Antonia was five years old when she saw her mother arrested on the street for prostitution. “I saw the police coming at me and I just ran,” Antonia recalled. “As a child, I thought maybe they might arrest me. At five years old, I should have been aware of the police as good people who help you. Not, ‘My mom is in the car with them!’ Not, ‘My mom is handcuffed!'”
Antonia ran home and told her older brothers what had happened. The children were on their own until their mother was released from jail a week later. Antonia remembers her ten-year-old brother trying to “be like the mother” during that time.
“When we would try to get junk food at the store, he would say, ‘No, put that back.’ We would burn food and he would get mad at us. ‘I’m supposed to do the cooking! I deal with fire!'”
When young people describe the arrest of a parent, the sense one gets is not only of unnecessary trauma but also of tremendous missed opportunity. A child whose parent is arrested is likely already a vulnerable child. Arrest, reimagined, could be an opportunity to make that vulnerable child, and her family, visible; to make a bad situation better rather than worse.
As it stands, young people’s reports of being overlooked or ignored are confirmed by law enforcement accounts. “I have taken and seen hundreds of children processed throughout my years in law enforcement,” wrote one investigator in a handout prepared for a seminar at the California State Legislature. “The way these children are handled after a parent is arrested varies from, ignoring them, leaving them with a neighbor, leaving them alone with the promise that someone will be back from the store shortly.
“This area is highly overlooked and uncontrolled,” he continued. “This area is like spousal abuse years ago. It was taken lightly and officers took the path of least resistance, until the law required specific actions. I think this problem is in the same realm.”
Another police officer told a researcher, “Most cops do not like to and will not take kids into protective custody. It takes time, puts pressure on you from your agency, creates tons of paperwork, and CPS [Child Protective Services] isn’t happy because they have other cases. There are all kinds of pressures [for law enforcement] not to take the kids.”
Another officer was more succinct: asking after children, he told the researchers, would be “one more thing to do.”
Some officers told the ABA researchers that they did not consider it necessary to inquire about children because they felt certain arrestees would always volunteer that information, in the hope of getting off easy because they had children. In fact, arrested parents may have a strong incentive not to tell police about children, or seek official help, because they fear losing their children to foster care—perhaps permanently—if they do so.
The alternative—making one’s own arrangements for a child’s care—is often difficult. Although many women arrestees are primary caregivers to children, they generally receive little or no assistance, or even access to a telephone, to make arrangements for children’s care.
In 2001, Marcus Nieto of the California Research Bureau surveyed California police and sheriff’s departments about their approach to the children of arrested parents. He found what he called a “de facto ‘don’t ask and don’t tell’ policy”—children were generally not considered a police responsibility unless they were perceived to be in grave danger.
When Nieto asked law enforcement personnel for their suggestions for improving police response to children of arrestees, the most popular answer was “nothing can be done.” Those respondents who did see room for improvement primarily pointed to agencies other than their own.
While there is in general no statutory mandate for police to concern themselves with children at the time of an arrest, courts have occasionally held police liable for injuries to children left alone after a caretaker is arrested. White v. Rochford, the 1979 case that established the precedent for such liability, is based on a set of circumstances that tax the imagination. Police left three small children alone on a highway at night after arresting their uncle for a traffic violation. One child was hit by a car while crossing the freeway. The other two were later hospitalized with severe pneumonia.
A nine-year-old left alone with a baby—or a child venturing into traffic—does not go unnoticed indefinitely. When a Florida two-year-old spent nearly three weeks alone in an empty apartment after her mother was arrested—surviving on ketchup and dried noodles—the story made national news.
Teenagers are more likely to slip under the radar indefinitely—and most likely to be left alone in the first place. With few foster homes willing to take them, teenage children of arrestees are commonly left to fend for themselves at home. Even among police departments that told the ABA researchers they had a written policy outlining officers’ responsibility for minor children of an arrested caretaker, only 55 percent defined “minor” as all children under eighteen. The rest offered definitions that ranged from sixteen and under to ten and under. In other words, children who would not be permitted to sign a lease, get a job, or enroll themselves in school because of their age were, as a matter of explicit policy, deemed old enough to be left behind in empty apartments should police find it necessary to take away their parents.
Terrence fell into this category. He was fifteen when police broke down the door of his home and arrested his drug-using mother. “‘Call somebody to come watch you,'” he remembers an officer advising him on the way out.
“They were so busy trying to take my mom out, and the other people that were with her, they didn’t care about me,” Terrence said. “All they cared about was getting them people to jail that day.”
“I was scared and angry,” recalled Terrence, who had, as it happened, no one to call. “Then when I see my mama in a car, being hauled off, ain’t comin’ home, I’m feeling this sad feeling and angry feeling now. ‘I gotta make it happen. I gotta help my mama.’ I took it on me.”
In his mother’s absence, Terrence said, “I just cooked, cleaned, went to school. Stayed out of trouble. Really, that’s all I could do. I stayed around other people a lot, ’cause I never liked being in my house all the time. It got lonely and it got scary.”
Among Terrence’s fears was that the police would return, this time for him. “I’m like, ‘They could come kick in the door at any time again. They might think I’m doing something.'”
For a few weeks, Terrence got by on what was left of the family’s food stamps. When they ran out, he could secure no more; only his mother’s name was on the card required to pick them up each month. He cracked open his piggy bank, netting $56. When that was gone, he washed cars in the neighborhood and sold newspapers door to door. At fifteen, he was too young to get a real job.
“In my head I was like, ‘I’m gonna be the man. I’m gonna pay the bills. I’m gonna try to do it,’ ” Terrence said, “but I just didn’t know what to do. I just basically had to eat noodles and do what I could until my mom came home.”
Terrence bought groceries with his earnings, but he couldn’t keep up with the bills. The electricity got cut off, then the water and gas.
Once his apartment went dark, then cold, Terrence began spending more and more time with friends from school who lived together in a foster home nearby. When he began spending the night there, the foster father took notice and asked Terrence whether something was wrong at home. Terrence explained his situation, and the man arranged for Terrence to be placed with him on an emergency basis. Five months had passed since Terrence’s mother’s arrest before his solitary status registered as an “emergency” with any official entity.
Terrence was clearly a thoughtful boy with a strong sense of what he needed. Had the police simply asked him that question when they removed his mother, he likely would have told them.
He might also, had anyone asked, have offered his own vision for drug-policy reform, one that took his needs into account: “I think they shouldn’t have took my mama to jail. Just made her go to court, and give her some community service, or some type of alternative, where she can go to the program down the street. Give her the opportunity to make up for what she did. Using drugs, she’s hurting herself. You take her away from me, now you’re hurting me.”
