D.C. police Chief Cathy Lanier says her police department is just as “frustrated” as the public when it comes to the lack of new information in the case of missing eight-year-old Relisha Rudd.
The Metropolitan Police Department official told NewsChannel8’s Bruce DePuyt that they still “fear the worst, but hope for the best” in the case. “We had an 18-day delay in actually going to look for her,” Lanier said of Relisha, who was last seen on March 1 but not reported missing until later that month. “Even on the 19th, when we talked with the family of Relisha, they said, ‘Oh, she’s not missing. She’s with a person that we trust and we know. And she’s just fine.'”
Police still made a missing persons report, and by the next morning, police had tracked 51-year-old Kahlil Tatum to the Maryland hotel where his wife was found dead. (Tatum was later found dead of an apparent suicide in a park where police were searching for Relisha.) Lanier said a similar case — where police filed a missing persons report while the family claimed the child was fine — has not occurred during her career. The detectives who responded to the call from social workers and Relisha’s school followed their “instincts,” Lanier said.
When asked about surveillance video released by MPD showing Relisha and Tatum in a hotel hallway, Lanier said Tatum took Relisha to a hotel on that occasion and previous occasions.
Lanier called the investigation “very active” and said she’d rather not make specific comments about Relisha’s family “out of respect.” “It’s so easy to blame the government for everything,” Lanier said when asked if certain agencies failed in some way. “The mayor has ordered a review of all the contact the government has had with this family.”
When addressing questions about how the Amber Alert was issued, the chief said “the press really annoyed me, and they really confused this whole search for Relisha by misreporting information on the Amber Alert. … They were so wrong in this case.” Lanier said at times the media has to “defer” to the police: “And we just didn’t get the respect from the press in this case.”