"Washington (CNN)Two months ago, the Washington Metropolitan Police Department's new commander, Chanel Dickerson, made a pledge: Let's find our missing girls.
Now, as the department posts profiles of missing black and Latina girls in the nation's capital on its Twitter feed almost daily, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are calling for a federal investigation.
In a letter Tuesday, the lawmakers asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey to "devote the resources necessary to determine whether these developments are an anomaly, or whether they are indicative of an underlying trend that must be addressed."
The Metropolitan Police Department recorded 501 cases of missing children so far in 2017, and said 22 cases were open as of Wednesday.
"We have received a lot of media attention and a lot of concern from the public because of the number of releases," Dickerson said at a news conference on Friday. "There have been concerns that young girls in the District of Columbia are victims of human trafficking or have been kidnapped, or that there's an increase in the number" who have gone missing.
Numbers and Amber Alerts aside, Robert Lowery, a vice president at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said he is grateful an important conversation about missing children is happening.
"I think the narrative is good," Lowery said. "The more the public becomes aware of this issue of missing children, the more lives that can be protected and potentially even saved."
"Our frustration is, we deal with a very desensitized public," Lowery said. "The natural inclination (about a runaway) is the child's behavioral problem is why they've left. We also see significant numbers of runway children who are running away from a situation, whether it's abuse or neglect or sexual abuse in the home. These children face unique risks when they're gone so we applaud the conversation and we applaud the attention that this issue is being given..."
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