U.S. Rep. Thomas Rooney (R-FL) introduced child safety legislation on Friday that would encourage parents to store their children’s sensitive information like fingerprints at home, aiding law enforcement.
The National Child Identification Program is a community service initiative that provides child identification kits to parents and guardians that can help supply critical information to authorities in missing children cases. In addition to empowering parents to personally store their child’s sensitive information, the bill, known as the National Child Identification Assistance Act, would also decentralize the information collection process for police.
“The National Child Identification Assistance Act highlights the importance of the National Child Identification Program, a national community service initiative which provides inkless, in-home fingerprinting kits to parents so they can proactively collect and store their child’s vital identification in the privacy of their own homes,” Rooney said. “It also decentralizes the process for law enforcement agencies that may lack the resources to collect and centrally-store information related to individual children.”
If a child goes missing, Rooney added, parents would be able to immediately provide their child’s information to law enforcement conducting search and rescue missions.
“In the past, this program has partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other community service organizations and this bill is an important step to ensure parents are directly involved in its continued success,” Rooney said.
The National Child Identification Program routinely partners with college football teams and NFL teams to provide parents with ID kits.
“I am so proud that Congressman Rooney and Crist are leading the effort to help protect our greatest asset, our nations’ children,” said former Florida State Head Coach Bobby Bowden. “I was one of the coaches that helped start this program, and to date with 57 million ID kits distributed, it is the largest child ID program in the world.”
The ID kits can be filled out in about 5 minutes, stored at home and can be provided to authorities in the case of an emergency, noted former West Virginia Head Coach Don Nehlen. “Nothing is more important to the country than our children. They are our future.”