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DYFS is not a police agency. It does, however, have the authority to remove someone’s child from his home and keep that child out of the home for an indefinite period.
This procedure is done without the constitutional protections given to people under criminal law. Frequently agents of DYFS will request assistance from the local police departments. Sometimes this is done before there has been any contact with the persons being investigated by DYFS.
This newspaper has looked into numerous instances where a DYFS agent requested a police escort to accompany them to a home after the agency received an anonymous tip that alleged some sort of non-specific abuse or neglect. A DYFS agent may or may not be a member of the community where the alleged incident has taken place. The police department that must respond is located where the child and parents live. While the agent may be from outside of the community, the police officer lives in the community that he serves.
For many officers this is a difficult and distasteful duty. Three officers spoke to this newspaper about their concerns and problems with the state’s child protective services, as they are presently constituted.
According to the division’s mission statement, “When DFYS receives a referral alleging abuse or neglect, or which the screener classifies as abuse or neglect, a DYFS caseworker conducts a child protective services investigation to determine whether a child is at risk or has been harmed.”
It further states that the “purpose of the investigation is to gather all relevant information including information about the circumstances which led to or may lead to harm to the child...”
There are occasions when kicking and screaming children are removed from their homes by police officers at the direction of the DYFS agent prior to any investigation. The children are sometimes removed solely based on the anonymous caller’s statements. Many police officers, according to the ones that talked to this newspaper, find this duty very disturbing.
The three officers who spoke are all on active duty, and all have been assigned to be DYFS escorts. One officer is close to retirement but the other two have at least 10 years before they can retire. Two of them are serving on departments located within Cape May County and one is from a county north of here. They have been given different names to protect their identities.
“Richards” and “Renko” are policemen in Cape May County. One is a patrolman and the other is an officer. “Kelly” is from Chatham Township. All agreed to speak to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity.
“Richards” has been a policeman for more than 20 years. He is old enough to remember when there was little anyone could do to help a child who was thought to be a victim of abuse.
“In those days…when the doors were closed, that was it. Unless you, as a policeman, saw the abuse or the mother, it was usually the father doing the abusing, made a complaint or the kid spoke out, then there wasn’t much you could do. That was bad,” he said.
Now he believes the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
“Now you can’t give your kid a ‘time out’ before the DFYS agents are knocking at your door,” he said.
He tells the story of being called, along with another officer, to assist a DYFS agent in the removal of a child who was on his way home from school.
“The DYFS woman missed him at the school and he wasn’t home yet. So we were assigned to sit outside the house and intercept the kid before he got to the door. He wasn’t even allowed to go in and have the mother explain why he was being taken away. The old, bitty DYFS woman forbid her to explain anything to the son or to even see him or talk to him. What was going through the kid’s mind? Think about it,” he said, “you’re a kid on the way home from school looking forward to getting home and a bunch of strangers with guns and badges grabs you and puts you into a police car. And you can’t even talk to your mother?”
Of the many times he has been called upon to assist a DYFS agent in the past 20 years he can think of only one time that he felt it warranted.
He worries that what be calls “silly assists” will breed contempt for the law and police officers. “Richards” would like to see the Legislature change the law and give parents back some of their rights. “Every scumbag criminal I arrest gets his rights read to him. I take a kid out of his house and nobody gets told nothing. The parents get advised of nothing,” he said.
"I’m close to retiring and glad of it,” said the veteran cop.
Officer “Kelly” is a non-judgmental sort. He gets an assignment and carries it out. He had assisted on many DYFS jobs and never gave it a second thought until one day, four years ago, when he went on an assist to the home of a high school friend.
According to him she had married a “real jerk.”
It did not last and after they separated the ex spent half of his life trying to make life difficult for her and the two children. This included according to “Kelly,” having the ex’s new girlfriend make an anonymous complaint to DFYS.
The DYFS agent requested a police escort “because of the nature of the complaint,” Kelly said.
“When we got there and I saw who it was, I said ‘No way. I've known this girl and her family from first grade. No way there’s abuse or neglect here.'"
He then asked the agent about the complaint itself. She told him all that was confidential. “I told her, 'This is b---s---.'” Nonetheless, he had to take his longtime friend and her two small children down to the police station with the DYFS agent.
“My friend was screaming at me. And I don’t blame her even though I told her to ‘shut up, I’m the only one on your side here.’ It sure didn’t seem like it to her,” he recalled.
He said he is more cynical about child protection laws and DYFS now than he was in the past. “I think the whole thing stinks. I think they should get their own internal police department and not make us (local police) do it,” he said.
Of the three officers “Renko” joined the force with the highest ideals. “I wanted to get the ‘bad guys’ and make the streets safe, to make life better for people,” he said. Now there are days when he thinks he is ‘the bad guy.’
“I never envisioned myself going onto a military base and breaking up the home of a serviceman who was defending our country against terrorism because some misguided social worker told me to based on the flimsiest of allegations,” which is just what he said he has been told to do on more than one occasion at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Cape May.
He also said that he could never go into court and testify on the kind of evidence DYFS uses to remove children from the home.
He worries about an unfounded incident getting out of hand.
“Suppose, based on some malicious informant, we have to escort some social worker DFYS agent to a home at night or in the day. And we run into an upset parent who refuses and resists because they don’t want you to traumatize their children. Someone could get shot and even killed. Based on what, a fabrication? It is a very dangerous situation besides just being wrong,” he observed.
“I didn’t join the force and risk my life to be a strong-arm for a misdirected DYFS. This isn’t fighting the ‘bad guys.’ This kind of treatment of the public will not enhance the security of the country or the local police. The community needs fairness. This is not fair,” he stated.
The newspaper called the Division of Youth and Family Services and asked for their response and a statement of their policy regarding requests for police escorts. There has been no response.
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