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8-Year-Old Girl Walks Dog Around Block, Police and Child Services Investigate Mom

“We want to investigate…because you just don’t know.”

Lenore Skenazy|Aug. 22, 2018 7:01 pm

Walk

Vvvita / DreamstimeCorey Widen let her 8-year-old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world—walk the dog around the block. After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.

The cops had received a call about an unsupervised child, and had to question the mom. After doing so, they quickly dropped the matter. But then the Department of Children and Family Services picked it up again—interrogating not just Widen but her kids, other family members, and even her pediatrician.

I was a cop for thirty years. The two most useless agencies I ran across during that time were the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Child Protective Services (CPS). To the uninitiated this story makes no sense. Wrong, dog breath. This is the type of investigation that a CPS investigator can sink their teeth into.

I once ran a search warrant on a trailer home looking for methamphetamine. I found a speed lab. It wasn’t much of a lab, but a hazardous environment none-the-less. Did I mention the two kids in the home? Daddy was making his methamphetamine in the kitchen using the same pots and pans that mama used to cook the kid’s dinner. I won’t mention the stench, filth and general disrepair of the home. That is par for the course with speed freaks. I forwarded a report to CPS. CPS couldn’t find a reason to investigate.

In an another incident, I was working undercover and set up a cocaine deal with a suspect. I arrived at his place only to find out that he didn’t have any cocaine. But he knew somebody. All I had to do was give him a ride. (This is a standard low level dope deal.) I agreed and we loaded up in my G-ride. I say we, the suspect, his eighteen month old toddler and I headed off to meet his connection. Needless to say I didn’t have a child safety seat. 

We pulled up to a trailer park and the suspect told me where to park. He asked me to give him the money. #1 rule in dope deals: DON’T FRONT THE MONEY. I started to object, but he assured me it was alright, he would leave the kid as collateral. I got my dope.

I was posing as a used car dealer. This was to explain why I showed up driving a different car. During the next deal I showed up driving a late model Ford Crown Victoria, four doors, vinyl seats, vinyl floor mats, black wall tires, saucer hubcaps, spotlight on the driver’s A pillar and a manufacturer’s applied model plate that said “Police Interceptor.” None of this phased the rocket scientists I was dealing with. 

He called his connection and the connection agreed to drop by with the cocaine. When he showed up, he had a two year old with him. The kid was holding the dope in his diaper. I got mine and we each drove off. My cover officers stopped the connection, recovered the money, and found an additional quantity of cocaine in the kid’s diaper. I again forwarded the report to CPS. I am a glutton for punishment. CPS again couldn’t justify a reason to investigate.

One more story. I have a friend, both he and his wife were police officers at the time. One of his children, as an infant, tried hard to die of SIDS. (He survived.) They went through three separate incidents with the child and ended up at the hospital three times. Unfortunately for them, not the same hospital every time. CPS opened a case on them based on the multiple hospital admissions. The investigation went on for several months before they were cleared.

What is the moral of the story? CPS case workers are not cops. They are unarmed. They have  stack of files on their desk. They have cases in neighborhoods where the police go only when called. The denizens are not likely to welcome a visit and become downright surly. The alternative is to find the cases in nice middle class neighborhoods. There, they will deal with a better class of people. People who won’t cuss them out and threaten them. Chances are the target of the investigation will be intimidated by the presence of CPS. It doesn’t matter if the complaint has any merit. As long as they are “actively investigating” and generating reports to the boss everything is good.

Saving kids in not in the metric for identifying performance. How many cases were investigated or closed in a given week is. I predict that this investigation will run for several more weeks. The alternative is to head to the ghetto where the kids really need help and that is unacceptable.