07/08/2016
Really drained this morning. Too many deaths. Too many victims.
But I need to comment. Just as the wrongs have come in a cluster, so are the individual incidents a cluster of wrongs. I want to speak about the death of Philando Castile in MN. There are many facets to his death and one of them is the reason our agency came into being and that is the unaddressed impact on the child who was part of the event.
Children are the invisible collateral damage of our criminal justice system. Little attention was and is being paid to the 4-year old in the backseat of the car; yet she is one of the victims.
Our mission is to help and advocate for children who are impacted by the criminal justice system. Our mission is to make these invisible victims visible.
As for Diamond Reynolds' daughter, just sitting in a car when a police officer fires into the car is trauma, but all the ensuing happenings added to the intensity of the trauma for her. Children rely on their parents for safety and care in this large and frightening universe. It is not clear whether Mr. Castile was her dad or her step-dad, but whichever he was, he was a father figure in her life. Now he was dead. Then the child witnessed Mom losing all her power to protect this child as Mom was ordered to walk, ordered to get down on her knees, and then was handcuffed. And as Mom broke down while sitting in the police car, the four-year old took on the adult role, trying to comfort her Mom.
Across the U.S., police departments do not have written protocols for arrests made in the presence of children. (I have asked.) One of the officers spoke to the child in a gentle voice, telling her to stand next to Mom. Obviously, he had not been trained in any way about the trauma to the the child and how to lessen the trauma. ... Is Mom safe? Am I safe? .... These questions needed to be addressed. "Well meaning" is not the equivalent of knowing what needs to be done.
As we hopefully address some of the underlying issues that led to the death of Mr. Castile and have led to the deaths of other men, let us not forget the other victims -- the children.
It is my hope that this tragic event may spark some police department somewhere to write a protocol for arrests made in the presence of children and as a gesture of community collaboration, will make the protocol available to the public.
