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| Joe Arpaio (Photo by Gage Skidmore) |
Among the many unpardonable (or is that the wrong word?)
things that allegedly happened during the reign of former Maricopa County,
Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, let’s not forget the time two of his top deputies
allegedly threatened to have a reporter’s children taken from her.
According to a report from another county sheriff’s office,
it happened several times. According to the Phoenix alternative weekly New Times, “’[The reporter] was always
threatened that her child would end up in the hands of CPS, which was very
upsetting to her,’ the report states.”
It allegedly happened in 2009, but didn’t come to light
until two years later. I wrote about it at the time, and that post is reprinted
below. A couple of updates:
● In the 2011 post, I discussed a foster-care panic ending
in Florida and continuing in Arizona.
Now, Florida is
panicking again and in Arizona, at long last, the foster-care panic may be
ending.
● The post criticizes coverage of child welfare in the
Arizona Republic. That coverage improved significantly over the past year, as a
result of a new project led by reporter Bob Ortega. Unfortunately, Ortega recently
left the Republic to join the
investigative unit of CNN, to it is not clear whether the progress will
continue.
Here’s the original post:
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Child welfare in
Arizona: They don’t threaten reporters, do they?
Two top
deputies in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office allegedly threatened to
retaliate against a reporter by taking away her child. That should give
Arizona journalists second thoughts about their embrace of unchecked power to
intervene in families – but it probably won't.
It took
Florida seven years to end the foster-care panic that swept through the state
starting in 1999. But with Florida having reversed course
and made children saferwhile significantly reducing entries into
care, there now is a new record-holder for perennial foster care panic:
Arizona.
That
state’s panic started much like Florida’s: First a high-profile death of a
child “known to the system” then a new governor embraces a
take-the-child-and-run approach. In Florida it was a Republican, Jeb Bush, in
Arizona it was a Democrat, Janet Napolitano. (In child welfare idiocy
tends to be bipartisan.)
Just
four days after taking office Napolitano told caseworkers to just take away the
kids “and we’ll sort it out later.”
Although
there are strong indications Napolitano herself realized within months that
this was a huge mistake, she never said so publicly. Now, more than eight
years later, Arizona still hasn’t sorted it out. Details are in our report on Arizona child
welfare. The Arizona Foster-Care panic has broken
Florida’s record. Nationwide, between 2002 and 2010 entries into
foster care over the course of a year declined nearly 15 percent. In
Arizona they soared 70 percent, with no end in sight.
As
always with foster-care panics, the one in Arizona backfired. All those
false allegations and trivial cases and all that needless removal of children
from their homes further overloaded caseworkers leaving them less time to find
children in real danger. So the cycle of failure continues year after year.
Every few years, when a new high-profile case or cases grabs headlines,
everyone repeats the same mistakes – like assuming that the solution is to
encourage everyone to report their slightest suspicions to CPS, further
overloading the system. As a matter of fact, that’s happening
right now.
And
sometimes it gets worse. Although politicians started the Arizona Foster
Care Panic, a lot of the responsibility for keeping it going rests with the
state’s press corps. The one reporter at a daily newspaper in the state
who really came to understand child welfare, Karina Bland of the Arizona
Republic, was transferred off the beat several years ago. So whenever
there were signs the panic might abate, someone at the Republic in
Phoenix and/or the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson would respond
to a horror story by pouring on the hype and hysteria and start it up
again.
It’s
not that these reporters didn’t hear from parents who said they were falsely
accused or threatened with removal of their children for no good reason,
perhaps as retaliation for being insufficiently cooperative with
authorities. It’s just that, like many reporters across the country, the
journalists at the big Arizona dailies rolled their eyes and figured it was
probably just some lousy parent making up excuses.
But one
would think they’d reconsider after it happened to one of their own.
Actually,
it happened a couple of years ago, but only became public in May, and I just
stumbled on it this week. It’s all explained in this story
from the “Valley Fever” Blogon the website of the Phoenix
alternative weekly New Times.
The
story revolves around one of the many scandals involving the right-wing sheriff
of Maricopa County, (metropolitan Phoenix) Joe Arpaio. (The “Valley Fever”
home pageon the New Times website includes a
countdown clock – or, more accurately a count-up clock, ticking off
the days that the sheriff has been under investigation by the federal
government. Click on it and you’ll get to a page with 15 years of New Timesinvestigative
stories about Arpaio and his office.)
But
here’s the bottom line. According to the Valley Fever post on May 13, a
reporter for the Republic, Yvonne Wingett-Sanchez, says two deputy
chiefs of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Dave Hendershott and Paul
Chagolla, threatened to arrest her – and take away her child – because
the reporter was doing her job. The story quotes from a report on an
investigation of Arpaio’s office done by the sheriff in another county.
Here’s the relevant section of the story:
A year
[after the incident], after Arpaio had put Hendershott on administrative leave,
Wingett complained to [sheriff’s office spokeswoman] Lisa Allen that he and
Chagolla repeatedly had threatened to arrest her over the incident.
"Next week, Yvonne, you're going to be arrested ... and your child is going to end up with Child Protective Services," they said, Wingett Sanchez told Allen, adding that she could barely speak about it without getting "emotional."
The threats to Wingett Sanchez came in person and, at least once, by telephone, Allen reported. "She was always threatened that her child would end up in the hands of CPS, which was very upsetting to her," the report states.
"Next week, Yvonne, you're going to be arrested ... and your child is going to end up with Child Protective Services," they said, Wingett Sanchez told Allen, adding that she could barely speak about it without getting "emotional."
The threats to Wingett Sanchez came in person and, at least once, by telephone, Allen reported. "She was always threatened that her child would end up in the hands of CPS, which was very upsetting to her," the report states.
So
maybe some of those parents some of those Arizona reporters have been rolling
their eyes about aren’t so crazy after all. And maybe the kind of
unchecked power law enforcement and child protective services have in the child
welfare arena isn’t such a great idea after all.
It’s
not only reporters at the dailies who could learn from this story. If this little
itemin the Valley Fever Blog itself is any indication, it seems that
when the reporter who understood these issues best, Sarah Fenske, left New
Times to become managing editor of Riverfront Times in
St. Louis, the paper’s institutional memory concerning these issues left with
her.
In
fact, it’s not just journalists who could learn from this story. I’ve
often written about the hypocrisy of some of my fellow liberals - those
on the left who forget everything they claim to believe in about civil
liberties when someone whispers the words “child abuse” in their ears. (The
response among many on the left to the FLDS case in
Texas being a prime example.) But there’s plenty of
hypocrisy among those on the right who say they’re against state interference
in families and abuse of power by “big government” - but love people like Joe
Arpaio.
