Steven, I think you will find this article interesting..
Cops Seek Safest Ways To Seize Kids
By David Briscoe
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2000; 12:49 p.m. EDT
washingtonpost.com
WASHINGTON ?? Police agencies, which rarely take children with a show of force, say they cannot recall anything like the Immigration and Naturalization Service operation that removed 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from his relatives' home using an armed assault team.
Law enforcement officials regularly face the decision of how and when to use guns to take innocent kids into custody. While few officers openly criticize the capture of Elian at gunpoint, they always look for nonviolent options.
Local police, who handle dangerous domestic disputes daily, avoid either a show of force or use of force whenever they can. Most of the time, they don't have to go in with guns drawn.
"What you've got is a child with a warrant out on him, and when is the next time that that is going to happen?" asked Lt. Lester Bell, head of a county Crimes Against Children unit in Georgia. Federal agents used an alien arrest warrant that declared Elian "in violation of the immigration laws" and a search warrant to enter the Miami house and remove the 6-year-old on April 21.
Even immigration agents, who pursue illegal aliens of all ages, have never had to use such force to take a child, acknowledged spokeswoman Maria Cardona.
"We serve search warrants all the time, but it's the first time we've had to serve a search warrant to relatives who have remained unwilling to abide by INS instructions," she said.
Still, Cardona said, the agency has enforcement agents around the country ready to stage a similar raid if necessary.
The danger of the action was cited by family members and others in accusing Attorney General Janet Reno of risking the boy's life to appease Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The Clinton administration denies that. Polls show most American cheer the return of the boy to his father. And children's rights groups applaud both the result and the method.
"We need Janet Reno to go into a thousand homes this week," said David L. Levy of the Children's Rights Council. "Elian is but the tip of the iceberg."
Pamela S. Stuart-Mills, director of Parental Alienation Syndrome Research Foundation, said she has witnessed abduction cases where authorities faced armed guards.
But rarely, if ever, has the nation witnessed live, recorded, or in still photographs the taking of a child with such force as the Miami operation.
Even with real-life police shows nightly taking viewers along in patrol cars, the image of a little boy inches from the barrel of a fearsome automatic rifle still shocked the country.
In 13 years, the nationally syndicated TV show "COPS" has never shown a child taken at gunpoint from an adult, its producers say. COPS cameras have never gone with immigration agents, but they have followed local police in several U.S. cities, as well as Russia, Britain and Hong Kong.
But the show does catch children in criminal circumstances. In a recent episode, an officer finds two toddlers outside a motel room door, their grandmother asleep inside.
In such child neglect cases, adults rarely battle police to keep the kids.
But kidnappers, hijackers, robbers, rapists and violent parents often use guns, and police face a hard choice.
Some are reluctant to discuss possible tactics, and others don't want to appear critical of the INS. Asked how Seattle police would remove a child from a home in a custody case, spokesman Clem Benton said, "We're not going to touch that one ... We're not going to criticize other agencies or offer any kind of comment in that area."
But police officials willing to describe their operations, said they nearly always talk first.
In Cobb County, Ga., officers are not likely to call ahead but wouldn't come in the middle of the night, said Bell, the children's crime unit commander.
He recalled an unpublicized case four years.
"We had an individual belonging to a paramilitary group. He had his house fenced, with dogs, and was not sending his kids to school and was feeding them only once a day. We had to go in and get those kids," Bell said.
Five officers were sent in ? two in plainclothes, three in uniform.
"We ended up talking him into letting us in," Bell said.
Not all such confrontations end peacefully. Eighteen children were among the 80 people killed in what the government calls a mass suicide of fire and gunfire after the FBI lobbed tear gas into the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas, seven years ago.
Stories of a deranged parent killing his or her children, usually followed by a suicide, are more common than stories of police putting childrens' lives in danger in custody cases.
Dave Wagner, deputy district attorney for California's Orange County, said he could recall no SWAT-style raid to pick up a kid.
"Our investigators are armed but usually carry their weapons underneath their clothing. They select the amount of force necessary to do the job and make sure no one is hurt," Wagner said.
In Chicago, police spokesman Pat Camden doesn't recall anything similar to the Elian incident, and the force has no specially trained unit for child recovery.
If such a mission were necessary, "what we would end up using is our hostage, barricade and terrorist teams," said Camden.
Police departments reveal little about such units, but they are basically paramilitary-style outfits, with special training. In Chicago that training doesn't include anything like going into a house and snatching a kid at gunpoint, said Camden.
Among the most dangerous cases involving children are kidnappings, handled by the FBI.
But even the FBI has no child rescue unit, said Chicago bureau spokesman Ross Rice. Kidnappings for ransom are now rare in America, he said. Most involve adults and drugs and don't lead to the need to break into a house to recover a child. |
