GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The Green Bay Packers are teaming up with other organizations to introduce a new tool for parents to protect their children.
The Packers, Alliant Energy, IBEW, and Attorney General Josh Kaul are working to provide 975,000 National Child ID kits to K-12 school children across the state. Kaul says Wisconsin is just the third state to provide enough for every child.
‘They went out and they figured out funding for this program, so it’s not coming at taxpayer expense. Fortunately, IBEW and Alliant Energy are supporting this, and we are able now to get these kids distributed to kids around the state,” Kaul said. “We’ve seen a few other states where this is going out, and it’s worked smoothly in those states. But we also want to be a leader in Wisconsin in making sure that we’re taking steps that we can to help give parents whatever tools that they can have to help keep their kids safe.”
The kits allow parents to easily record the physical characteristics, fingerprints, and even DNA of their children. The information is entered on an ID card which families can store in a safe place.
“If families take the time to fill it out, it is certainly beneficial to us, and ultimately to them, because it’s one less thing you have to worry about if the situation arises,” said Brown County Sheriff Todd Delain. “They can just quickly turn it over and and expedite us, and get us looking for the child quicker.”
The kits are being distributed to families through all public and private schools across the state. Delain says that kind of distribution is key to getting it out there.
A major concern some people may voice would include having their children’s identifying information placed into a government database. Luckily for those people, that’s not the case with the ID card program.
“Oftentimes family members are worried about this information getting out and ending up in a database or anything like that. That’s not the case,” Delain said. “This is a kit that you bring home, as a parent you fill it out, and you keep it. It’s yours, and hopefully you’ll never need it. But if you do need it, it’s there, and you can immediately turn it over to a law enforcement officer.”
Each year, more than 800,000 children go missing in the United States.
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