Nomination For A Hero Badge

Once communities defund the police, who will step into the breech? I am just a broke down retired cop. In thirty years of law enforcement, I’ve never had a positive outcome with social welfare agencies. I have been retired for 14 years. During that time, nothing has changed. When it comes to investigations, incompetence is an unreachable goal for these agencies. Here are some results of social agencies charged with investigating abuse allegations.

The Decatur School District was so enamored with the concept of “transgender bathrooms” that they instituted an open bathroom policy. They felt it was such a good idea that they didn’t bother to burden the parents by informing them. The rest of the story is reported at the link.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/10/federal-investigation-trans-bathroom-enabled-alleged-sexual-assault-of-kindergartener/

I want to emphasize the following passages from the Federalist Blog.

Rather than investigate the complaint, the district notified the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) and the police via the school resource officer. But DFCS’s legal mandate is to investigate child abuse and neglect in the context of caregivers, not schools.

If you believe that the Decatur School District was unaware of DFCS’s limitations in conducting investigations, I’ve got a bridge to sell to you. Button, button who’s got the button? The bureaucrat’s lament, I referred the complaint, it’s out of my hands. I’m not responsible for what some other agency does.

Somebody at DFCS has a sense of shame but not obligation. The Decatur School District tried to blame the victim’s mother. The school district alleged that mama provided inadequate supervision to the child.

I find this allegation positively obscene, at least prior to the incident. In light of what happened, I think it is a reasonable charge. Based on the Decatur School District actions in this case, any parent who sends a child to a school in that district is grossly negligent.

So DFCS limited its inquiry to investigating and dismissing the school’s allegations that the victim’s mother provided inadequate supervision — a shameful attempt by educrats to deflect attention from the school assault. The police also immediately declined to pursue an assault case because of the ages of the children involved.

I don’t know Georgia law. In common law offenders below a certain age were deemed incapable of forming the requisite criminal intent to commit a crime. This would appear to be the case here.

This may not preclude DFCS or a similar agency from stepping in with a CHINS complaint. CHINS stands for Child in Need of Supervision and does not require a criminal act.

The school district wasn’t finished screwing up.

The district contented itself with transferring the alleged victim, not the perpetrator, from the classroom and then to a different school and declaring the problem resolved.

Did I mention that mother and child were black? She was a single mother with limited or no resources. How could she take on a school bureaucracy. There is nobody, anywhere more bigoted than a liberal.

Unfortunately, this is not a Georgia problem. The problem begins with the denizens that populate social agencies, be it child welfare, schools, or mental health facilities. The first thing one must understand is that these agencies exist to provide the inhabitants with a comfortable living and a guaranteed pension. Referring problems upsets established routines. I’ll give you some examples from my own experience:

School Districts

I was confronted by a school district police officer, who handed me a “piece” of black tar heroin. Texas drug laws have slot limits. Twenty-eight grams of heroin is a higher offense than twenty-seven grams. So to be safe heroin dealers package it in twenty-five gram quantities. This is referred to as a “piece”. Most heroin junkies will never see that much heroin in one place.

It seems a ten year old walked up to his teacher’s desk. He was in an alternative school. In his regular school he showed up with a syringe. He had a message to go with the syringe, but it was lost in the hubbub. Zero tolerance! Off to alternative school he went.

This time the kid dumped the “piece” of heroin on the teacher’s desk. Never having seen black tar heroin (at least in that quantity) she asked, “What’s that?”

The ten year old relayed his message once again, “It’s heroin, I told you before, my mother is a dope dealer.” He was having a tough time getting anybody to believe him, so he brought a visual aid. The kid explained that mama had two more of them at home.

I got all of this from the third shitter on the left. The rocket scientists at school decided that the kid had to be protected from me, rather than his dope dealing mama. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him. At least they gave me the kid’s address.

I went to have discussion with mama. She denied any knowledge of heroin or dope dealing. She caved in when I accepted her explanation. I concluded that it must be that her ten year old son was a drug kingpin. I recovered almost eighty grams of heroin, the cut, scales and packaging. Mama caught a Federal case.

I started out characterizing this as a school district screw up. But in telling the story I remembered that Child Protective Services (CPS) was in the mix. CPS was trying to demonstrate they were at least as incompetent as the school district.

Mama eventually agreed to enter a guilty plea. During the hearing when she entered her plea, I observed a woman that seemed to be interested in the proceeding. She was taking notes.

Prior to sentencing mama was put under oath and then was allowed to make an impassioned plea for leniency. She informed the United States District Judge that she had suffered so much. She had voluntarily relinquished custody of her children. (A variation on the old, “I killed my parents and now I’m an orphan scam.”) The judge then sent her off to Club Fed for an extended thirty-two month stay.

About a month later I found myself subpoenaed to family court. I was confronted with attorneys representing mama, the kids and CPS. It seems mama was asserting her parental rights and challenging the effort of the state to take her kids. Seeded in the gaggle of lawyers and social workers, was the note taking lady from federal court. She was the CPS case worker.

I kept asking the group why I was there? They explained that they needed me to testify about the arrest and conviction. To which I replied, “But why am I here?” They again explained in a tone reserved for the old and stupid because I was the arresting officer.

Okay, I had my fun, now I went in for the kill. “You mean you don’t want me to testify as to how mama perpetrated a fraud and committed perjury in Federal Court? She told the judge she had already relinquished custody of the children. Ask her, pointing at the case worker she was there taking notes.” The deer in the headlights look I got from her indicated that she missed the significance of the plea. I told them they could do what they wanted, but if mama continued her efforts my next stop was the United States Attorney’s office. Done, mama decided to go off and do her time.

Child Protective Service (CPS)

I am not aware of a more useless, ineffective state agency than CPS. When it come to incompetence, CPS is matchless.

Did you hear the one about the woman employed by CPS who was arrested and convicted of producing child pornography. After she got out of prison, she was hired as a contractor by CPS with access to their database.

I was working undercover and buying cocaine from a couple of idiots. My primary contact acted as middleman. I ordered up an “eightball” of cocaine. When I showed up at his place. He informed me we had to trip. That meant he didn’t have any dope and we would have to go to his connection. When I agreed, I didn’t bargain on the toddler he brought along.

Dope deals have rules. Middlemen don’t want the customer and connection to meet. If the two establish a relationship then the middleman is no longer needed.

A second rule is that money doesn’t walk without dope and vice versa. This should be an indication of the high esteem in which middlemen are held. We had come this far, it was a matter of feet. Would I let the money walk? My rocket scientist had a solution. He would leave the kid as collateral. We had known each other twenty minutes. I gave him the money and he gave me the kid. I returned the kid when I got the dope.

We did a couple of other deals. I wanted his connection. I especially wanted his connection when I found out the connection also had a toddler. He had a foolproof method of transporting dope. He put it in the kid’s diaper.

Eventually, we popped these two idiots. I forwarded the completed reports to CPS. I got a reply that they couldn’t find a violation that required their attention. Why wasn’t I surprised?

In another incident, I ran a search warrant on a mobile home. We found methamphetamine and all the ingredients used to manufacture speed. You know like Breaking Bad. Naw, this idiot was manufacturing meth an eight ball at a time. He was using mama’s Pyrex cookware and the kitchen stove in the process. Did I mention that a speed lab is considered a hazardous waste site? Mama was using the same Pyrex cookware and stove to cook meals for the kids.

One of my fellow agents forwarded a report to CPS. I couldn’t be bothered. The response was something along the line of, “the kids were getting fed regularly. What’s the problem?” I was neither surprised nor disappointed. Once again CPS had met or exceeded my expectations.

Law enforcement and social welfare agencies may be part of government. But their mindset and expectations are oftentimes mutually exclusive. Social welfare seeks consensus and nurturing. The object is to avoid or mitigate confrontation.

Law enforcement is about confrontation. To be sure there are degrees. A marked police unit and uniformed officer are outfitted to ensure compliance via presence. When push comes to shove cops have no interest in nurturing murderers, rapists, dope dealers and thieves. There can be no accommodation for folks who willfully violate the law, to the own ends.