacy groups to “create a unified safety net around our most vulnerable youth,” the report continued.

Rite of Passage, which operates Canyon State Academy and Desert Lily Academy, did not return requests for comment on its work with QCPD.

To try to prevent children from going missing from group homes, QCPD works with staff to share risk assessments, establish protocols for sharing information, engage with youth to build trust and foster a proactive partnership.

The goal is to get the responding officers all information needed to immediately start an investigation.

But law enforcement is hampered by a current state statute that does not provide a time frame for when children have to be reported missing to state agencies. When the state does get the report, it has 24 hours to notify law enforcement.

To circumvent this, QCPD is working with the group homes to quickly contact police if a child is missing from care.

“We have a very specific protocol with these group homes that you call immediately when you suspect or notice that someone’s missing. We don’t want you going out to try and find them yourself, scouring the campus,” Brice said in the interview. “We don’t want any of that. Even if they’re there and it’s a mistake, you call us right away because we have a very specific response protocol that’s been very successful.”

Brice said the department has “placed an inordinate amount of pressure on (group homes) to do very specific things to help our program along, so that we’re keeping these kids safe.”

Desert Canyon and Desert Lily in particular are large enterprises designed like school campuses and not juvenile detention centers.

“It’s not a prison. They certainly aren’t set up like a detention center of any kind. It’s a campus that’s set for vocational training and treatment and a variety of other programs,” Brice said in the interview “There are some legitimate difficulties that they have that we’re working with them on that are just because of the nature of the campus.”

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.