(Newser) – If only the teenagers missing in Washington, DC, were wearing Super Bowl jerseys, they might be found as quickly as Tom Brady's lucky shirt, says comedian DL Hughley in a tweet, per News One. He's one of several on social media drawing attention to DC cases of missing juveniles, many of whom are black or Latino. NBC Washington reports more than a dozen teens, aged 14 to 18, went missing in 2017 and remain missing as of Thursday, while the AP puts the number at 22 as of Wednesday. Metropolitan Police say 501 missing child cases logged in DC so far this year are in line with previous years' figures (2,242 in 2016 and 2,433 in 2015) but are appearing on social media more often. Black members of Congress, however, are demanding action.

"Ten children of color went missing in our nation's capital in a period of two weeks and at first garnered very little media attention. That's deeply disturbing," reads a letter signed this week by Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. It calls upon the Justice Department and FBI to investigate and "return these children to their parents as soon as possible." At a meeting at a neighborhood school on Wednesday, the co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation suggested human traffickers could be preying on low income teens and runaways. However, a police rep tells Fox 5 there's no evidence of that. "A large number of our missing teens voluntarily leave home" and are found shortly after, she says. (Read more missing person stories.)

