Roaches in Normal entries

Let’s call it March 5th 1991 because thaty’s close enough for jazz. Um, what’s it? I took over another workers caseload, my memory wants to say because she was a shitty social worker, but I didn’t really know how bad she was for months, I did get an idea on the 6th though, and I think the official reason was something like ‘Pursuing opportunities elsewhere’. I had the case load maybe three minutes when the boss, my new boss and someone fairly knew to the Portland area, told me I had a six month review on the sixth on this one case. So I read it real quick. It was easy to read, it was a very thin case file.

Ten minutes before the hearing I met the mother, a pretty and demure 16 year old African American girl. She said something like “I’m pleased to meet you sir, you don’t look like a Kathy (not the ex workers real name).” I talked to her for a few minutes.

The judge asked the standard questions and then asked for my recommendation. “I recommend dropping the temporary custody agreement and returning the child to her mother.” The judge gently asked my reasoning, before I had given my recommendation she looked angry. I gave the failed systemic speech, which was true enough, and left out a few of the stupid social worker tricks, like, for instance, ‘Kathy’ had placed the child with the grandmother. The mother lived with the grandmother and had her whole life; Kathy had ordered no contact but hadn’t visited the home she placed the child in or ever met the mother.

Here’s what had happened. The cops raided a house they believed to be a gang banger house and had a warrant for guns and crack. The mother was visiting her boyfriend there. The cops tossed the place. In one room they found an ashtray in a sock drawer with three very small roaches in it (ends of joints not bugs). The room the mother and the boyfriend were visiting in, platonically by the way, was on a different floor and completely clean, not even a killer roach of any variety. The cops called CPS, claimed reckless endangerment, and ‘Kathy’ took the child into protective custody.

The mother wasn’t given a plan to have her child returned so she made one herself. Besides her perfect attendance at school and 3.6 gpa, and a part time waitress job at a diner, she had enrolled in an after school support group. The notes from the counselor said “perfect attendance, great participation… I think this girl is no longer involved with drugs and although it’s an educated guess, I don’t think she ever was.”

After laying out the case, careful to avoid the no follow up from my agency and the fact that the judge I was in front of signed the original order, the Judge asked me if I had anything else to add. I said yes and apologized. The judge, who could read her own signature, apologized as well.

The first piece of news I’d like to relate this story to is the removal of Steve Bannon from the NSA council. It is not heroic to undo stupid, not for me and not for Trump. The mother should never have had her kid taken and Bannon should never have been allowed near the NSA council. Undoing stupid is the least one can do, the minimum expectation of anyone faced with stupid. Also, I watching this show called Weediquette where this guy called Krishna goes around and talks to people about shit surrounding weed. The small part of one episode I watched was about Kansas and CPS removing peoples kids because of weed. Sensationalism. There were many blatant omissions to make the mothers seem sympathetic (and they were, in the two cases they interviewed and the content of what was said, it was a bad call to take the kids). The one omission that should have been obvious to everyone — neither mother had been incarcerated. So, no matter how harsh Krishna would have us believe Kansas law is, it’s not harsh enough to be criminal. One of the many things that salient omission means is that the charge was not about the weed. In my case the cops were pissed they didn’t find crack or guns and just wanted someone punished and ‘Kathy’ was too stupid to catch a single nuance of the case and too lazy to follow up.

If she had followed up at bare minimum she would have had the mother take a drug assessment, UA’s, and a parenting class. All of which was neglected in Krishna’s interviews, leaving me to wonder; incompetent social workers or incompetent journalism? Seeing how dude isn’t really a journalist … It’s also possible the weed was coincidental and the custodial arrangement for Kansas was based on other things as well.

Oh. On the third of April, 2017, the mayor and the city council of Lansing voted and declared Lansing the first official Sanctuary City in Michigan. It had something to do with this Latina getting pulled over for a traffic violation having an expired liscence and not understanding the cops question (“Ma’am, is this a fake license?”) and answering in the affirmative and was subsequently arrested. The article I was reading said this happened on March 20 but had no other information. I’m assuming bad things happened and the Mayor, who brought the idea of Sanctuary City to the city council, felt good and fucking guilty about how the lady was treated. I remember when one could read the news and not have to guess at what it meant.