When I was a child I grew up with poverty, neglect, and physical and emotional abuse. I watched my mother get beaten, and use drugs. I have been tied up, beaten with an extension cord, locked in closets, and much worse. As a police officer I revisited my childhood several times a month. Meaning I responded to domestic violence calls, child abuse/neglect calls and dealt with children that had the same shell shocked look I had. I am not sure if most of you know what I am talking about so let me explain further.
In looking at my own 4Th grade school picture you will see that my skin is pale, and colorless, caused by poor nutrition, and often times hunger. There are bags under my eyes, and dark circles caused by the anxiety of another violent night at home, and not being able to sleep because of fear. My eyes are deep set, and look lifeless. There is absolutely no look of emotion about my face, and the only way you know that I am alive is because I am standing. My clothing is wrinkled, obviously a hand me down, worn and dirty. My hair is unkempt, and it is apparent that I haven't had a hair cut in a long time. Weekly as a cop I saw children just like this, and always had a soft spot for them, and a rough spot for the adult that put them in this situation.
Today I am going to share but one of many stories about child abuse from my time on the streets.
My district at the time was made up of mostly poor, and lower class wage families. Most received assistance from the state for food and shelter. Many of these families were good, and decent with some type of circumstance contributing to their dis-fortune. But I am sad to say at least an equal percentage were the result of alcohol abuse, and drug addiction, and more often than not, both. Drugs take a financial toll on a family. Addicts will sell their food stamps at a reduced rate (.50 cents on the dollar is common) so they will have money to get what they need. Presents children are given by relatives are often returned by the drug addicted parent to lets say Wal-mart, and without a receipt they receive a gift card with credit on it. Like the food stamps, they sell the gift card for a reduced rate to purchase narcotics.
I am working day shift when an assault in progress call in my district comes out. "Man beating a woman in the yard". After arriving I am greeted by a battered female with obvious injury, intoxicated, and staggering around in the yard. The male half is a fat white male, without his shirt on, multiple tattoos ( nothing against tattoos I have a few myself). He is obviously intoxicated, and is yelling and cussing. My back up goes to the female half, and I go to the male half. It's already obvious to me who the aggressor is, and that the male half is going to jail, but we go through the motions of asking the sordid details. The female is yelling "that fat motherfucker smoked all my pot"..... he becomes aggressive again and tries to shove past me to go after her again. I get him in an arm bar, and take him to the ground. He wont give me his hands, and I apply a burst of pepper mace to his face. He still really isn't cooperating, but he is no longer aggressive and I get him in cuffs. AS I am loading him into the backseat of my patrol car, I see two little faces looking out the front door. A little girl of about 5 and a little boy of about three, both in dirty clothes, and filthy themselves, with the little boy wearing a diaper only ( that obviously needs to be changed) are watching all of this. For a moment I have one of my little personal flash backs of my child hood when I see their empty eyes.......The other officer has already arranged for a sober friend of the victim to be en route to the scene to take charge of the children. I go through my typical speal with the un-cooperative victim, telling her where that we can take her and her children to a "safe-house" and how to apply for a restraining order against her other half. I also go through my speal about how children are fragile, and like sponges and that they are going to take their emotional cues from her, and that she needs to calm down and act decent so the children's fear, and anxiety will be reduced.....and the call is complete.
Two weeks later I am dispatched to the same residence for the same type of call, only this time the woman had thrown an electric frying pan with hot grease in it on the male half. Her nose is bleeding and we can't determine an aggressor so I arrest both, of course the male half was taken to the hospital first. Both were high and drunk again. Sadly enough the children witnessed this too. The little girl was crying, just sobbing and yelling for me to not to arrest her mommy. I took the children inside while other officers made the arrest. I waited with them while a relative from Camdenton was en route to take them ( about an hour and a half away). While in their home I had the overwhelming smell of dirt, stale tobacco, and sweat. I had not seen a home this dirty sense I was a child. All of the dished were dirty, and not all were in the sink. Their was mold growing on some of them, and their were live maggots on others, needless to say there were flies. Cock roaches ran free range by the thousands. Not one thing in this home was where it should be, and everything was dirty and on the floor. I looked through the fridge and found there to only be Milwaukee's best beer, and a tub of butter in the fridge. The cupboard was bare as well. I asked the little girl what they had for breakfast and she said her moms boyfriend had picked some green apples off of the neighbors tree and they had them, but they were sour. The little girl and boy shared a bedroom, and there were at least 50 dirty diapers on the floor. I
I couldn't take it anymore. I had dispatch call the responding party and have them pick the kids up at the police department, and with that loaded the kids up in my patrol car and left that shit hole of a house. I stopped at a Dollar General Store and bought them both a pair of clean shorts, and t-shirts, and underwear and diapers. I also went through McDonald's on the way and ordered them some food, and after returning back to the PD set them up in front of a TV playing the Disney channel. A dispatcher helped me clean them up, and change the boys diaper. After the grandparents arrived and picked them I called the hot-line for DFS (Division of Family Services) and reported the living conditions that the children were exposed to and suggested the children be taken out of the home. Needless to say I was devastated.
The following day I saw the mothers "boyfriend" walking down 3rd avenue. Feeling furious, I stopped my patrol car and unofficially told him to get out the kids lives, while suggesting bad things would befall him if he didn't.
He apparently didn't get the message, because I was called to the house the next day for another drunken, drug induced fight and where the POS (piece of shit) had broken the "victims" jaw. I was sad to hear also that DFS has came and gone without taken action other than a promise of a return visit in 14 days. I took the kids into emergency custody this time. As a police officer I could legally do it, but within 24 hours DFS had returned them again.
It was my day off and I got a page from the police department with "911" at the end. I hurriedly found a pay phone and called in. I was transferred to one of the Detectives who wanted to tell me that there had been another incident with the kids I was so worried about. Medical had been called to the home for an unresponsive child. When paramedics arrived they found the little girl unconscious, and bleeding from her ear, and rectum. Only the boyfriend had been home and he claimed that he had been playing with "his" children, wrestling like and she had fallen off the kitchen table. At the hospital doctors determined that she had been sodomized anally with an unknown object that had caused tearing and bleeding to her lower intestine. The bleeding from the ear was consistent with an open hand strike to the ear. The ear that was damaged was the girls right ear, that is consistent with a strike from a left handed person. The POS was left handed. He had been arrested at the seen , and the little boy had been taken into protective custody.
After several days the little girl was "out of the woods" and expected to make a full recovery. I visited her in the hospital several times. She was quiet and withdrawn. With the help of a therapist, and juvenile officer I tried to gently question her about the incident. She was too traumatized to answer, but would only say she fell, and while answering would look at the floor, and recoil into nearly a fetal position. In some of the training I have received on interrogating, and interviewing they say this is the response to someone that doesn't want to answer truthfully, and uses their body as a subconscious block, and I assumed this was the same with victims too.
POS had been released from jail after the mandatory 20 hours as the prosecutor said that there were no adult witnesses to the crime, no physical evidence, and the victim was to withdrawn to have aenough to get an arrest warrant.
Again on my day off I was paged by the PD. When I called in this time they asked me to come in, but wouldn't tell me why. 10 minutes the chief of detectives took me into his office and told me that the little girl had developed a staph infection, and had passed away. It was like lightening had struck me. I was floored. I began to sob, uncontrollably, and I punched a few holes in the drywall. I was sad, and furious at the same time. A couple of other officers were in the office were upset and crying as well, as we had all dealt with this family many times.
The detective also told me that the prosecutor said that since the staph had killed her that there would not be a charge of murder, or even manslaughter but they were "following up leads" on the Class D charge of child abuse.
10 minutes after leaving the PD, me and another off duty officer (female officer) went to the POS's house. We didn't knock, we didn't ring the doorbell. We kicked open the door, went straight to the living room where he was and began to beat him. His bitch of girlfriend called 911 I guess as soon as we came in. I wanted to kill this son of a bitch. We worked him over for about 2 minutes and left him in a pile in the floor, and then we left. Knowing we were going to get caught we went straight back to the PD.
The POS was taken by ambulance to the hospital. But other than a few cuts, and bruises he would survive.
AN internal investigation was launched, and a couple weeks later we found out our fate. I was afraid that not only would we get fired, but we may be charged with a crime. But I really didn't care, and thought it worth it.
The chief yelled at us for about15 minutes, the prosecutor yelled for 5 minutes. No charges were going to be filed. The female officer was suspended without pay for 1 day, and I was suspended without pay for 3 days. Matter closed.
After everyone left the Chief called me back in the office and closed the door. He told me that I knew his official position, but wanted me to know his private position. He said he was proud of me, and when he was a younger officer had done something similar. He asked me if anything similar were to come up in the future to talked to him first.
Just remember that the Devil doesn't always where his horns, carry a pitch fork, and have a bifurcated tale. Sometimes he is a shirtless, fat POS drinking a beer.
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