A Primer for Parents and Other Caretakers
Lesson II in the Series
“Some Stupid Damned Social Worker Took My Kids; Things you Should Know”
When last we met, our dear victims of circumstance had endured a police raid on their home in the middle of the night, only to find that the reason for the raid was that some unknown somebody called the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to allege that one or both of the parents perpetrated sexual abuse against one or both of their young son and daughter. Those cops who busted down doors, trashed our victims home generally, physically and emotionally assaulted, abused, dominated and humiliated the father and mother as they fought to get to their babies as the cops hauled them screaming, from their beds, rooms and the home, did not have either a warrant or even constitutionally passable probable cause to obtain a warrant which would have allowed them lawfully to enter our victims’ home under normal circumstances.
For instance, if our victims had been holding a 16 year old neighbor girl hostage for use as a sex slave in their home, and had the police received an anonymous tip about the crime, the police could not lawfully obtain a warrant to search the home in hopes of rescuing the poor child because an anonymous tip, the United States Supreme Court has held and upheld, cannot provide probable cause in and of itself to reasonably believe that a crime is indeed occurring in the home.
Since the 16 year old will not lead to removal from a parent of the girl, the DCFS would have no interest in the matter, so that agency is inapt to lend its superpowers to the police, assuming that it could if it wanted, which it might! Yet, an anonymous tip to the DCFS even only that a child has been hit by his parent with a belt on one occasion provides the DCFS social workers ample authority, so sayeth the courts, to enter the subject home without even attempting to obtain a warrant! Think that is scary? Even more frightening it the fact that the law authorizes the social workers to require (you heard me!) the local police, LAPD, LA County Sheriiff, whichever agency has jurisdiction, to help them, the social workers, to gain access to the subject home and to protect the social worker as she goes about her business of getting into private citizens’ business.
Oh, and by the way, if, while the officers are lawfully in your home assisting in the social worker’s investigation of the belting allegation, they happen to observe some evidence of some other crime in the home, say, a marijuana roach or pipe, the police now have authority to search further, even without a warrant, under the “Plain View Doctrine.” Anything in plain view of police where they have a right to be is not subject to exclusion if they seize it without a warrant. If cops walking on the sidewalk past your home look in and see you smoking that pipe, they do not need a warrant to come in and get you, and to seize whatever they see once inside, and even to search in hidden places, since they already have evidence of a crime having occurred in the home. But enough of the search and seizure issues, that is for another lesson. Just know that the social workers add a horrifying other opportunity for the state, the police, the government, Big Brother, to trounce upon your freedoms, like the freedom to be left the hell alone! God help us all!
I intended to take you with our victims into the dependency court for the initial hearing on their children’s sexual abuse petitions today, but I have gone on too long already, and I think you have enough here to digest anyway. So, I shall return again next week with another episode in the continuing saga, “Holy Crap! That DCFS, et al, is Really Scary!” Until then . . . be afraid of the DCFS,be very afraid!
