INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Nicki Minaj, Meek Mill, And T.I. Among Celebs Pressing To Find #MissingDCGirls

By Shaunee Flowers
Published on: 14:11 PST, Mar 24, 2017

Meek Mill wants to know why Tom Brady’s missing Super Bowl jersey has been found but dozens of missing girls from the Washington, D.C., area aren’t even getting the attention of many mainstream media outlets. T.I. shared a message on Instagram urging black men to keep an eye on women and children, walking them wherever they need to go. Nicki Minaj shared a video that contained the faces of the missing teenage and younger girls from the D.C. area that have been missing in alarming numbers. Model Eva Marcille called out the media for reporting on events across the globe but failing to cover an overwhelming number of missing persons cases in a concentrated area and urged law enforcement to #saveourgirls.

Meek Mill, Nicki Minaj, T.I., and Eva Marcille are among a handful of celebrities who want to know why law enforcement isn’t doing more to find several young girls from the Washington, D.C., area who have gone missing in recent weeks and months. They also want to know why so many media outlets are also failing to report the apparent problem.

So much outrage is starting to build over the case of the missing D.C. girls that even celebrities are starting to speak up and the hashtag #MissingDCGirls is now trending on Twitter and everywhere else. In response, authorities in Washington, D.C., have been quick to minimize the disappearance of so many young women, ranging in age from 11 to 17. One thing all of the missing D.C. girls seem to have in common is that they’re mostly minorities, black and Latino.

USA Today reports that 501 missing-child cases were filed in the Washington, D.C., area since the beginning of 2017. So far, 22 of those cases are still open. A comparison was made to 2016 when a total of 2,242 missing-child cases were opened to show just how many more have been reported this year. While 501 sounds like it’s a lot, that is actually just about on track with last year. That’s still a lot of missing kids, though.

Some fear the worst for the #MissingDCGirls and for some, that probably is the case. Human trafficking has been suggested as a possible motive for so many missing kids. There has also been talk about organ harvesting being a possible issue in that area. Both scenarios are horrific and there is no argument that law enforcement should be doing everything they can to get those missing girls back to the families that love them.

NBC Washington issued a report on the missing D.C. girls after public pressure from celebrities such as Meek Mill, Nicki Minaj, and T.I. made the #MissingDCGirls hashtag go viral. In an attempt to clear up what was true about the missing-child cases, they reported that a viral Instagram message touting the #MissingDCGirls hashtag and claiming that 14 girls went missing in Washington, D.C., in one day has been circulating but is not accurate.

Instead, news outlets are attributing the new outrage and public interest in the cases of the missing Washington, D.C., girls on a campaign by D.C. police to find them. It was reported that police have increasingly been sharing missing persons fliers on Twitter in an effort to bring more of the missing girls home and that has helped many to notice their plight. However, local law enforcement says that the number of girls who are missing isn’t unusually high.

According to D.C. law enforcement via the NBC report, there hasn’t been an increase in missing-child cases in the area this year. Instead, they say that the increased social media sharing in an effort to find the children and close those cases has caused an increase in concern about what may or may not be going on in the area. They said that some of the attention that celebrities and bloggers are bringing on the #MissingDCGirls cases is actually misleading because of misinformation being spread.

That doesn’t change the fact that many of those missing in the D.C. area are black and Latino, two minority groups who tend to not get a lot of media attention when someone goes missing. With celebrities like Meek Mill, Nicki Minaj, and even T.I. getting on board to share information about the missing girls and putting pressure on law enforcement to do something, hopefully, that will change. Even if there are misleading reports about how many girls have vanished from Washington, D.C., in 2017, every single missing person deserves to be looked for regardless of what race they represent.

[Featured Image by Rick Diamond/Getty Images]

Share this article: Nicki Minaj, Meek Mill, And T.I. Among Celebs Pressing To Find #MissingDCGirls
t.i nicki minaj meek mill
More from Inquisitr