Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Arverne) announced today that she will be hosting a child safety event at the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance’s “Hip Hop Halloween” celebration, at the RISE Center at 58-03 Rockaway Beach Blvd in Arverne, this Saturday, October 14th from 1PM to 4PM. Pheffer Amato is co-sponsoring the safety program with the New York State Masonic Safety ID (MSID) Program. The event will provide a free Child ID for each child and safety tips for parents. “There’s no higher priority than keeping our kids safe, period,” said Pheffer Amato. “We expect the Hip Hop Halloween to be a great time and bring out lots of families; and Halloween is a perfect time to talk safety! The MSID program provides parents and guardians with a compact disc with digital photographs, fingerprints and vital statistics to aid police through the Amber Alert program if, God forbid, a child goes missing. Meanwhile, both parents and children who come to this fun and fact-filled event will learn how to best stay safe over Halloween and throughout the year. As a parent, I love the idea of this program.” According to the MSID website, “Every day across America, children are abducted by family members, acquaintances, and strangers. Families traumatized by abduction are faced with the simultaneous challenge of quickly gathering all available resources to recover their missing child, while dealing with the devastation of their loss. The first several hours after a child, elderly, or disabled person is reported missing can be critical to the successful outcome of the case. Having valuable information about the child ready for law enforcement agencies is imperative.” Across the country, according to the National Crime Information Center, about 2,000 children go missing per day in the United States. The vast majority of cases are resolved within hours. Only about one child out of each 10,000 missing children reported to the local police is not found alive. Thirty-three percent of parents report being frequently worried about their child being abducted, though abductions by strangers account for a vanishingly small percentage of missing-child cases – between 100 and 200 per year nationally.