Darcy Staniforth in Conversation with Derrica Wilson, Natalie Wilson, and Mike Fulton of the Black and Missing Foundation
Cinema Sentries
Darcy Staniforth
September 12, 2025
The Black and Missing Foundation shouldn’t have to exist, but it does because you probably haven’t heard the names Tamika Huston, Pam Butler, Unique Harris, Phoenix Coldon, Relisha Rudd, or Eileen Robinson. The foundation has to exist because law-enforcement agencies and media outlets don’t cover missing people of color in the same way that they cover white people, especially white women. It has to exist because of something known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome” where biases lead these organizations to pay disproportionate attention to white, middle-to-upper-class women who conform to Eurocentric ideas of beauty. It has to exist because people of color don’t garner the same attention from the very agencies who claim to be part of the solution.
This past weekend at CrimeCon, I had the chance to sit down with Derrica Wilson and Natalie Wilson, the co-founders of the Black and Missing Foundation. They founded BAMFI in 2008 “to ensure black people and other people of color reported missing don’t slip through the cracks.” I had a chance to speak with them along with Detective Mike Fulton about why the foundation exists and the importance of creating best practices guides for both media and law enforcement.
Derrica, Natalie, Detective Fulton, Thanks so much…
Mike Fulton: Mike please.
Thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me today about the Black and Missing Foundation. I love this foundation because of the really important work that is being done by y’all. It’s something that since encountering you last year here at CrimeCon, I have done my best on my end to share out as much as I can and get the word out. But one of the things I think that you have all done, that’s so important, is that you have put out a guide on best practices for law enforcement. So, can you talk a little bit about that and where that comes out of, and why? I understand the need, but what do our readers need to understand about the importance of a guide like that?
Derrica Wilson: Well, thank you so much, Darcy, for even sitting down and having us here. We put out this law enforcement best practices guide for missing person investigations because we saw a need that there was a disconnect when it comes to reporting. You know, when families are going to law enforcement in the Black and Brown community, oftentimes the children, they are classified as runaways. The adults, their disappearances associated with some sort of criminal activity. And there’s also a barrier in the reporting or waiting period. You know, some agencies require families to wait 24 to 48 hours when we know the first 24 to 48 hours are the most critical moments. And what we did was we actually brought everyone to the table with us, law enforcement, media, the community, these families that we’re serving, and we created a policy holistically, with the hope of everyone across the country taking what we have written out for best practices and utilizing some of the best practices from other agencies to bring it all together and have a holistic approach because jurisdictions handle missing person cases differently.
Absolutely. So, what are some of the things that you think that this guide has really brought to the forefront that maybe people weren’t thinking about in the first place?
Derrica Wilson: You know, it is really helping law enforcement with their policy and procedures. You have your written policy and procedures, but then you also have those that are doing things at the discretion when you’re out there. But if you have something in black and white, this gives them an opportunity to review what they currently have, and we just want to enhance it. We want law enforcement to see us as partners, but it’s also equally important for the general public to know what is expected, So by us putting out this guide, which is not just for law enforcement, it’s for everyone. You know we’re all in this together because it takes all of us, law enforcement, the media, and the community, to help bring our missing home.
Absolutely right, because even though your family may not immediately be affected, it may be your neighbors. It may be the family that your kids go to school with. It may be a colleague or a co-worker. And in those moments of survival and crisis, so many times, we’re just waiting to know what we’re supposed to do. And the more people that know what people should be expecting from a law enforcement response, the better that is going to be able to help to say, “Hey, you know what, there’s this guide. These are the things you should be expecting, and these are things that are affecting policy and procedure.”
Because sometimes that turn in law enforcement is really slow, but the more law enforcement agencies that get on board, and the more officers and people that are serving behind the scenes that get on board, the more we start to turn the culture to take away those terms like “less missing” and “less dead” And you know, we need people to be thinking about the representation, which absolutely matters, when people have not felt it has mattered in the past.
Derrica Wilson: Absolutely. Because the guide is for anyone that’s missing. All Races matter.
Mike, for you, as a law enforcement agent, how did you get involved with Black and Missing? And how has this changed you as a person who’s been in this field for quite some time.
Mike Fulton: So I got involved, because I work out of the cold case unit with the D.C police. And I got involved in a case where Pam Bulter went missing. It was a cold case and ended up getting assigned to me and we were able to sort of resolve that. And Pam had a brother, Derek, who I connected with and through the investigation and we talked on a daily basis. And after that investigation, there was another case, a young lady who went missing that I started working. And during this whole process is when I found out about Black and Missing as one of the resources that was there. And Derek is an incredible guy and Derek introduced me to Black and Missing.
All the all the missing person cases that that we have, we went and pulled. Derek is a great resource. I had Derek meet with all the families to talk about what he’s been through. He’s been through the whole process.
Law enforcement always protects investigations. They don’t get any outside help, and quite honestly, that’s kind of the way I always felt. And then when, I got put in contact with Black and Missing, what I’ve learned is there was this whole resource that was there that has access to thousands more resources. And the police department was very skeptical. They didn’t want to do stuff. They just were like, “no, no, no,” but then when we were able to close up Pam Butler, that was a success for the police department. They looked good. And then to piggyback right off of that was the Unique Harris case, which we closed, and now the police department will say, “Hey, wait a second, this is a win for us.” So when I approached them I’m like, “hey, you know, we got all these other cases we want to investigate. You know, Black and Missing really is a great resource. Can we utilize them?”
And they were kind of maybe skeptical, but they’re like, “well, sure,” and that’s how sort of the process sort of began, with the trust.
And you fast forward to where we are now. When we’re coming out to the to the conference, you know, I called our PIO guy. And he’s, like, “go, go do what you got to do.” So they allow to partner up with them. They allow me to use outside resources, because it’s a benefit. It’s a benefit to me. It’s a benefit to the police department. And it’s a tremendous benefit to these families whose cases we’re investigating.
And not just that, we had policies that were in place that we thought were good policies as it related to missing persons. We started digging into that in the Pam Butler case and it started exposing a lot of the flaws. And then, when we circled into the Unique Harris case it really exposed that we weren’t doing the best we can. We actually changed our policies based off these investigations and based off knowledge we were getting from Black and Missing. Knowledge we were getting from Derek. The policies got changed. So now, when a person’s reported missing, if it’s under any type of suspicious circumstances, it comes right to us and we’re also the major case unit. That never happened before right. Now, when it happens, usually within the first 24 hours, it comes to us. And since we’ve implemented these new policies, I think there’s been five cases of people being reported that came right to us and within a couple months, we were able to resolve them. And that wouldn’t have happened if the connections hadn’t been made and if we weren’t able to sort of figure out the things we weren’t doing right that put us in connection with Black and Missing that caused us to change our policies. So were able to fix these issues that were going on to have a better practice in what we’re doing.
I think you bring up a really important point of intent versus impact. Because a lot of times, policies and procedures have an intention behind them, but how they actually impact cases is another very different piece in those things. And then, when you’re also looking at connecting in with community, right? Because we’re not breaking new news when we talk about the fact that the Black and Brown communities have complicated relationships with law enforcement with very good reason. We have historically, and again, this comes from my American Studies brain; originally the use of bloodhounds developed because they were looking for enslaved folks who had escaped. A lot of law enforcement practices come out of these practices of white supremacy. At the heart of these things, and so it is like, who is first, and who is the people that we pay attention to first, versus the who being everyone. So trying to build those bridges of trust between communities and understanding that a foundation like Black and Missing is going to have access to a community that is not necessarily going to come to law enforcement first. But they will say, I trust my own community. I trust the people who are representing us and representing us in the best way possible. And so it, it takes both sides, right?
This will lead into the next thing I want to talk about in media. We see so many times, law enforcement agencies doubling down, tripling down on, “We did it right. We did it right. Don’t question us, we know. We know how this is done. We are the experts.” I think it’s very courageous of law enforcement officers and departments and those institutions to say, you know, what we can do it better, we know better, so we can do better now.
Mike Fulton: So, one of the things that the police department instituted in their curriculum is, and this was probably about five, six years ago, everybody on the Metropolitan Police Department, including all new recruits, we go to the African American History Museum, and we take a tour of it. And there’s an education that comes from behind that, and then there’s a professor and one of the things they talk about is why law enforcement is so distrusted in the community. What is told to us, and what I didn’t even you know or truly appreciate is, that we were the ones that were enforcing the laws, no matter how bad they were. But we were the ones that were going out and locking up slaves. We were the jailers. So to the Black community, they look at us, not as protectors, not as somebody that’s for them, they’re looking at us as we’re coming to get them, to lock them up, send them to jail or get lynched or whatever it is. And those are all things that you know that we weren’t necessarily aware of, so now we’re educated on that.
I love that that education is happening and I think it should be done a lot more and a lot of other places. Speaking of things we see in the media, I heard that a media guide for best practices is coming out now. Can we talk a little bit about that today as media? Let’s talk about that.
Natalie Wilson: Yes, let’s talk about it. So first of all, Darcy, thank you so much for having us. It has been an uphill battle with our organization getting media coverage. Not going to sugarcoat it at all. When we first started the organization, it was because of Tamika Huston, who went missing out of Spartanburg, South Carolina, and her aunt, who is in media relations and has a lot of connections, reached out to the same reporters, the same network, the same programs to get coverage for her beautiful niece, like Natalie Holloway did, and guess what? She was met with silence. And when we started the organization, we were met with silence.
There was a young lady by the name of Phoenix Coldon who went missing out of Saint Louis, and I called every single news station and I was met with silence. And then finally an assignment news editor said, you know what, just send it to me. And you know, they started covering her story. So we have created this media guide in partnership with the National Association of Black Journalists in Washington DC chapter, and it’s made up of media professionals. Not only in the DC area, but around the country, and they’re at various news stations. And we were, you know, taking a look at some of their experiences, and we shared with them some of our experiences in trying to get our missing to be household names, too. Because media is very powerful and we have seen, where getting coverage can result in someone being found in minutes. We know that to be true. We were on The View and 14 minutes after the show aired, the young woman was found. We received a tip. That led right to that young lady. So, we put all of our heads together as a task force, and we have created this media guide, which talks about what to do as a media professional, and what not to do. Like don’t go to social media and get their photo of them at a club. You know, be respectful of the families. And you know, when you’re interviewing someone, or if you choose to interview someone, have some empathy, some sympathy, and some humanity with these families. And oh, by the way, return a call.
We do know that in many newsrooms, there are no policies or procedures in the place. So, who decides who gets coverage is typically a middle-aged white man. And some people may say, “rightfully so,” but they’re looking at ad dollars and sponsorship. And yes, you have to pay for the newsrooms, but you have to look at your community as well. So, let’s go beyond the ad dollars and the sponsorships.
Absolutely, and it’s a big assumption by someone making that call that it doesn’t affect the people in that room, right? Derrica, you and I were talking a little bit yesterday about how close some of these cases hit. A few streets over. A few neighborhoods over, you know? What I think about whenever I hear about something going down in my neighborhood, I look to see if those are my students. If those are their family members.
Natalie, you bring up such a great point about the humanity and the images in the media that people are putting out there, because we know that those images cause bias.
Natalie Wilson: Absolutely.
We know that if someone shares a picture at a club all these questions start.
Natalie Wilson: Yes, like they are getting what they deserve.
Yes, things like they’re getting what they deserve. Or how was she acting or what were they wearing? A lot of the same kinds of things we see in sexual assault cases, where people are not believed. And these things tie back to deep misogyny, deep sexism, and deep racism.
And at the heart of these things, lie these biases that not everybody knows they need to check when they see these kinds of things. In my brain already, I’m like, how do we get these guides in journalism classrooms? How do we start spreading that word? But with these best practices guides for law enforcement, and the best practices guide for the media, where can folks find these?
Derrica Wilson: They can absolutely go to our website at BAMFI.org. All they have to do is request it, and our team will send them access to it. Now, Natalie can speak more about the same for the media guide, but you know, we just want people to have the information, this is all about being solution driven. We see a problem, and in order to correct the problem, you must be willing to be the solution, and that is what we are doing. And we are bringing everyone to the table with us so we can be the change agents and help this project forward.
Natalie Wilson: And with the media guide, you can go to our website at BAMFI.org, and it’s not just for media professionals. As you mentioned, students, we’re training our future journalists. We will have a social media kit. We’re also asking media professionals to take a pledge. You don’t have to say it publicly, but we want to know that you are committed to ensuring that you will cover these cases. We’re not asking for anything different or special. We’re asking for the same level of media coverage that you give the same cases, time and time and time again.
If you look at Relisha Rudd, how many impressions does she have compared to Natalie Holloway? And it’s very unfair, so stop showing the same cases over and over again, and let’s show some of these new ones. Because the families are desperately searching for their missing loved ones, and we know that media works.
Derrica Wilson: I’m sitting here thinking about what Natalie is saying, and I remember, we had a case where there was a young woman who went missing, Gabby Petito, and she was shared over and over on every news outlet, local and national. And we had a family reach out to us and as soon as we answered the phone, “How was my daughter any different?” And that just hit, you know? Like, “How is my daughter any different?”
So, the other thing that our team does a great job of, especially when there’s this heightened awareness, you know, around the Missing White Woman Syndrome and our media partners are reaching out, asking for comments and statements, our team do a great job of giving them all the flyers of missing people of color as well. Instead of highlighting us, highlight and utilize the space to highlight those that are missing from the community because awareness is key. You know, this isn’t a black issue. This isn’t a white issue. This is a human rights issue. And less is more. Less focus on one particular race and more of everyone that’s missing, the greater the chances of a reunion.
Absolutely. And I think in a lot of media outlets and law enforcement organizations, people look at equality is oppression. There is space for everyone at the table and we need to reinstill that humanity in folks. And you bring up something that I think is a really simple way to help, because I think sometimes people think that they have to be out in the streets, or that they don’t have a voice in these places, but I think one of the simplest things people can do on social media is follow y’all and reshare your posts.
Natalie Wilson: Share with your networks.
Because you never know who is going to be at the right place at the right time. Like the story you share about The View, that gave me chills, because that is that many eyes watching and saying, “Wait. Wait. I saw something” or “I’ve seen something.” And that one share becomes more shares, becomes more shares, and becomes more shares.
Derrica Wilson: We ask our community to be our digital milk carton, because we can’t wait on the five or a ten o’clock news cycle.
Natalie Wilson: And we’re also finding that if you’re not personally affected, you’re turning a blind eye to this issue. Well, guess what? Your neighbor could be trafficked. You know, someone down the street could be missing, but if you don’t know that or really, and truly, we think sometimes people don’t care because it’s not their daughter. It’s not their son. It’s not their grandparent who has Alzheimer’s and wandered away. So we have to look at things differently as a community and be more involved and stop walking and looking down at your phone. Look up as you pass people by. You may look at someone, say, “Okay, I know you.” Or you know, just strike up a conversation sometimes. We’ve been doing that a lot here at CrimeCon. And you the community is ready to be involved.
Mike Fulton: I was just gonna add in on that. Of one of the cases that I went and pulled was a young lady named Eileen Robinson. She went missing in DC in the early 90s, and she had struggled with drugs and, and you know, the case kind of didn’t go anywhere. So when I pulled these cases and I met with her daughter about four months ago and we were talking and, and she was just saying that the hardest part was the lack of not knowing anything. And one of the things that I told her, I said, “Hey, look, we’re partnered with Black and Missing, and they have the power to get the media involved.” And during our conversation. I held up her mother’s case file. It was very slim and there wasn’t much in it. And I said, “I know you feel that your mom’s invisible.” And the waythat this case was treated, there was no media, no nothing. I said, “I know, you feel invisible, but I promise you, at the very least, we’re going to give your mother a name. We’re going to get it out there. And she bust out crying, and she was so thankful for just that one simple thing of, my mom is somebody.
So, we reach out to Natalie and say, hey, work your magic. And then, I think within a week or so, somebody from Channel Nine reached out, and they’re going to do not just a piece on her, but a piece on the other five cases we have. And by the way, that’s next Thursday. So that in itself is a win for the family. It gave them a sense of hope. A sense of identity.
And the other thing to think about, it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect me because it’s not my loved one, but it does, because if you do nothing it, there’s already this whole community that’s basically invisible. And the more people that realize that if you’re striving for the same thing, to not be invisible, it’s best by numbers. It’s just the more people that speak out, the more people that get involved, you know the more become visible. Because I’m gonna tell you the one thing the police department does not like they do not like bad press. They do not like they do like to look bad. And the way to change that is through social media and speaking up and saying we’re not just one family. We’re a whole community. We’re not just DC. We’re not just Virginia. We’re Alaska and Montana. That’s really what’s going to force departments to change is when people start applying that pressure.
Natalie Wilson: And that’s our strategy for media coverage. Because we know that it puts pressure on law enforcement to add resources to the cases.We see it time and time again. We have a partnership with OP Live and one of the things that I love that they do, they will call law enforcement and say, give me an update on the case. And we start seeing a lot of traction because of that one call.
Mike Fulton: And not just that but every police department in this country, we’re all understaffed, we’re all overworked. But you know what that is what it is. But what I’ve learned, and I think what this strategy does is there are tons of resources out there that aren’t your normal or conventional resources. Whether it’s social media, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s internet sleuths, or volunteers that will go on search. There’s a whole…hell they’re all here! So my point is that it is a resource that is free to us. It doesn’t cost law enforcement anything. It doesn’t cost us any man hours, but they’re willing to go do all the stuff, that if you’re understaffed, you’re undermanned, you can’t do. Utilize it!
Like for the DC police department, it’s like, hey, wait a second, there are a lot of resources and it’s beneficial! And I think when you talk about the media strategy, that is a very effective tool because it’s going to force the police department to think out of that small narrow box that they’ve they’ve pegged themselves in, and they’re going to realize that there’s a whole other segment of, I call it civilian law enforcement, that is out there, ready to do whatever it takes and use it right, because it’s a powerful thing.
Derrica Wilson: I wanted to make a point to your point. We do have law enforcement agencies that are now uploading cases to our database because they are short staffed and we’re getting that information out instantly. Especially when it takes a little while for their PIO or someone else in the office to distribute the flyers. They actually go right in, and they’ve built us into their best practices or their policy and procedure. But they actually enter them themselves and as soon as they enter, because we know that it’s already a verified case, they get a flyer immediately.
Because that flyer can make a difference so quickly.
Natalie Wilson: It has.
And sometimes people might think it’s just a flyer. But it’s not just a flyer. It is somebody’s brother, daughter, cousin, sister. Whoever it is, it is somebody’s someone.
Natalie Wilson: You know, there’s so much information on social media, right? We hear all the time, “Well, I don’t know what to believe. Is this a true missing person?” If it’s in our database, and we publish that flyer, it’s true that person is missing. And we update if there’s sadly, a sad news, or a great news. We update our social media posts instantaneously.
And I think that has been of the things that has been really incredible, following you over these past few years, is watching those updates. I eagerly await those updates. And I always hope that they’re going to be great news, but I know sometimes there’s sad news, and that brings a different closure. That updating is so important, because again to your point, Natalie, so many people say, like, I don’t know if this is real. I can remember when one of my own friends was missing and people were “Okay, you are all claiming to know this person.” And I did know this person. This was a loved one of mine, and so what, what does it hurt to share. What does it hurt to click the button? You’re already clicking the button. Just click the next button over and share that out.
Natalie Wilson: You already saw it. So now spring into action.
Mike Fulton: I was just gonna say the most sort of amazing thing happened yesterday. This older white lady came up very and was this is something that’s very passionate to her. Talking about missing people, missing people of color, and she said to me, “There is some sort of pandemic going on with young black women disappearing. I’ve been seeing a lot more on the news the past couple of years. And I said to her. “Well, no, it’s always been there.”
And a lot of times you know police reports weren’t even taken, but because of the pressure of organizations like Black and Missing and social media, it’s forcing the news outlets to now put the stuff out there.People are seeing it for the first time, and she had no idea this has been going on. So that is a check mark that it works. Here’s somebody who this is something that has been dear to her heart for all these years but didn’t realize it was an issue until she started seeing all the news. So it works. It’s powerful.
Those folks have always been there for sure, and the challenge, as we’ve talked about today, is making sure people know how they can help and get that word out and that. like. What an incredible interaction you know with her, because then you get to share that knowledge. And then she’s gonna take that knowledge and share it. And as I mentioned to Derrica yesterday, spread the word, change the world.
And if you want to get involved with helping spread the word of the Black and Missing Foundation, please visit their website www.BAMFI.org and sign up for their newsletter. You can also follow them on social media:
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bamfiorg
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blackandmissingfdn/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bamfiorg
Photo credit: Cinema Sentries