As a police officer, I have responded to all types of crimes during my 24 years with the Kirkland Police Department, from violent crime to domestic disturbances and all types of emergency situations. However, there’s no question that crimes involving child victims are the most distressing for an officer.
I vividly remember responding as a young patrol officer to a complaint of loud music coming from an apartment. My partner and I looked through the unlatched door of the apartment and we found a bruised, dirty and frightened toddler. There was no adult in sight.
At first we thought she had been abandoned in this filthy apartment, littered with drug paraphernalia and empty liquor bottles, but we discovered her father passed out in the bedroom.
With the help of one of our always prepared teddy bears, we wrapped the toddler in a blanket, and took her to the safety of our station. Child Protective Services placed her in a foster home until she could be reunited with her mother, from whom she had been abducted on the East Coast several months before. The police officers paid for the mother’s flight and expenses since she had no financial resources to make the trip.
The image of that little girl has stuck with me for more than 22 years. Her physical wounds eventually healed, but what about the consequences of the psychological abuse and extreme neglect she experienced? Did those ever heal?
It’s cases like this “noise complaint” that make me want to speak out. Child abuse and neglect happen in every community – even Kirkland – and this problem impacts all of us, directly and indirectly, by draining short and long-term public resources.
The suffering those child victims experience at the hands of abusers produces lifelong scars. While most abused kids do not grow up to be criminals, research indicates that abused children are almost 30 percent more likely to commit violent crimes as adults.
Law enforcement agencies have resources to respond to child safety threats. Examples of these are Kirkland’s Family Violence Unit and Domestic Abuse Response Team, but these are only after-the-fact tools available to us once a tragedy has already occurred.
Child abuse presents a short-term cost to taxpayers, primarily due to the cost of arrest, investigation, prosecution, and incarceration of the perpetrator.
Since many abused children require health care and child welfare services, enormous costs are transferred to the health and human services system. Some of these include emergency room care, trauma care and foster care placement.
Fortunately, we know how to prevent the scourge of child abuse.
Research shows that certain intensive, high quality home visiting programs can significantly reduce child abuse and neglect.
One program, the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), pairs first-time, low-income young women with a registered nurse who provides coaching and information from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.
Long-term studies show that children whose mothers were randomly selected to participate in the program were half as likely to be abused or neglected than those whose mothers did not receive the home visits.
Children who did not participate in the program had more than twice as many criminal convictions by age 19 as those in families who received the visits. One study credits the NFP program with significantly fewer cases of childhood injury and child mortality and improved child health among families who participated.
Finding money for these services is challenging during tight fiscal times, but doing nothing to intervene is more expensive because it leads to more criminal justice and social service costs. In fact, researchers at the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that NFP saved taxpayers $21,000 for every family served.
In King County, a team of the NFP nurses work with first time, low-income mothers throughout the county, including the Eastside. We are also fortunate to have other home visiting programs serving Kirkland through Friends of Youth.
We can and must do better by our kids, and I’m proud to join others in speaking out during Child Abuse Prevention Month. I hope all Kirkland residents join me in committing to support the prevention of child abuse and neglect in our community — not just during April, but every day forward until all of our kids are safe.
For more information, visit Friends of Youth at www.friendsofyouth.org and Nurse-Family Partnership of King County at www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/personal/NFP.aspx
Eric Olsen is chief of the Kirkland Police Department. Contact Kirkland Police at 425-587-3400.
