State Agencies and Governmental Affairs - Senate and House
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right chairr he's a quorum we're gonna call this meeting the Senate House Joint state agenciesittee meeting to
order with that I wanna start off we're gonna recognizepresentative ladyman for a point of personal privilege Representative ladyman you are recognized. thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
4:08
you Mr Chairman. I'm over here in the corner over here. I want to recognize a group that's with us today we have the clinical instruct the clinical instructor Shanameyer and the students that are the
occupational therapy students from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. so if you would help me recognize the students that are here today y'all stand up ir y'all getting punished for something or are you just coming down
here to watch your state government in action because it's just a fun thing to do the chair doesn't believe that but we're happy to
have you guys here either way thank you for being here
all right the first up consider consideration of a motion to authorize the special expenses incurred by this committee? Do I have a motion got a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed right motion to approve May22,2024 meeting minutes got a motion see a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed like sign rightins have been adopted I do want to welcome everybody here today
before we get started I don't want to say this that I don't think there's a person in this room that doesn't care about the well being of this state's children and youth and these are you know you know difficult times. I understands nothing's perfect but whether it's on the legislative end and that's you know DhSdCfS state police prosecutors anything I think the important thing is is that when the system fails the children it fails all of us and that human error is to be expected from time to time but with human error comes accountability and I think
that's what the pe the citizens of the state of Arkansas want is they don't want perfection they want accountability and so today I'm looking forward to a fruitful and productive meeting and conversation to look for areas and where we can get better at serving our state's most vulnerable population and with that I'll ask my co-chair Representativeazaway if he has any comments. He is good right so starting up we're gonna bring in prosecuting attorney David Etherridge from the 14 th judicial District David come on up here
David Etheridge
Unverified
6:30
full disclosure members I've known David for about30 years you better
Speaker 15
6:32
not have any old photographs of me David. or stories Oh
David Etheridge
Unverified
6:41
go I do have a mother and I do not need you to call her David. all right
Speaker 16
6:46
if you'll introduce yourself and your position for the record my name is David Etheriddge I am the elected prosecuting attorney for the oth Judicial District here in the state of Arkansas thank you David So Mr
Etheridge if just to start with if you would just wouldn't mind walking
this committee through about you know how your office works with DCfS and and state police when it comes to you know you know you know cases against children or cases where there's alleged maltreatment or abuse my office
Speaker 16
7:16
will receive those reports in various forms and fashion a great number of the times we receive those reports they are coming from reports generated by the department of humanman Services or from the department of rimesgainst Children vision of the Arkansas
Statelice in addition we will get those reports at times from local law enforcement whether that be city police county police all those individuals who are wanting to do a job to try to investigate issues that
Speaker 24
7:42
would have occurred relating to a child or to a child maltreatment allegation OK. OK. Now there was a case
there in in inmountain homeme inbaser County that you and I are both well aware of and I understand that that's an
active case and so there's plenty of details that we're not able to go into but if you can't give us the the30,000 foot
view of just a little bit of the ins and outs that happened there and how your office was communicating with state police and DCfS during
Speaker 16
8:11
that time the particular case we're talking about is an active case there are certain things we can speak about and I will that case came into our office as a result of an investigation by the officers of the mountain homemelice department who had done an outstanding job going out and trying to identify the situation based upon that investigation that it was identified there was a child that had been in a situation
that they should not have been in that resulted in us filing charges against the two individuals who were responsible for this child's care and as a result of that happening we started investigating how we reached that point and in doing so we identified that this child in his situation had been made known to individuals within state agencies for at least 29 previous contacts and we could not identify in
those 29 previous contacts that there had been action taken that we felt like were appropriate to protect that
David Etheridge
Unverified
9:11
child so Mr Etheridge explain to me the process so it was mountain homelice department that did the
investigation. this young man and his guardians resided in the city limits there at Mountonhome that is correct so you know was it the twentyninth call to the you know maltreatment child abuse registry that you know elicited you know somebody from that end reaching out to mountain homemelice department that is
Speaker 16
9:34
not what happened here this happened because there had been a complaint about issues taking place inside of that particular location and as a result of that mountain homemeli department went out on a call and made the investigation and found what had taken place and then we proceeded to the investigation I hate to say mountain homemelice department did investigation backwards trying to find out what history existed for the abuse of this particular individual thank you cohairazaway did you have a question
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
10:04
thank you Mr chairir so a prosecutor Etheriddge of course you
and I have also known each other for quite some time as a former prosecutor myself can you talk with us a little bit about the facts of the case that are in the public domain already because what I've heard this was just horrendous. This was akin to torture and I I think you know for the public who may be unaware of the specific
circumstances of this case it would be helpful again not asking you to disclose anything that would be confidential but at least what's in the public domain I think it would be helpful
Speaker 16
10:44
for the public to hear just how horrific this case is absolutely the things that were in the public domain is based on again the investigation that was done by the officers of the mountain homemelice department and you're gonna hear me say their name a lot because I am grateful for the work they did this would not have happened and gotten us to the place we were had they not done the work they that was accomplished in
this and I I wanna make that very clear because I can't do what I do without them and I'm grateful in this particular case we charged these individuals with 112 counts of false imprisonment for this child we had charged him with dangering welfare of a minor permitting abuse of a minor and
Speaker 24
11:21
we've now amended the charges to charge them also with kidnapping so my understanding
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
11:29
is at least the facts that I've seen reported in the press so I don't think that there's any
secret here or confidentiality here but that this child and I I can't remember the age relatively young was kept locked in a bathroom with a by a ratchet strap in the bathroom was only allowed to eat on school days missed a lot of school was severely or was maybe malnourished and small for his or her age and there were I think some other facts that once again were
Speaker 16
12:08
really just horrific in my mind so can you kind of expound upon that the statements you have made are correct with the knowledge that we have of how his history transpired we found that he had been engaged by these individuals the two defendants in this case over a substantial period of time provi giving him the same type of treatment or lack of treatment wasn't being malnourished was not being fed we found that he was not being allowed to go to school at
times he was being restrained which in the room that that we have charged him with for substantial periods of time the the best we can tell the the only place of relief this child had would have been when he went to school and was away from his home
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
12:54
situation and how old was the child and what was his relationship to the two adults who are charged
Speaker 16
12:59
in this case child to believe now is 14 years of age at the time we got involved he was young on that of course he was a non biological family member of these individuals the one individual had a guardianship
over this particular child thank you Senator
Chair
Unverified
13:17
Clark you're recognized for a question OK so
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:23
Mr Eridge this is abuse not neglect correct I'm not here
Speaker 16
13:29
to make that determination Senator Clark but if you're asking my opinion yes sir it is
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:34
yes sir the how what was the age when y'all
Speaker 16
13:42
got involved the the when we became involved he
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:45
was 13 years of age sir was 13 and the there were complaints made before y'all got involved? yes sir there were how far did that
Speaker 16
13:58
go back I don't know the exact time we know there have been 29 separate complaints made across what I wanna I keep using the term North Arkansas. He at one time was located in northwest Arkansasm complaints were made there and then complaints were made when he moved to to the
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
14:12
Baxter County area also sir so complaints were made in a different community sir so complaints were made in a different community and then
the community that where y'all founding yes sir that's correct all right that's all for now thank you Senator clark and we'll have DCfS up here in a little bit to to answer that question for you but I do believe that there are 29 calls to the maltreatment abuse registry then those dated back beginning in sometime 2013. I'm not sure
Speaker 52
14:39
about the exact timeline but I do believe you go
back you know, starting to sometime in 2013.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
14:46
thank you I may have more questions for this witness after they come if if that's ok he's not going anywhere all right senator hammer
Speaker 54
14:54
you are recognized for a question sir thank you Mr chairir and maybe this might be appropriate to
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
15:00
answer this question later. let me lob it out there right now in your professional opinion having looked at all the facts of the case without divulging anything that's going to jeopardize the ability to prosecute this case to the full extent
do you see areas where you in your professional opinion think there were breakdowns in the system that you would care to speak to.
Speaker 16
15:24
yes sir I do and that that's the reason probably that I'm sitting here at this table today is because I I was concerned about what I saw had transpired for a child and I didn't want to happen again and I don't mean to answer more than you're asking me but I have to back up just a minute if y'all will let me I went back and looked at my notes in my office
January30th of 2020 I got a phone call unrelated to this case about a a homicide in Boone County Arkansas that was committed by a juvenile on February7th the following week I got another phone call about a juvenile in a homicide in Boone County Arkansas I don't get those phone calls where we live very often I wanna say that at that time it was identified but both of these children are the children involved had been in had been in contact with the
department and there had not been action taken to address this at that time . in about end of February that same year I traveled to littlettleRock I met with the then director of the department of human services this was just immediately prior to COVID kicking in. I remembered vividly we had the same conversations and I was askedenhammer the same question you're asking me now did I think something had failed and my answer was I was really tired of having to go look about
children and murders. I don't like that and don't want to avoid it so yes I think there was a breakdown I think we still have issues I don't want to say the department is not aware of that they've done steps and they're gonna talk to y'all about that today to address it but yes sir I believe there was a breakdown that needs to be addressed sir do you
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
17:07
care to be specific as far as what you see as the breakdown I think and I don't
Speaker 16
17:13
have the answers I wish I said I could I'll tell my wife told me last night you need to have an answer
to that question and I don't but I think there's got to be a better way to filter and identify when these type of complaints come in to ensure that this does not happen over and over and I think there are methods to which that could happen to get the right people looking at those complaints especially when you have multiple times about the same individual about an issue taking place in particular when it's coming from teachers at the school or the ones that guys we trust those folks to make good decisions and when they're
reaching out and saying there's a problem we need to be
Speaker 61
17:53
looking at that and I think we've got to involve people who are seeing it and making sure we
David Etheridge
Unverified
17:59
don't let this happen Mr Etherdge I'm sorry Senatorhammer. can you tell us you just touched on teachers can
you tell us who the who the folks are who are legally obligated reporters they're they're mandated to report any suspected instances of abuse
Speaker 16
18:11
or maltreatment. I was a teacher s that's a long list but teachers and any any education professional or paraprofessionals required to do so healthalthcare providers
therapists counselors the list is longer than that and I apologize for not knowing that list but those are the ones that jump out at you in particular are healthcare providers and educators and and I will say educators are concerned about this they want to make sure this does not happen to the kids who're trying to help thank you sir yes rightsenator hammer go ahead just one more and I'll
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
18:39
I'll get off school resource officer do you know if they were on that list of those that had called in? I believe a school resource officer
Speaker 16
18:47
at some point had called him believe that was in northwest Arkansas yes sir right
Chair
Unverified
18:53
I'll stop. thank you sir thank you senator all right Representativeazaway you're recognized thank you Mr Chair. So in
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
18:59
terms of the process I mean let's talk about kind of how this process generally works and then how it worked in this case when a prosecutor gets involved I mean I I seem to recall of course calls are made to the hotline and we're gonna talk with DCfs about what happens once a call comes into the hotline and and state police crimes against children division and how those are handled but I mean typically after a call is
made a report is generated if there's some belief that a crime has occurred then Arkansas state police crimes against Childrendivision generates a a report and that's sent to the prosecutor so in so can you kind of describe generally how that process works when your office gets involved and then how it worked
Speaker 16
19:47
in this case in a normal situation what you've identified is what transpires a report is made comes into the hotline that that
report is in filtered is it going to be a potentially criminal activity or is it going to be something that's just there needs to be some help in the family that's what they're kind of looking at a report is in gene generating I got3 this morning into my email box on individuals and of those three more than y'all want to know those three there was it was unsubstantiated they they had investigated the crimes against Children division had gone out they've done interviews and they looked and they did not find anything to support to move forward that is sent to me it's also sent to local law
enforcement the the idea behind sending it to local law enforcement is are we having contact with the same person are we seeing this name over and over is there something more we need to look at but then they they look at that and make a decision from there if they find something it gives rise to potential prosecution then it's gonna be brought to us OK here's what we see we're gonna generate an affidavit for you to review to issue a criminal information to charge that person with a crime OK and so in this particular case
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
20:55
how did it work I mean I think
one of the concerns is we've heard about all these multiple reports that happened since 2013 calls that were made calls made by mandated reporters were they not generating those reports were you didn't get any of those reports I take it and so how did that process work in this particular case? in this particular situation
Speaker 69
21:20
at the time we made the charge on this particular facts situation we
Speaker 16
21:25
did not get that report this came to us based upon an
investigation that was done by the
Chair
Unverified
21:36
mountain homemelice department. thank you thank youpresentative Representative
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
21:43
rose you're recognized thank you Mr excuse me Etherridge for
being here with us today I had a couple of quick questions and and
I wanted to just get some clarification to and I think everybody feels
a lot of different levels of frustration and outrage for this this child for the case and for the system if I understood it correctly 29 reports filed against them over about 11 years Was this dealing with the same child? do you know are you are you privy to that information? sir all of those reports were closed found to be unsubstantiated and were not thoroughly investigated is that correct?
Speaker 16
22:33
our position is those there was never any action that was taken to allow to be prosecuted by someone and investigated to a point to
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
22:42
allow for a prosecution yes sir now you don't have
access to a great number of things that would be helpful to your case and for justice for the child is that
Speaker 32
22:53
correct I I believe at this time we have what we need to prosecute this particular case
Speaker 16
22:58
but again based upon the work as I'm said before by the police department in this case they did
a great job identifying the situation so we have the tools and our toolbox to move forward with this case
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
23:11
yes sir do you have everything you would like to
Speaker 16
23:15
have there are some reports that we would still like I will say is we're sitting here today DHS has been very good now to allow me to have what we need we're not I'm not cross with them
Speaker 24
23:24
I don't want people to think that's where I'm at we we're able to get what we need from them at this
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
23:30
time I'm glad to hear that can you speak to at what point that began to work well for you with DHS?
Speaker 16
23:44
there is always tension between the department of humanman Services and what I have to do and that's not mean to say in a bad way but there is tension but by statute statutory authority that they operate under they've got to do different things than what my obligation is to prosecute and there are times that we disagree with what should happen with people and how they should be placed back in homes and things of that nature and again they're bound by some law that that's what they have to do and so that creates a tension and that's we understand that
in this case and I guess senator flippo you've may go ahead and talk about this a little bit right after this case happened I met with the then director of the department of humanman Services about what we needed what we were seeing and with Daniel Brightwell counsel for DHS who was they were great met with me and here and we were moving the right direction at some point in time that path changed and we had to go to a different direction and I thanken Flippo and and Representative Gasway for helping us get back on the right track with that
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
24:50
and I don't mean to belabor the subject but there there was a point you were not being
able to put your hands on the information that you needed there were things that
Speaker 24
25:00
would have made my job easier absolutely sir and at some point you
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
25:03
crossed a threshold and it became a much more amicable process it's a very amicable process at this time and
Speaker 92
25:08
how recently did that happen it's it's in the fairly
Speaker 16
25:13
recent past yes sir OK so there's there's a letter that it that I assume will be introduced at some time
today addressing this issue that the members the letter from DCS
Speaker 16
25:25
is included in your packets there that that letter is a that letter's in there representative rose I think it's a that's that very clearly states and they've answered my questions
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
25:34
in that letter I will say that yes sir and and I appreciate you have you have
a lot of there's a lot on the line in the work
that you do and the relationships that you hold with agencies and so I respect kind of the careful line that we
have to walk today I just hope that it wasn't all of a sudden a much more amicable process following something coming out in the news that is my hope and
that it was because they saw the right path to get you what you needed I think the the last thing I I want to ask you feel like now you have the ability to prosecute to
get justice for this child you now have everything that you need from everybody who we're talking about today. you have everything you need to do that
Speaker 16
26:31
correct? if there's something I I believe that I do and I will answer that for I believe if I do not have it at at this time I believe I'll be able to reach out to the department and they'll provide me what I need from them if there is something of
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
26:44
theirs that I need at this time yes sir Mr Chairman last question I'll I'll hop out due to failures across the board within the system
is it your judgment this child suffered unnecessarily over the course
of 11 years sir right thank you that's all
Chair
Unverified
27:04
Thankpresentativepresentative Richardson you recognize her thank you Mr Chair. I'm over here
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
27:09
to your left. thank you was oh you
Speaker 41
27:11
further around I kept looking and you were here somewhere I saw
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
27:15
you earlier I apologize. Well thank you for being here my my question is this out of the 2 whatever you said 2922 times. do you know how many individuals
touched that case like caseworkers where they're5 or6,2 or3, do you know how many? I do not know the answer to that
Speaker 24
27:33
question but I will tell you that it would be multiple individuals touch this case yes that's what was you yes
Chair
Unverified
27:46
sir thank youpresentative Representative hawk you're recognized her
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
27:50
thank you Mrir. umpresentative rose kind of stole some of my thunder on this but so to be clear I want to go back to the
the reporting phase. you've been doing this a long time. have you ever run into a situation like this in any case where it's been hard to get information to move a case
Speaker 16
28:12
forward. this case is different have there been difficulties in the past yes but this case was different and I think this case is different again based on the number of number of times for us to see that there's been failures in the past that we
Speaker 24
28:28
know that that's been seen but this one
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
28:32
was different yes sir. OK I'm gonna read a quote that was was put out by a DHS spokesperson that says we've completed our review of the case and have informed the prosecutor however we have determined the details cannot be released publicly as initially intended due to the sensitivity child maltreatment investigation under Arkansas law it requires everything to be confidential. What Arkansas law is
Speaker 110
28:52
being referred to in that statement that's a broad brush and just
Speaker 111
28:58
that's a terrible lawyer term I apologize there
Speaker 16
29:02
but when we start talking about juveniles there's a a a large amount of information and data that we cannot release about juveniles and it's anything from I had a conversation this morning about a video with people's pictures we have to you know fuzz their faces because you want to see them can't release their name identifying marks when we file documents involving juveniles we use, you know this we'll say an individual versus a male child because somebody might figure it
out so there's a wide range of what we cannot release about juveniles and I don't mean to be disrespectful to to what you've read I don't agree with that I think there was ways to do that and still protect and make allow it to be done while Arkansas law says you
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
29:45
could have released I guess that's kind of where I'm getting at is that I feel like if if we're trying to do what's best for the child and you've got a department doing an investigation and a prosecutor trying to get justice for the situation that information there
there's not a law that says we can't share that information
to get justice. that is correct sir thank you thank youpresentative. All right Senator Clark you're
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
30:14
recognized for a question sir thank you Mr chairir. The Mr Etheridge one of my colleagues a
few weeks ago several weeks ago sent me a news story that had to do with the prosecutor who was trying to get information and try I believe because I don't remember
all the story exactly tried through foia and other means is this the is that prosecutor you that that would not be me sir
Chair
Unverified
30:39
that's a different case that's different case yes sir ok thank you thank you senator all right Representative
Gazaway you're recognized for a question and so I
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
30:48
want to be clear in terms of the report or reports that you were denied I mean can you give us
some idea about you know you're trying to work this case you're trying to do what you need to do and there's there are reports information that you need access to that you were denied what
Speaker 16
31:03
were those in this case information about the history which we warned to have we were not getting in the manner we would normally get those and I wanna say we've got that
Speaker 24
31:12
that information now I don't wanna be I don't wanna say that but there was a time when
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
31:18
it was a little more difficult than it is now and then I think this brings up a bigger point and Senator Clark's point is this part of kind of a broader systemic problem of DHS kind of hiding behind confidentiality and not sharing information that needs to be
Speaker 24
31:36
shared just in your opinion I think there is a fear from the department about release
Speaker 16
31:43
of information and understand that I think that to me comes from not understanding the role of the prosecutor and the role the prosecutor has to to seek justice and because of that we see things that are confidential and and hidden all the time and we understand the rules and if we are to if we release something we're not supposed to that's the prosecutor's mistake we're the
ones who did it and so I think again I think the department does not understand sometimes the role that we have and that that goes back to the tension we were talking about earlier, that it's created that should not be created we should work together on these cases in the way that we can work together on them and but to be clear
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
32:24
Senator Clark referenced another case that he was aware of that was not you you're here
today testifying about this particular case that leads me to believe that this is a problem that goes beyond you
Speaker 24
32:38
in this specific case I I think there are things
Speaker 16
32:42
that could be done to make everybody understand how we need to share information that could be cleaner to protect if they if that's what the department is concerned about and again it's not me throwing rocks at them if that's the concern they have they're safeguards to be put in place to protect that you know because look we're in juvenile court all the time and we understand the rules there and a lot of these rules are the same rules and so there's adequate ways to protect that information to give us
information and what senator Clark has said it's that they try to get through for you is concerning that's the route they're having to go I think there's better routes, easier routes that could take place to allow to protect children yeah
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
33:21
well that's a big problem I think if a prosecutor is having to try to use foia to get information that's relevant to one of their cases you're a state actor you're a state official you're communicating with the state agency I would think if there's not you know, some exemption that would allow for that information to be shared for you
to prepare your case then we may need to look at some statutory changes in the future to to make sure that
Chair
Unverified
33:51
that's a much easier process absolutely Thank youpresentative entrehammer you ask your question
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
33:55
sir thank you so you said you said something to go kind of perked my interest and you said the environment now is better in I characterizing what you said correctly? yes sir you're you're definitely are ok so
and I'm just gonna not try to tap dance around things. so what you're telling me is you're getting along better with Tiffany and the current leadership of DHS now than you did under the previous leadership that this case occurred under the time frame of is that accurate? want
Speaker 28
34:24
to characterize it is we're getting along fine at this time and I don't mean to say we've not in the past at times but there's not a friction between myself and
Speaker 16
34:33
the department in that regard right now senator they've they're giving me what I want and we're able to communicate and I think they
understand again I want to give thanks to Representative
Speaker 28
34:43
Gasway in central flippo for helping us
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
34:46
out get through those struggles OK so so part of my concern would be then a change in personnel has improved the situation but as far as the policies that should have been followed that were in place regardless of the personnel what's different because of personnel changes and it goes back to not so friendly working environment the policies are the policies
I do not disagree with you let me jump in there Mr Ethridge. you know, enatorhammer if we don't mind we can save
Speaker 132
35:20
that fordCFs as far as any specific changes to any specific policies I think they'd probably be best to speak to you
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
35:27
know any s specific internal policies that have changed Can I ask one last question of course thank you so part of what I heard you saying if I misheard you you straighten me out, OKart of what I heard you saying was that you felt that you should have been given things by DHS that because you didn't get those was actually
obstructing your ability to do your job to bring prosecution is that correct or not? I want
Speaker 24
35:50
to make sure I say it correct way and it made it more difficult for us to move forward
Speaker 16
35:55
in this case because of that relationship we fixed that now but there was a time where we felt like it was not we were not getting the amount of cooperation we need to have to prosecute this case do I think that was the death knell to what we were going to do in this case absolutely not but I think it makes a difference for us to have all the tools in our
Speaker 24
36:15
toolbox and we didn't have all the tools that's a bad answer but that's be my answer
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
36:20
to it yeah because the answer I'm looking for is did you did they or did they not obstruct your ability to carry out justice by withholding things that the law said you were supposed to give it to you because if they did and I'm not sure if that characterizes who's in the room or who what who's not in the room any longer if they did to me I think that is the atrocity that needs to be focused on and whether legally
Speaker 32
36:46
you can do anything about that time will tell I guess. that's that's all got if you want to give an answer otherwise I don't
want to use the term obstruct but I I will agree it was difficult sir and I tell you what we're at a point now where I'm gonna ask Mr. Wright and M Mcdonald if y all want to come up here and join Mr. Etheridge because when it gets to you know, water formation is is is allowed to be turned over to prosecution or any specific internal policies with ECfs I think
y'all be best equipped to answer these questions so if y'all have a seat and introduce yourselves and your
Speaker 136
37:28
positions for the record Hilourri Mcdonald chief of staff DHS.
Speaker 138
37:32
good afternoon Tiffany Wright, director for the division of childrenldren and Family Services. Great and thank
you both for being here so you know to dovetail into Senator Hammer's question what is the policy the what is the policy for DCfS when it comes to you
know releasing the findings of any investigation into an alleged you know case of abuse or maltreatment towards
a child what are y'all's policies for that information being available to the prosecutor. DCfS
Speaker 143
37:58
can provide the information to the prosecuting attorney for the child maltreatment reports. Is there anything that could be withheld that would be withheld?
We eat 100% can share the
Speaker 143
38:09
information with the prosecuting attorney's office. So what was the what was the
Speaker 138
38:21
so my understanding is that local law enforcement at Mount Home Pd actually made the records request for a child maltreatment registry records through our privacy office which is our procedure so those records can be requested and then released through privacy through our central registry unit to the prosecuting attorney or law enforcement and my understanding is those reports were released to law enforcement. Do you have a time frame of when they were requested to the one that we were
Chair
Unverified
38:47
actually released was it for a general what's a
general time frame for that process to take place from when those records might be requested either from the local law enforcement doing the investigation or prosecutor's
Speaker 149
39:02
office but what's a typical time frame for don't want to speculate on a typical time frame. I
Speaker 138
39:07
think it would depend on the case and the information
Speaker 150
39:11
being requested. However, I believe that these records were released in late November of 2024. and then you know Mr
Etheridge so you got all the in all the case files that you needed at approximately what date? I do not know the exact
Speaker 16
39:29
date it was my understanding it was sometime in the first part of of either the latter part of January or first part of February is what I'd understood. and I want to be clear I'm not trying to say that that day is not correct what she's saying sometimes there is a there's a flow time because you're asking for a lot of data in this particular case we asked for a lot of data I wanna say that
sure sure and I think the the in and and and you know Tiffanie Lourri one of y'all will speak to this because I think a lot of the the concerns or frustrations amongst members and is why would it take so long to get that information you know to these respective offices whether it's a prosecutor's officer to local law enforcement I understand that you know there's was Mr Eler said earlier there's sometimes there's gonna be friction between agencies or my colleagues in the house hate it when they see me as referred to the senate as the
upper branch of government you know so there's you know there's there's and say that a little tongue in cheek but a prosecutor is not the same as a public defender and so you understand that you know there can be a little tension sometimes but at the end of the day the citizens of Arkansas expect us all to collaboratively be working together to you know to address the challenges and and miswright and Miss Mcdonald I believe y'all are trying to do that Mr Eridge, I believe you're trying to do that do you believe the system's perfect? Absolutely not because if it was we wouldn't be here today but at the end of the day
people deserve to see you know their their government working collaboratively together. and especially in cases like this where does the absolutely most vulnerable amongst us you know to make sure that they are not suffering not a day longer and so while I understand details are important to a degree process is important I know one of the ladies that called into the the the the the the maltreatment you know call line and although I wasn't on the end listening to her call. I know
her and I can imagine the tone of her voice and the words that she was using to describe what she felt this young man was going through and I thinks the frustration on my end I don't think that I know it is that what person in DCfS or if it's you know whoever's many of the the the the the the call center and that's under the you know direction of state police as I understand it but at what point do we not just hear that this is sincerity in somebody's voice and we actually need to look into this because this is not somebody who's just suspecting there might have been
something to happen but we're not quite sure this lady knew things were going on and that it wasn't neglect it was abuse and I don't know how she knows that. I have not asked her to get into the details of the conversation she had with this young man. but I know her I know her to be this kind of a person and this is the frustrating part is cutting through all this and realizing we're dealing with human beings and bureaucracy sometimes it gets in the way of things not sometimes oftentimes and I believe that's this is one
of those cases where bureaucracy kind of gets in the way and uhtiffanyloriri, you and I have had conversations offline prior to today's meeting and I believe those have been productive conversations and I want to acknowledge that publicly before those here today that I believe they've been fruitful and that we are looking to push in the same direction but before we can know what needs to change we got to know what the what where the failures are and so while I've got you all up here
in your opinions where was the systematic breakdown here? in
Speaker 138
43:05
our process ? So after the one of the things that we did was bring together the DCfS team that was still here or staff and leadership roles and really review information and so a part of that information that we saw that's also outlined in the letter that I wrote to prosecutor Etheridge was around
history searches and having quality history searches and really looking at the information that is provided and how we connect all of that information together. I think that also just being able to have more cross collaboration and using our community partners through the multidisciplinary teams um, and just engaging and having extra set of stakeholders to
participate could have been fruitful in the situation and those
were things that were not taking place with regards to
Speaker 162
44:10
this specific case. don't think that I can answer specific questions about the
investigation. we're talking about the process there though. I mean I'm not talking about any specifics about the case just the
Speaker 138
44:22
process that in the process we couldu should have leaned more into our community partners our stakeholders, experts across
Speaker 163
44:28
the community working amongst the families and I want to be
very clear here because I do understand not an attorney but I do understand that there are absolutely things that that you want or prosecutor Etheridge nor any law enforcement entity investigating this case you know is a lot to discuss publicly and unfortunately there's plenty of information certainly inmountain homeme inbaxter County about some of the specifics of this case and it'll make your stomach turn but what we're talking about here today is the process. The process worked or it didn't work and if the process didn't work then it is fully within the
scope of this community and I believe DcfS and DHS to speak to those specific instances right Representative
Speaker 34
45:13
crawford put you in line for a question thank you Mr chairir
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
45:18
. I'm up here and ladies you know I respect you greatly and I know that this kind of has gotten kicked to you guys
so as we ask our questions now that we we do respect
you. I guess one of my questions would be to Mr Etheridge of I'm not understanding exactly when you became aware when you first became aware of the abuse
you'll let me look at a note I'll tell you pretty close ma'am
Speaker 16
46:20
the initial report would have come into my office ma'am from law
Speaker 24
46:25
enforcement sometime around the first week in November of 2024 OK
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
46:34
I'm trying to think because we're
talking 11 years. What happened in those 11 years to where it only became aware to you in november of 24.
Speaker 16
46:52
ma'am that's the first time that my office had contact with anything concerning this individual can you answer why ma'am I
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
47:01
don't know and I'm that's a terrible answer I hate
Speaker 69
47:10
to ever give that as a as a prosecutor but I do
Speaker 16
47:14
not know that's one of the reasons we're having some of the questions we have today is when we looked
back and saw the history of this particular incident and this child while there had been that many number of reports and yet there had been no action moving it forward beyond just someone singing report I don't know they answered that question but the first
Speaker 24
47:36
time the prosecutors in the fourth judicial district had it was one that came into us to the mountain homemelice
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
47:44
department a couple more questions about some things that you said January3,2020 and I believe it was
February7,2020 someone contacted you about juveniles who had committed murder, correct yes ma'am that's a that's a totally separate matter I brought
Speaker 16
48:04
that up just to discuss that this issue has been out there but it's in
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:10
the county same county is that correct?
Speaker 16
48:12
I'm inx it's in my judicial district yes ma'am I I have four counties in my district. I have Baxter Boone marion and Newton and this particular one we're speaking about today took place
in Baxter the two homicides I'm speaking about took place in boone are they close
Speaker 92
48:31
yes ma'am they're within it takes me it's47 minutes for me
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:35
to drive from one to the other yes ma'am I think what I'm looking at here is trying to paint a picture
of that area in where if 1 years abuse went on with a child and hed he couldn't get free
from it and then you have two separate juveniles who commit murder my mind goes to well of course if you have been abused for 11 years and I know I'm mixing the cases just follow me for a minute ma'am if you have been abused for 11 years and you get out on your own and feel like
you have a little bit of control and that anger takes over things like juvenile murder will happen so I guess in painting this awful picture that Arkansas should not have because
we are a Andy Mayberry ste right? yes ma'am how in the world is OK let me ask you this
Speaker 175
49:48
do you get to a direct question here. I got a lot of people in the queue
here and I want to make sure that we're not attributing, you know you know this case with another so if we can speak to the specific you know to to to to to this current case. I don't want it to there to be any illusions that you know you know like this automatically is going to lead to you know to juveniles committing murder. there's going to be kids that come from good homes that can do this but as far as the process in this you know in this case or if Mr others wants to speak to the process and that the the two cases that he brought up with the homicides in Boone County
but let's talk to the process as far as you know, DCfS's role the prosecutor's role, law enforcement's role
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
50:40
in any specific questions you have about that process. I just believed that if we continue down this road that we will be here a lot with a child
who after 11 years has been harmed because of our state thank youpresentative uhpresentativeazaway then
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
51:01
Senator Clark thank you Mr chairir. so follow up on Representative Crawford's
question mean I think she is tries to get to what I think is just the big point prosecut Etheriddge's office found out about this case November 2024. but prior to that there were 29 calls to the child abuse hotline or the DHS was made notified about of of reports of abuse or neglect and the first time he ever heard about it was November
of 2024 and apparently there had never been as far as I can tell or' aware any substantiated report any effort to remove the child from the home any effort to conduct a criminal investigation and so I think the big question is why over the course of 11 years or however many years it was were 29 calls made and nothing ever happened. And I think that
Speaker 138
52:04
one is when the reports are accepted in the hotline we do conduct our investigations and one of the things that we learned was that we did not have adequate history searches there's lack of documentation and that we also were and mean I'm not making an excuse but giving you a picture of where the system was we were having significant amount of maltreatment reports that were overdue. we were having significant turnover and just
navigating all of those things and then multiple counties involved and so again, this was where this is the whole system was not operating together that's very helpful because I made a list of all
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
52:49
of those things and so I think what we have to
do is how do we address each one of those things history searches lack of documentation the fact that you're overwhelmed with too many reports
hard for me to read my own writing here significant turnover multiple counties involved so communication between counties ensuring that you guys can keep a workforce where you're not changing employees every other day ensuring that you have sufficient staff so that you can handle the number of reports that you get ensuring that you've got all the systems necessary to make all the documentation that you need to document when these reports come in and then the ability to search the history these all seem like solvable problems so how do you respond to that?
Speaker 138
53:38
would say that we've been one of the things we've been doing as a state is rolling out structured decision making which leads to consistent safety decision making be solutionfoed leads to more engagement both with the family but also relies on safeties of support and networks of support and so we implement we started implementing that in 20202 and3 and we're
hopefully fin in the final stretch of that so it's a multiple it's a big systems rollout and so we started with the front door which would be that the hotline and we've been working through maltreatment reports to our inhome and protective service s cases and now the last part of that is around appropriate case planning and reunification and doing those appropriate safety and risk assessments also we are hoping that
we'll see some outcomes around the pay plan that we were able to receive in July and how that will impact our workforce in a positive way as well as seeing the history searches in this situation we've already started some work on how can we use our current system to do some level of notifications around history searches like automatic, I don't know something something innovative that puts it more in the forefront of the workforce's
at face is probably not the right word to use but in the face so that they know that it's there some kind of trigger around that. we're also working on how we use the continued quality improvement contracts we have to continue to enhance how we're responding to families also continuing our intensive in home contract to keep kids safe and have those services available to children and families that need them and con continuing to
navigate and work with our staff around critical incidents so we can learn from them and continue to expand and change and listens to systems issues that are happening whenever we have a critical incident and then obviously continuing training conversations the system is big and sometimes you might hear what we pay attention to gets you know gets all the attention and so how do you spread out the attention and get be more specialized and have that work that's happening
and then obviously our relationships with the multidisciplinary teams across the state as well as law enforcement and prosecutor's office to ensure kids are safe on all fronts of the system OK thank you very much and that's all
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
56:29
sounds like good work and all things that can be improved upon I guess there and there are a lot of issues here I
mean we could go over probably in detail each one of those things and how you're improving
and as you said starting with the hotline that's where most of these investigations start someone makes a a call to the child abuse hotline and it kind of proceeds from there and I think there will be a lot more discussion about that about how that process works how decisions are made what reports are generated where who receives those reports etc. I think that we'll probably get into that a little bit later but again be because there are so many issues here setting that aside and going back to the
issue of in the specific case working with prosecutor Etherridge to get him the information that he needs I would think as a prosecutor if I'm preparing a case number one I need to know the of these people that I've charged I need to know if they've been involved in past incidents of abuse before that's very important to my case because I may be able to admit evidence in that case that their prior conduct may be admissible to prove that they acted in conformity with it might not be admissible for that
purpose but it may it may and so as a prosecutor I'm very interested in that and then two as a prosecutor I have an obligation to turn over to the defense any exculpatory information that may exist and some of that may be found in these past reports and I mean that's a good way as a prosecutor to get sued to get in trouble with the bar for failing to disclose exculpatory information. I don't know if that exists or not unless I have access to these reports. I would think as a prosecutor ought to be able to just pick up the phone. I don't remember how this worked when I did it seemed to be kind of how we did it but I could just pick
up the phone and call someone at DHS and say hey, I'm working on this case. I need all of this information. you guys would prepare it and send it to me ber one is that how this process works is it as simple as as prosecutor Es picking up the phone and calling someone and saying hey, I'm working on this case we have these two individuals charged. I need this information and you guys get it to him number one if it is that simple I want to know the process there and then number 2 if it is that simple why didn't it happen like that in this case?
Speaker 138
58:50
so I would say yes it is still that simple and I would say as DCfS if you were calling the local county worker office supervisor that they would they would be notifying our office of privacy that these were requested and then they handle the getting the records out the door appropriately and and safely right? And so I don't I my understanding is that the
records were given to law enforcement and I don't know if prosecutor effortridge specifically called and asked for them but my understanding is that they were all released tomountain homemelice Department, so I I'm struggling to answer your question because they both could have them but I'm unsure if he specifically called and asked for those records
Speaker 147
59:45
or not on the on this case but I do know they were
released to law enforcement. OK thank you very
much but Tiffany as you said like they could be released to local law enforcement and to the prosecutor even if you've already given them to to a local law enforcement and I want to just expound upon you you mentioned you know to make sure I forget the the pos you know the position but whoever you know you know you know receives these reports and then makes that determination you say you know release that information safely and appropriately what's that
Speaker 142
1:00:26
think they I please don't quote me on this but I
Speaker 138
1:00:29
think they're using like move it to move the records if they're emailing them not not snail mailing them that's what I mean by state thank you for the clarification dumping to a faxx number like how do we make sure that the records are going where they need to
Speaker 16
1:00:42
be when we asked for records of that nature and of any type like that there's some safeguards we have to put in place to allow them to be transmitted will that be criminal histories things of that nature we had to not just send them by again by snail mail or by faxx or had to be
encrypted and that's what she's speaking of and I'm gonna go back to representative gaway's comment it would be best if we could pick up the phone and call one person and say this is who we want it from if you're asking me for an improvement that's an easy improvement for us if we had and I hate to pick on the crime lab they're not here but the crime lab has an individual that we go through all of our subpoenas for all our information that's who we reach out to when we need something I think the same thing being in place from the department in this case would be would be
beneficial that we know we reach out to whoever it is make that request whether it be through a electron ic request or direct phone call that may help everybody that we can know who to ask for who to get it from and that person then has a relationship with the prosecutor's office for us to have
that senator clark you're recognized for questions sir. Thank you Mr chairir. the Tiffany
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:02:02
this current case that we're talking about is open right? sir but with reports going back to 2013 were there cases that
Speaker 198
1:02:17
were opened and closed there was child maltreatment
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:02:23
investigations there were child maltreatment investigations and want to be clear on that the Mr Etheridge and and let me say I'm not assuming
that anybody's done anything that may may look like they have they may have there's a lot of questions that we can't get answers to today I think there's a lot more we could find out than and not and it's not their fault then what we're getting to but Mr Etherridge I know that so far from this meeting I know that there's a child who we had lots of reports on for a long time that from what you've seen
and probably from what they've seen at this point has been abused yes
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:03:16
I don't know and let me tell you also what I know is there's a lot of political niceties and I get it if I was in your position I'd be doing exactly what you're doing whatever problems we had they're over they're done we're playing knots now and we don't want to say anything bad about anybody I get that but that's not
conducive to solving problems so what did you ask for What did you ask for that you didn't get right
Speaker 16
1:03:51
away Senator Clark and I appreciate the way you phrase what you do you know we we have a long long relationship because a lot of times the session and so I wanna be very blunt with my answer to you we were just asking for information about this particular child that was not coming to us as fast as we should get it
the my problem in this case and this is they know this my problem in this case and I'm gonna be really blunt since you've asked me to be is the fact that I know that a kid was in this situation for 11 years and nothing happened that's what stoked my frustration and my anger and all of this and I don't want to get emotional on these things but the fact that that took place and that kid lives where I live at and that could happen in the states so widely put in may r ry that's not what I wanna see
happen so there's where my anger is if you want to know about it I don't know I don't have the answers and that's what bothered me that no one did anything to protect this child over the last 11 years and so that's pretty blunt for me and that's where my anger comes from do I have what I need absolutely we're we're good and that that I may have had some frustration that I can live with that frustration my frustration is the last 11 years for this little boy and I don't like that well I I want to get down
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:05:15
possibly later to why we had a problem and this particularly concerns me for different reasons not from the community don't know the community but my investigation and the Stanley case was 2015 I started here in 20132015 and we've made a lot of things better much better and not justdCFS but others and but at the same time with
us at least in the background with that investigation and others that we still had this going on with this child and there is other venues chairs where we can look at this deeper behind closed doors we do not need your permission or recommendation but I'd like to see this committee today recommend that it go to that committee so that we can go deeper and
and and get more into but what came out what happened and what we did wrong that's why we exist and it's simply so that we can fix it and we send a report to the governor and report to the legislature at the end of every two years about what we have found
that needs to be changed what we've found that needs to be fixed we
don't get into details but I think it ought to go there and the
And I'm also concerned Tiffany I mean you can only answer for what you've been in charge of and you know that I like the past director and I actually liked the one before that who resigned but it's like education we go46 years and then we change what we're doing and we
start measuring all over again and our measurements are getting better from that point but they're not better than they were from way back when and of course we're always gonna be changing people those things are always gonna be happening and so we're all concerned the that any child is left in conditions like this none of us and so we've got to dig down not hurting anybody and how did we do it
Speaker 138
1:07:58
would you would agree and and we made a we made a step to do that and and saw some irri some of the things that I've talked about a high highle here today and shared the you know, shared that information in that prior question and so
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:08:18
and what I'm fixing to say now is not to inundate y'all with lots
of phone calls but it may. OK legislators
with your permission Mr Chair you can get hold of DCfS and find out all the details they have to tell you anything about a case if you ask the questions so if you're confused about what happened and you'd like to know you can find out you cannot share it any more than they can share it but behind closed doors you can find out so that you're not confused as to what happened because there's all kinds of things that could have happened
when it comes to reports and caseworkers and and a case could have been closed legitimately we may find that somebody didn't do their job at all but bef but you have to really look at it before you know and but like I said if you want to know lot new legislators especially don't know this and if you need help with what questions to ask I'll just call me I'll help you but they're very good about answering your questions they're
very good about letting you know what's going on and so you don't have to be blind because from listening to this today I ain't learned much I've learned a little bit but if if you want to find out what really happened you can and if there's enough of you they may want to bring you all in at one time so they don't have to go over it but thank you chairs for your indulgence but I think it's important that our colleagues know that they that they can know what's going on in these cases thank you senator thank y'all
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
1:10:02
p re s ent ative Nazarenko, you are recognized sir thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you Miss Wright and Miss Mcdonald, Mr Etheridge for being here. I appreciate it and appreciate the the time we took Mrmcdonald and Miss Wright with Senator Flippo and I appreciate that. I know Miss Ethridge was on the phone and we all know that there's there's been a failure. We we've talked about it we've talked about it multiple times we've talked about where the failures
occurred different things and we've talked about you have mentioned different safeguards you've put in place and different things we can do to make sure that the safeguard or make sure that this doesn't happen again. my question is is twofold. First number one with those safeguards in place if I'm a concerned citizen or I'm a legislator that knows that I've got an issue in my area or I suspect there's a problem near me as a concerned citizen. what is the procedure right now because I'm gonna trust that that procedures working because we we want it to work for those
children so what is the procedure right now that I should take if I'm a concerned citizens in order to report something and then what should I expect
is going to happen behind the scenes think I'm gonna answer it twofold because I think it depends. I think if
Speaker 138
1:11:21
you're a concerned citizen and you want to report child abuse or child neglect you need to call the child abuse hotline which is man it it's we also have a mandated reporter are you gonna ask you want me to give you the
Speaker 217
1:11:35
number don't have the number memorized it's 1800 48259641804825964 or you can use the mandated reporter that's
Speaker 218
1:11:43
why announce it because concerned citizens that are out there watching they're very concerned
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
1:11:49
about what's going on and they may have something
in their area so it's it's very important we get that out there and then
Speaker 138
1:11:58
or or if they're mandated reporter they can use the mandated reporter that they they just type in Arkansas
mandated reporter and it pops up and they can type in the information they don't have to make a phone call to the child abuse hotline so then to answer the question if they're a concerned citizen they need to make a report they would make a report and then depending upon if the report is accepted or not it would be assigned to a specific agency crimemesgast Childrendivision or DCFs and then at that point they could can they would be able to they would hear from the assigned
investigator and be able to share further information about what they have reported is that answer the question does when you said if it's accepted what's
Speaker 222
1:12:44
the trigger for it to be accepted so there has to be
Speaker 138
1:12:48
some child maltreatment has to meet the definition of the child maltreatment Act for what is defined as abuse or neglect. and then and that is a there's a whole lot of information in that but the hotline if they're on if they make the phone call the hotline will ask them questions as they share the narrative using the
Chair
Unverified
1:13:08
tool to make the decision around if it's accepted or not. OK thank you very much thank you Mr Chair. thank
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:13:17
youpresentative enter hammer you're recognized for a question sir. thank you Mr chairir and I just feel it may turn out good, it may turn out bad. I don't know but I really do feel Mr. Etherridge that you've alluded that past difficulties have been experienced in your opinion as far as why you had difficulty getting information out of DHS that wasn't with either of the two ladies sitting at the table next to you is that correct?
That's absolutely correct sir. OK, I think that's fair to them that we know that these two ladies at the table are not not what you refer who you're referring to that's number one and then number 2, I've been sitting here on my phone going back and forth with somebody because about a year or so ago there's a situation in school in my district where multiple calls have been made over a two year period by mandated reporters from the school with regards to drugs in the home, multiple arrests of people in
the home, boy getting shot the BB gun multiple calls with me and and others and so systemic problem of how many calls does it take before finally the decision is made to pull somebody from the home so that that's one thing I'd like to ask is criteria for making that determination because I know your field representatives are in a tough spot because y'all want reunification all things we've been pushing for
tough spot though but you hear 29 times so give a little education about that
and center hammer before and before y all you know you know you know educate us on that I'm gonna have Carly go down there and I'm gonna ask forlieutenant Colonel Aaron and Mr Mack with
David Etheridge
Unverified
1:14:52
administrator for crimemesgainst Childrendivision hotline to come on up to the table because I just think given the conversation it'd be easier just to have all relevant parties here at the table so Carly's
gonna bring a chair up here and if you all will
you get to the table and have a seat if you introduce yourselves and tell us your position for the record and then Senator Hammer will allow you
Jason Aaron
Unverified
1:15:25
to proceed thank you sir Thank you Carly all right gentlemen my name's
Speaker 227
1:15:29
Jason Aaron. I'm a lieutenant colonel with the state police. I supervise our crimes againstt Children division our highway patrol division and our criminal investigation division and I'mn Mack. I'm the
Speaker 231
1:15:40
administrator of the child abuse hotline of the
Speaker 15
1:15:44
crimemesgainst Childrendivision. thank you for being here gentlemen. All right Senator
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15:48
Hammer please continue Tiffanie who who
Speaker 235
1:15:50
wants to take the question'll I can answer I think the answer is when we're assigned
Speaker 138
1:15:56
a child maltreatment investigation and if if DCfS is assigned and we're working it removal is dependent upon but both the assessment of the history the current safety of the children and what's going on and so typically rising to
the level of removal is around intimate danger that we can't mitigate through a safe safety planning and supports being in the home and so on your specific situation, I know you can't tell me here but I would like to know
Speaker 237
1:16:24
who the family is to do some research and review around that the so based on your answer,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:16:30
I got two and I'll be short Miss chair. Bas on your answer why was this child not removed sooner than later
wass it just a system failure personnel failure what what would you identify then as the problem or were you
Speaker 138
1:16:52
you weren't privileged student at the time I guess were you? privileged to the the Baxter County I would say I've reviewed the history, and so I would say that there was lack of documentation lack of investigation doing the investigation as well as interviewing appropriate interviews
Speaker 198
1:17:14
and then of the all the other system pressures
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:17:18
that I mentioned before. OK. and do you track or do you have the ability to track that when you get a oh say 10 or more calls on a particular child just grabbing number 10 What point do you does it get above the radar screen that you say you know what this this is a lot of calls to one particular family that it gets above the radar screen so it it doesn't doesn't lack for attention think that is one thing that
Speaker 138
1:17:46
we've seen that didn't happen right? there was not extensive history search. we weren't reviewing the history we weren't taking that all into consideration with the continued reports coming in from the hotline and being assigned for investigation and so that is one thing I have mentioned we're working on some kind of flag system flag to for staff so it says like hey this is there's more than I think the number we landed on was5. there's more more than 5 reports on this family but
we're still working through what that would look like
Speaker 198
1:18:18
and how we can change what our operating in our system around that history could you pull a current report now
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:18:25
with with the systems you have in place or is that not possibleull current report how many cases out there do you have right now and maybe the gentleman can weigh in this how many how many how many cases do you have out there right now where you've gotten 10 calls on anywhere particular child you you don't have the systems in place right now to do that
Speaker 138
1:18:47
that's what you're working on developing. our staff can search the history and review it right now like they can type in the name of the family and review all of the history but what we're talking about is how do we have some level of notification that's happening and I don't know if I can pull out of the system right now and say like the Smiths have5 reports for example. I don't know if I I would have to ask I can circle back to you on that. Could we get the gentleman to
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:19:12
weigh in on those questions Mr Chair and I'm done. Thank you go ahead
Speaker 230
1:19:18
just just real quick on the for the committee's sake I just kind of I know it gets kind of blurry between CCd and DHS but just to be clear for the committee the the hotline is manned and operated by the Arkansas State Police crimemesgainst Children Division and that division's broken up between our hotline operators and our investigators. Dan Mack here, he is here as a supervisor of the hotlineenter so most of these questions in this nature I'm gonna defer to Dan Mack. in
Speaker 231
1:19:43
to piggyback kind of what what Director Wright was saying we don't have a way to just pinpoint how many calls have
been made at the hotline work because you've got so many mandated reporters it was earlier mentioned about teachers and and educators you may have3 or4 educators from the same school make a report to the hotline because they're all mandated to make a report to the hotline about one child. we may have3 or4 reports on that same child with the same report same allegations same offender so one of those would be accepted but maybe three of those would not be accepted because they're all reporting the same thing and then those would be kind of hit so it's hard to say how many reports are are stacked
like that we don't have a way of filtering that in in our system we can see that there's been entries but we don't know you know why they're unsubstantiated or why they're screened out or why they're accepted that that the at the very first when we're on the call with someone
Mr Macker are you aware of any interstates whose call centers operate in a similar capacity where there are like a centralized database so if a person has an individual has um5 reports to the child maltreatment abuse you know, hotline where it gets us centralized so you're not going through and
having to you know reference that specific case number and pull that up and go through each one individually we don't per se
Speaker 231
1:20:57
but there are some states I know Missouri has their intake and then they also have what they call a team of searchers and they would be handed the information from the intake process and they would do the actual search through their database and they would gather all that information while the intake operators or intake workers would stay on the phones keep gathering more information so there are states that do that aspect as well. and then just for the benefit of
the chair and then maybe other members of the committee can you briefly tell us why is it that the the the the maltreatment abuse hotline is is under the you know the umbrella of state police and not DCfs because DCfS still has oversight of it although you all it's it's state police that operates it and I believe there was a court
Speaker 132
1:21:40
ruling years ago that so if you don't mind just briefly walk us through why it's structured this
Speaker 231
1:21:46
way. other words a lawsuit that created the the hotlines have the central intake unit years ago the
maltreatment reports were were called in to each individual county office for to determine maltreatment. so they there was the belief was to streamline it to make one central intake unit and at first the hotline was under DHS and they were under there maybe I don't know5 or6 years I don't know the the number but round about late 90s 97 or so it was deemed to to create a something for the hotline or or for the state police to have the severe cases be presented
for prosecution and through the powers that be with legislation we were created the the state police family protection unit was kind of created and it was later namedrimesgainst Children vision to be more specific that we dealt specifically with children and it it's been there the whole time I've been there it was there I think 9798 was when it transferred so
Speaker 250
1:22:39
you aren't just dealing with the worst of the
worst you know you know cases but this is any you know in a case where there's allegations of abuse, neglect or maltreatment with a child that ok all right
Speaker 138
1:22:55
so I just to clar for clar it's so that lawsuit was Angel R it started in 1991. it ended in 204 and the miners standing, I'm not an attorney but the 128 sections of law are all the codified agreements that
Speaker 198
1:23:10
came out of that Angela are lawsuit. thank you. Can you just
briefly walk us through the process so somebody calls in you say teacher calls in you know she's got
students in her class and she calls into the hotline Walk us through the process of how you know on your end once that call is received you know what is the process to determine whether or not an investigation is warranted. so when they
Speaker 231
1:23:39
they first call in we're going to let them go ahead and have their speak of what they're saying they pretty much say that they want to make a report and we kind of walk them through it. The operator is going to gather there the demographic information particularly who the victim child or children are and are there any siblings in the home who the caregivers
might be and then who's the alleged offender and then we kind of want to ask them tell us what's their reason for calling today what's prompted you to to to make a report so we'll let them kind of just just tell us the story of what they what they have we want to determine like who did what to whom, what happened where did it occur? how did the offender have access to the child? Why did something occur to the child if it was out of anger or if it was an accident and so on so based on that kind of questioning we asked them specific things about what they're reporting if they're reporting
physical abuse to a child we'll ask who the offender is what is the relationship of that offender to that child was the offender in a in a caregiving role because parts of the law required that the offender must be a caregiver. where was the child struck? does the child have any injuries from from being struck if so can you describe and get in detail what those injuries look like, what it may have been caused by and so on. sometimes depending on the age of the child, they really can't get a lot of information out of the child. sometimes there may be deficiencies mentally or
emotionally with the child or if they're they're older children and they just don't want to give the information so we'll try to discern what we can figure out as far as if it's abusive it's a neglect if it's sexual abuse umrectorright mentioned the the definitions that are laid out in the child maltreatment Act. we take their information and match it up to that and if we can define it through the the the the the SDN the the structured decision making tool we can go ahead and accept a report for investigation at that point we can assign it to either DCfS
or CCd depending on the severity of the the allegation and then based also through with our our MOU of which agency will get the the assigned report is there ever a time where you read
the case to to local law enforcement so this instance in Basor County a mountain home for my understanding that was you know you
David Etheridge
Unverified
1:25:46
know that was referred to and David you can jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong was that referred to turned over to mountain homemelice Department to investigate OK David wants you know so this case did not come about this
Speaker 69
1:26:00
came about a phone call that was made andmountain home took the report and so it did not come through this
Speaker 231
1:26:08
process when the hotline accepts a report for investigation we typically won't forward it on to a law enforcement agency because the investigator's going to have that information if we can accept report for investigation and we believe that there may be some criminal aspects involved maybe drug use or maybe other aspects that we we that aren't maltreatment but there could be a criminal issue then we'll try to forward those on the law enforcement for for follow
Mr. Macin I got plenty of people in the queue so I
wanna don't wanna take up two more time it's a difficult question in your professional opinion what do you think's the single most important thing that we can do 29 unsubstantiated you know 29 calls that were deemed unsubstantiated. This kid as I said I don't know what the fine line is between you know abuse or torture but I think this kid was tortured so you know you know you know that being said what is the single most important thing that you'd believe that could be done to improve this process
Speaker 231
1:27:04
specifically the call center you know if there were 29 investigations that mean there were 29 accepted reports to the hotline so I think from a screening standpoint those were seen as are all reports
accepted when they're called in they're just they're the report is called in and it's accepted.
Speaker 231
1:27:20
sir it goes through the process of that so if it's deemed to be accepted and forwarded on to an investigation then we we've done at the hotline we're supposed to do in regard to assessing the information and forwarded on to the investigations. we can see that there are reports that that were
unsubstantiated but we don't go into the reports to determine why so that's part of kind of unfortunately for us we do this we don't know the outcome of that report because of the sheer volume of what we deal with we just have really no way to to follow up to see what happened with that report after if it comes out in the in the news then we can we can say all remember that that report but it may have been november of 24 so we may not have people that were there or
they just that they don't remember that but I think when you're you're accepting reports at the hotline and sending for investigations we've and sometimes it comes down to to educating reporters to be better reporters some don't know how to how to make a report and that's ok we if they can call the hotline we'll we'll walk them through the information of what we need to to to get a report through. thank you uhpresentative Gazaway you have a question thank you
Speaker 54
1:28:30
Mr chairir. and so I guess just following through
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:28:37
that process exactly what it looks like someone makes a call to the child abuse hotline I made a call recently to the child abuse hotline when I got some information in a case that I had I felt it was incumbent upon me to report at the child abuse hotline I did that I don't know if I'm a mandated reporter or not but I did. Someone answered the phone and and took my information and let me explain why I thought I needed to be calling. is that the who makes the decision on whether or not a
report is accepted or then substantiated or unsubstantiated and whether or not it has a criminal element whether or not it should go to DCFs for dependency neglect who makes that decision is that the person who I call and talk to on the phone more
Speaker 231
1:29:24
often than not yes the the operators are trained through they're they're educated and trained on the the maltreatment law the the the STM tool they're trained on the MOU to make the decisions themselves. we let them know that you're gonna you you're gonna tell the reporter that the
report is accepted for investigation. what what the allegation may be in which agency is going to at that point that's where we would stop the the substantiation of an investigation that all goes to the to the investigative agencies with CHCD or or
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:29:56
with DCfS so how many employees do you
Speaker 231
1:30:00
have manning the hotline? Currently we have32 operators,5 supervisors and and they've all been trained
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:30:07
on how to take these reports and
then make and and they're the initial decision makers on whether or not something's gonna be referred for investigation or not to
Speaker 231
1:30:18
be clear if they accept it for investigation if they decide that it's not going to be accepted for investigation that gets reviewed by a supervisor they have to speak with the supervisor or present their narrative of of the report to the supervisor to verify that yes it can be screened out or no that it shouldn't be or maybe you need to call the reporter back for more clarifying information from the reporter before that's done. OK so and
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:30:41
back to the point that's been made earlier and and I've made it and others have made it but 29 times now I don't know that all of those were hotline reports I take it that many of them likely were but you know I heard Senator Clark say that you know there's you know a number of reasons that we don't know why these 29 times this case was never followed up on we don't know the workers who were involved in in other words we don't know the people answering the phone if they were following protocol or not if they were taking this as
seriously as the as they should or if it went to the next level whether or not those employees did what they were supposed to do I've heard a lot of and I hate to call them excuses reasons excuses whatever you might say of lack of appropriate interviews lack of appropriate investigation, lack of the ability to do history searches and a lot of things about why this happened 29 times but I just find it hard to believe it might be one thing if there
had been one or two calls about this child that something falls through the cracks that is capable of happening
but 29 times seems unbelievable to me so is there any explanation for that? well again all
Speaker 231
1:31:57
I can say is based on what the hotline our what basically the role we play in this part it's it comes into us if we send it for investigation and we sent it 29 times we've accepted it we sent it on to the
agency who's supposed to be the investigation part of it we don't we don't see that report again we're we're gonna be on the phone to take the very next report so we don't have anything to do with the the findings and the determinations and and anything about that as far as whether it's substantiated or it's found it
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:32:32
investigation I understand and and if even if it is accepted or substantiated it's then going to get referred out I guess based on certain protocol to possibly a criminal investigation or possibly to
Speaker 148
1:32:46
DCfs for dependency neglect type analysis and apparently I'm not
Speaker 138
1:32:53
right about that so can think I can help so they the hotline will accept or screen out the report if they accept it that's the end of their that's where they stop their involvement stops right there then it's either assigned to crimemes against Childrendi vision which is underneath Arkansas Statelice as well or DCfS either OK, so it let's go if it's assigned to crimes against children and they're investigating they're working
that investigation if they don't feel like a child is unsafe based on that investigation then DCfS isn't ever involved. if they feel like they have a safety issue then they call us in to assess the safety and that's how we get involved in collaborate with crimes against children if DCFS gets the report, then we're both agencies are working to for a true finding or an unsubstantiated finding but let's say during the course of either of these investigations
there is risk of danger imminent danger and the safety that we cannot keep those children in the home then wedCfs would take what we call a72ho hold and place the child into foster care and then that's what starts the dependency neglect process did that help or clarify and make it worse that
Speaker 182
1:34:03
helped a lot thank youpresentativepresentative rose you are recognized
Chair
Unverified
1:34:07
for your question sir. Thank you Mr Chairman. I think we
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:34:11
can all agree that the individuals who committed this absolute
horrible atrocity on a child or monsters we'll start there they're responsible and their actions were evil Following that as we keep referencing the 29 reports I imagine for the rest of your life 29 will be your least favorite number it would probab it probably for the rest of my life will cause me to twitch because of the span of time that abuse or torture took place at some point and I read in your letter that DHS
recognizes the responsibility that they bear so at some point in addition to those who are committing the crimes DHS is bearing some responsibility because the crimes were being allowed to continue after people had called and said something bad is happening. you guys have discovered the 29 reports. I'm guessing once you discovered that there was an actual crime that took place you then searched your own database is that correct? you searched the database to figure out that there were 29 reports that had
been initiated so briefly because I've got a couple of questions here but briefly can you tell me how you were able to determine that there were 29 reports we able just to search the names of those guardians
Speaker 209
1:35:41
so we have the ability to search the name of the the parent, the child and it will
Speaker 198
1:35:47
provide the information to us around who and then you go in and read each of the investigations sorector Wright chief of staffffmcdonald
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:35:56
you're much more adept at this than me and I'm sure far superior in your knowledge and understanding. I'm sure you're already making changes but if it hasn't already been discussed I'm just gonna throw a suggestion out there that you guys think about is that every report when you receive it as a protocol now we're gonna immediately search that name and see how many other reports come up so that 28 times it doesn't go by without being caught till the twentyninth time
with that you've now seen OKok we searched this we saw we had 29 reports I'm sure you can see who took the reports who investigated to some degree all of those reports were found to be unsubstantiated for some reason hass any disciplinary action taken
place amongst staff? talk about why you consult for just a second I'll say I sit on
the charitable penal and corrections subcommittee and we had this calico rockck prison break and they immediately dealt with staff who were responsible fortunately in that instance nobody was hurt in in the prison break nobodydy was hurt but staff members were immediately released others were punished, demoted etc. in this case a child was significantly harmed over a long period of time. So I'm curious if in your investigation to those 29
reports have you taken any disciplinary action against any staff members Sorry, some of those
Speaker 197
1:37:39
employees no longer work for the agency, given the length of time and some
Speaker 277
1:37:44
of them are in within different roles me pause to let you continue is
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:37:50
it does it happen that you rehire
staff members after they've left? can they come back at the future?
we do rehire some staff so for those who were involved who no longer are on staff are you guys making any kind of notation to their employee file or anything along those lines I hear you saying well they don't work for us anymore. there should be accountability so I I would like you to at least consider that for those who are no longer a part of your department or or or your division if they don't work here anymore that doesn't mean let's just forget it it's no big deal if they want to come back that's fine we won't put it on their employee record for those who
are in different roles or in the same roles has any disciplinary action taken place if the
Speaker 279
1:38:49
answer is no you can just go with no No I mean there has
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:38:52
not been disciplinary action for staff who remain important in your letter you say we will do everything
in our power to prevent this from ever happening again so 29 reports nothing was done nobodybody's punished
does that sound like you're doing
Speaker 138
1:39:12
everything in your power to prevent it from happening again? we brought our staff
Speaker 198
1:39:18
together and reviewed the incident and had everyone in one room and we started reviewing the case we assessed their accountability. um, we assessed their engagement in learning and improving practice and so that's why the the decision of no
Speaker 285
1:39:37
discipline for staff was not made. Have you individually reviewed every
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:39:42
one of those 29 reports reviewed those 29 reports do you know the names of the
Speaker 198
1:39:46
employees who still work for you who took those reports or
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:39:49
pursued those investigations not not off the top of my mind but do you know do you know them like you have records you know who those employees are can see who was assigned to each of the cases have you spoken individually to each one of
those employees about what went wrong or did you just have a group
Speaker 277
1:40:15
setting? not individually but we've had some hard conversations about this so there's been
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:40:21
no disciplinary action taken. nobodybody's been dismissed I find that hard to believe. what is the likelihood that there are dozens more cases like
this poor child's that have gone unnoticed
Speaker 289
1:40:43
I would hope that there's not but I can't give you an answer
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:40:48
on that today. So the database that you use can you export data from it like an excel file a CSV or anything along those lines have you guys exported that and done any kind of analysis to determine if there's significant number of reports against any names that was an additional question
Speaker 292
1:41:08
that we received and I said that I have not
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:41:12
done it so how long ago did you discover the 29 reports for this one name how long ago
Speaker 150
1:41:19
was that? november of 2024 in almost one
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:41:21
year's time you discovered that there were 29 reports for one name and it hasn't occurred to anybody to export the database I just thought of this sitting here it hasn't occurred to anybody to export your entire database and just search and see if there's somebody else mass abusing a child and it going unnoticed
so in summary no disciplinary action no employees dismissed and you guys haven't simply done a search to see if there's any other children out there who've had these kind of reports filed all
Chair
Unverified
1:41:57
right I'm finished Thank you Representative Representative Richardson you're recognized for a question thank
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:42:02
you Mr chair yeah so I got to tell you I'm for there to be no disciplinary
action to these employees is unacceptable and and I think you would agree with me that with you being in a leadership position, managing these employees I would have assumed that there was something done with these individuals what's the what tell me how much training are
these individuals who carry these cases getting on an annual basis to
Speaker 217
1:42:37
become a caseworker you will get about 9 months of initial training and then we do for
Speaker 138
1:42:46
our investigations team, at least twice a year if not more we'll do trainings where we bring them all together and do additional trainings and talk about you know, case reviews and practice issues we may have identified along the way and we also host follow up Zoom calls and things like that with them to just continue
Speaker 162
1:43:05
their education, share information, review data that kind of thing and out of the individuals that
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:43:11
you have identified and you had your group meeting with that didn't receive any disciplinary action.
Has there been any history with any of those individuals that some of these same instances
Speaker 302
1:43:25
have happened in the past can't recall that information. I would have
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:43:30
to get circle back and provide that to you and how often are those employees that are the case managers how often are are do they remove themselves from investigation based on conflict of interest don't that information
Speaker 138
1:43:50
of that having I do know of cases where staff have said, um, I know this I'm related to this person I can't work this investigation and we reassign
Speaker 237
1:43:58
out of the county maybe out of the area, maybe within the county just depends on the
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:44:04
circumstance. are you aware of of of people that are reporting instances to you and and have notified you that these people are involved with this edge with this investigation and they're still involved. Has has that been made known to you? does that question make sense? ask me and
Speaker 136
1:44:21
and go ahead p re s ent ative Richardson, I think I'm familiar with what you're referring to. whenever a worker is notifies a supervisor of a conflict of interest a possible conflict of interest that that there there should be a staffing on that and the likelihood of that worker being removed is is great. I'm familiar with what you're referring to. How do we avoid that and and this
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:44:47
is slightly different from the the case that we're talking about
and I apologize chair. how do we fix that you know what I'll get with you offline and we'll discuss that. thank you
Speaker 306
1:44:58
thank you Mr. greatpresentativepresentative Gazaway did you have a couple of
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:45:03
follow ups I do thank you Mr chair so follow up a little bit on RepresentativeRose's line
of questioning you guys have a difficult job everyone employed in this process has a difficult job and just want to say to his point I
mean in this case with 29 calls I would think somewhere along the way it would have been identified that this child was being abused seems to me somewhere in that process it should've happened but with that being said you guys also and I know from practicing law for nine years having had enough cases that you guys get a lot of bogus reports too and there are people that will call the hotline I've had I'm aware of cases even
one today that someone made a call and DHS showing up over things that are really insignificant not abuse not neglect but the parties may happen to be involved in a divorce and you have one person who's just calling the hotline all the time because they're trying to gain an upper hand in a divorce setting for instance. and so I think the challenge is seems pretty clear is to
distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not and you may get5 reports on the same child in a very short period of time because you have a crazy person these people exist who are calling the hotline every other day over bogus things because they're trying to gain an upper hand in their custody dispute or things of that nature so can you expound upon that also I don't know I think Dan may want to take that at the hotline
Speaker 138
1:46:56
side but I think once it's assigned for investigation we don't have a choice but to work that investigation so once it's assigned and it's
Speaker 209
1:47:02
been accepted we are we have to go out and work those reports so in in response
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:47:08
to that I mean I think my point to you would be in any comments that you have on this I would like to hear but it's the the protocol that you have in place and the ability to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate you also need to have
a process in place similar to what RepresentativeRos is talking about I mean to search your database quickly and find out that this child has been called on 29 times now with that being said we know that there are going to be some of those examples where a child there's been a call about a child for instance 10 times and we know that they've all turned out to be unsubstantiated because you're dealing with for lack of a better way to put it a crazy person who keeps calling the hotline over bogus things so the the real I think challenge that you have
that you have to solve in terms of proper protocol and training for the people that are answering these calls and responding to these calls is how you distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate so and you can address that and the second point I want to make however is again practice law for 19 years and unfortunately I have been involved in these cases and not seen what has happened I talked to a friend of mine, another lawyer friend of mine last night who has done parent counsel work in DHS court
part of what he talks about is that DHS sometimes will strain at a gnat as to borrow a phrase from the bible but swallow a camel so you may have something that's really insignificant that would in most people's estimation never constitute abuse probably not neglect and you have kids removed from home placec removed from homes placed in foster care etc. and then you
have cases like this where a child is being tortured and there's been 29 reports and it takes 11 years before there's any action and so again it's a difficult job but part of what you have to solve for is not removing kids and taking drastic action in cases that are minor relatively minor if serious at all and then not taking action in the serious cases so I realize I've said a lot and I've not asked any particular
Speaker 162
1:49:32
question but can you respond to those remarks? I will do my best
Speaker 138
1:49:41
I think that you're right we do get reports as you've described I think that if you look at our data of the maltreatment reports that are accepted approximately 20% of those are found true and so I think that maybe one thing together as a collaborative we could focus on how do we accept the right
reports and make sure that we're getting to the right kids and how do we mitigate and families who may just need help or like you said, saw the camel swat the net or I set it backwards. I apologize. but anyway what y'all what I'm saying is we do sometimes get tied up into things that are custody battles or those different situations and then those reports are coming in on top of more severe reports and I actually have a couple of
ideas but I don't want to put my partners at crimes against childrenldren's division on the hot seaat right here but in our partnership I have a few ideas of things that I'd like to talk about with their leadership team and our DHS administration about as well so just trying to strike the balance and making sure that when we have a report that comes off the hotline we are looking at the history and understanding the family that we're serving so we can keep kids safe I don't know if that satisfies your questions
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:51:06
. Well I don't know that I had a particular question. I just wanted to make that point if
if anyone if witnesses from the hotline have any comments on that because that's where those reports are initially received that's where that initial decision is made how do you how do they distinguish between what is legitimate and what's not and what are they doing to search the
history like RepresentativeRose said. So it it's kind of
Speaker 251
1:51:27
like director wright said we're we're under we're obligated to
Speaker 231
1:51:30
go ahead and accept the report for investigation if if the reporter gives us the information and it meet
s criteria to accept according to the child maltreatment Act, we may have a a an underlying thing this is a custody issue or this is that issue whatever but it still meets what they've said in the black and white meets child maltreatment. we've got to send it on for investigation. very few reporters have been quote unquote banned from making reports to the hotline due to a mental instability harassing nature of stuff we we do have some of those and and we'll have law enforcement agencies we've had
prosecutors contact the hotline and say hey how can we get these people or investigators we keep getting these malicious reports and what what can we do and we just we refer them to the prosecuting attorney we we can't put a a ban list if you will together without somebody saying they're they're mentally incompetent or they're this or they're that and they've been told not to contact the hotlinefo anymore.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:52:28
one last question just for the benefit of
the committee. Arkansas state police crimes against childrenldren division which mans the hotline and then
does conduct investigations are they commission law enforcement officers no sir
Speaker 230
1:52:43
they're not they're they'll work their case and if it looks like it's going criminal then they will parallel that with the local jurisdiction whatever jurisdiction that crime was committed in so I just wanted to make it clear
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:52:55
it when you when you say Arkansas state police crimes against childrenldren division and that certain of these investigations get referred to
them that is not a a trained commission law enforcement officer conducting a criminal investigation they're really acting kind of under the authority of
Speaker 309
1:53:14
DHS can you they're they're almost kind of like a liaison but some of our investigators and the
Speaker 230
1:53:20
andallika may clear this up but either all of them or some of them may have certified training and forensic interviews and some of these police departments or law enforcement agencies across the state do not have that resource or asset available within their agency and so that CACd investigator will pick up that role. They may
already have a report with the victim or the suspect in this potential criminal case and so the CCD investigator will will plug along with it but the CCD is not carrying the criminal case that law enforcement agency's carrying the criminal case. but but the CACd investigator is
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:53:54
employed by the Arkansas Statelice correct and it's a civilian employee ok as a civilian and then what exactly is the interplay with DHS?
Speaker 138
1:54:10
we operate on a MOU together and have agreed upon understanding about our roles and
Chair
Unverified
1:54:21
expectations between the two agencies. right we're gonna do uhenator Clarkpresentative rose thenpresentative Woolrich Senator
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:54:30
Clark you are recognized to the state police and the hotline the you cannot accept
a report on every call correct you have you have rules and and your people are trained we can we accept this we don't accept this because we have people that are concerned that kids are out on their bicycles. they're they're holy grail is the
Speaker 230
1:55:00
child maltreatment actct and it specifically defines what that operator can accept and can screen out what they cannot and even
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:55:07
at that we still not blaming y'all because you're
going by the rules you have we still have the one of the highest rates in the country of accepting calls which could be a problem on the other side of what happened here because we got to remember this is never just one sided this is a terrible thing that happened but you accept that call and it goes then to DCfS may go to CACD if it's looks more criminal in nature
go but we're gonna say it goes to DCfs you have to investigate that's correct if the government comes to your house to investigate you about your parenting you think that's traumatic or not traumatic? It's traumatic. It's traumatic if you're so if you're one of the most perfect parents there ever was it's a traumatic experience now there is no not guilty it's unsubstantiated
Speaker 138
1:56:14
and true that's right because these are not
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:56:17
criminal investigations now if you come investigate my parenting because they somebody called in they accepted a call how long oncece I have that unsubstantiated not not not guilty unsubstantiated report how long does that stay? unsubstantiated
Speaker 162
1:56:36
it's not on the central registry it's but it's within our database for history it's within your
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:56:42
database because I agree with everything
thatpresentative rose said I agree with everything Representativeaaway said but it's in your database and so you are if another call comes in and that's what how long is it going to be in your database forever forever so if you have that person and we do that keeps calling and knows the right things to say that they have to take the report and then you have to investigate and whether y'all will admit it or not. I may try to get you to
admit it if you've got5 or6 unsubstantiated even though you're one of the most perfect parents that we would find there is some tendency I find that where there's smoke there's fire there is some perception about where there's smoke there is fire getting calls there must be something wrong even though I never did anything wrong so there's so I agree with p re s ent ative rose on pull it you know you got pulling those
out but on the other hand we gotta be careful don't we that we don't come we don't come up with the wrong idea about people who are perfectly innocent so we've got to do everything we can to stop this kind of case but we've also got to be careful because I work with way more cases where we should have done less than cases where we should have done more and the thing is that a lot of times including
in my own family those are tragic cases and in our case I know the caseworker and you know what t turns out it would have been best if the child had been removed and placed with this paternal grandmother but at the same time we want to keep families together you know and and so the a lot of times there is no perfect call this one looks like it was and I wanna get into it looks like it was probably obvious but
you know when we get into it we'll see but I just so we agreed that it's not just one sided where we is we have to be very careful on the other side that we don't become a police state when it comes to parenting that's right we have to
Speaker 162
1:59:07
walk a balance on and have both and manage this manage both sides of the system I would like to make a motion what's your motion
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:59:14
is that true that we refer the closed cases
we can't look into the open case that we refer the closed cases on this child to the child maltreatment investors investigation's oversight committee for them to look at recommend that they look at the motion
by Senator Clark is that we that we referred the closed so did you say cases or yeah closed
cases specific to this child that's what we're ok so so so the cos case is specific
to this you know you know you know case in Baxter County and mountain home to the child maltreatment investigations oversight committee
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:00:02
so may also say while I'm making the motion that it's a closed committee it's the only one that exists and but members who are not on it can come to the chair who is currently me and asked to be there I'm not I can't allow the whole room
to come but if you have a very specific interest and would like to be there because we have we have never had a leak and I'm very proud of that it's very necessary so you've got to understand if you want to come and be part of it what the rules are and how careful we have to be so it is possible for some of you if you wish to be in attendance when we
when we look at these things but
that's the drop a second on that
got a second by senator Sullivan all in favor sayy ay opposed congratulations motion carries let me just
add Senator clark, how long have you served on that committee? did we create it?
Speaker 291
2:01:12
Was it 217 or 2018?w17. Did you run the
Speaker 154
2:01:16
legislation that created the we looked at every
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:01:18
way to try to have oversight and this was the only way we came up with and everybody said it was impossible because the press wasn't gonna
allow it and the press understood the problem I went to AP and the TV stations and the radio stations and they understood the problem and we're willing to let us do that and we're very careful that we have a very narrow scope . Senator Clark, I've served with you
for 11 years. there's not a member of this legislature that I that I think's worked in the you know, any harder or bend in the weeds any more than you have when it comes to issues regarding you know, children, family and youth and DCfs and or or family courtz and I know that you have a heart for this and a passion for this. I think you're
an excellent chair there and so I feel very comfortable you know with your committee taking this up because at the end of the day I think people are tired it's you want accountability but what people are taught of is just the the finger pointer to this and that is like we want a better process we want better kids and you know unfortunately I think we live in this society and this is this is you are dealing with the fallout and trying to you know but you know some some of these people it's just I hate to even use the word parents. because they're so far from it
and now that you all have to see you know I'm disgusted by what I know about this case. I can't imagine you know what you all see in in just in an average week at DCfs but one thing that's come to me today and is an honest question ballpark me how many of these how many calls do y'all get or this is a case of a couple going through a divorce and somebody's just trying to make the other spouse look bad or I'm upset with my sister so I'm gonna call in some you know you know some manufactured case and I know that these things have to exist. I don't know how to quantify
it's like is it is is it is it a is it an issue or is it a minor yeah it happens
Speaker 231
2:03:08
but not in any degree of frequency from our standpoint at the hotline we know what happens we can see spikes of of our call volume and when the exchange of custodies happened on on Sunday evenings, we can see it after a long holidays when they've been with the noncustodial parent and summer visits and so on so we we see those types of reports but some of them are are legitimate concerns. umrector Wright probably would have more insight
regarding the investigations part because they see which most of those are bogus and which aren't. we believe what we're being told granted we we only know it's50% of the store. we just don't know if it's a true part of the the false part but if it meets criteria to accept then we're going to accept it and let investigations run its course. sorector Wright will probably better be able to answer that question I don't
Speaker 317
2:03:51
I don't have a good data point on that
Speaker 138
2:03:54
except to say that of the reports that come in in a state fiscal year where only finding true on 20% of those.
is that in line with other states is there is there a national average?
do there any national data or or states that we border that we look at to see how we're doing a comparison.
Speaker 197
2:04:13
I think we are over accepting I think the data would show that Arkansas over is over accepting at the front door on
Speaker 329
2:04:18
the hotline reports the data would show thatir I think to give you just to give
Speaker 230
2:04:25
you an idea of to give you an idea of the call volume about65,000 calls are taken in the hotline center
Chair
Unverified
2:04:34
20% of65,000% of that all right. Representative owe and the serose excuse me and thenpresentative
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:04:47
Woololdridge thank you chair Msmcdonald any o
c to ber over the last 11 years if we'd posed the question hey why don't you do a database search
of every report that's been filed and see if any name comes up 20 plus times if we'd done that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago we could have stopped the abuse of this one child sooner would you agree Yes sir if today we made the suggestion and it was followed through upon to do that search in the database
and you guys picked the number 10,152,030 I don't know what the magic number is but you guys are the subject matter experts and we said if it hit this many with one name we're gonna invest some time in pursuing why this is happening do you think that that would be a productive method to hopefully stop some children from being abused. I certainly think that it would
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:06:09
there are still employees who took reports or investigated or were in some shape or form involved in the 29 reports that were deemed unsubstantiated. do you think it would be beneficial to have a one on one review with that employee as well as the standards and practices that they're exercising in their report taking or they're investigating to determine whether they need correction or discipline or to be removed entirely
Speaker 333
2:06:43
yes sir, I would certainly I'd I'd like to go back and talk with our legal counsel as well as director Wright and be able to look into that more
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:06:56
deeply. don't want to rabbit trail too much here but can you think of some job performance related offenses that are fireable what would those look like? in any any given position within your department you can use broad
Speaker 335
2:07:13
terms jobb performance terminations what
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:20
what would rise to the level of
being relieved of their job Sure dishonesty, theft
Speaker 335
2:07:29
there's there's a hostster reasons what if they were just bad
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:37
at their job performance performance
Speaker 335
2:07:40
performance performance yes sir if if
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:45
they failed to do their job adequately and it caused harm to happen to somebody or for something to be missed that was significant would that rise to the level of being fired that would certainly
Speaker 333
2:07:58
rise to the level of of taking that to our legal counsel for counsel. yes sir. re w r ight in
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:08:06
your letter I want to go back to you said we will do everything in our
power to prevent this from ever happening again.
in your letterhead it says we care we act we change lives I would like to suggest and challenge that you consider immediately doing a database search for any large number of reports that come back to a offender or a child's name and give those a significant review to make sure there's not some other kid who's been in an abusive or torturous
situation for over a decade or even3 to5 years I would also like to suggest that you consider immediately upon receiving a report of child abuse that part of your protocol is that that name is put into a filter whether it is simply that the employee goes to the database and searches John Smith address ordOB or whatever else information that you take to see if there's a long list of names
or a long list of reports that show up and if that were to happen that they would then also pursue further investigation into that or referring it to an investigation and the other thing that I would like to suggest is that one in one on one followups are done with the employees who are still with you regardless of their position but if they're still with you if they were involved in any of these unsubstantiated reports whether it was on the paperwork side the investigation side that you have one on ones that you
review their body of work and that you pursue whether or not there should be disciplinary action taken after just having my my exchange with the chief of staff it seemed that these were maritable considerations and so I would like to suggest that you consider those and then report back to the state agencies's committee and let us know your findings whether you decided to follow those suggestions or not and if you did follow them what results you came up with and and and I hope this does not come across harshly
but you said I hope there are no other children that fall into this category. Hope is not a strategy. you have data and tools at your disposal you and your team have to act because none of us can let this happen again on our watch. would you agree thank you thank youpresentative
Chair
Unverified
2:10:44
Representative Woolridge you are recognized for a question sir. Thank you Mr chair
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:10:48
and thank you for being here. I know that you all are as equally bothered
by this as we are so I know we talked about65,000 reports roughly 12 to13,000 are accepted when those are found as unsubstantiated reports are those staffed with the supervisor or they staffed through ier to peer review what does that look like?
Speaker 197
2:11:10
for DCFS when we unsubstantiate before we close an investigation there is a supervisor or consul
Speaker 198
2:11:16
that occurs with on the each investigation so and I know the hotline
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:11:24
already answered that so they said if they don't accept a report it's reviewed by a supervisor so for DCfS every unsubstantiated report is reviewed by supervisor. It doesn't
Speaker 209
2:11:34
matter unsubstantiated or true before the closure happens there is a review that occurs. OK. So I guess
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:11:40
then the the question and I don't know that you can go into the answer or an answer for this question so 29 times this was reviewed not only by a caseworker but by a supervisor and found to be unsubstantiated ok
Speaker 306
2:11:55
all right thank you all right Representative gazaway yesallos
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
2:12:04
thank you chair looks like we may be nearing the end of this meeting but before we
go this is the state agcency's committee DHS is a state agency Arkansas state Police is a state agency I think we all want to be problem solvers here and so the question is how do we
improve what can we do as a legislature to help you guys ensure that what happened in this case never happens again and so you know, I heard you say earlier that you had issues with number one you have a significant number of reports and that you've had significant turnover in staff so that sounds to me kind of like a staffing issue and so I don't know what how we can help you in terms of staffing but I would ask that you let us
know that and you may want to generate some kind of report following this meeting about recommendations about what we can do as a legisla as a legislature to help you but some of that sounds like staffing some of it sounded like there were may be software problems in terms of being able to search histories that maybe there was there were protocol problems because those who were charged with taking the reports didn't document things properly sometimes there's not anything you can do about that
you may have all the protocol in place that you need and if people won't follow it that's not your fault but what we need to know is if there are things that need to be changed in terms of you need different or better software you need resources related to staffing you need training and you know more money for training protocols that need to be put in place I don't want to leave this meeting of the joint state
agencies committee without coming to some kind of resolution as to how we can help fix a problem because ultimately that's what we're here for and so will you guys commit to letting us know what we can do to help you yes sir all right thank you absolutely we appreciate it thank
Speaker 136
2:14:17
you thank you Representative Gazaway and it would
Speaker 54
2:14:23
be my intent to have at least one more state agencies meeting between now and the end of the year as a follow
up as far as you know what DHS DCFS state police are doing and within what the legislative branch needs to be doing as far as
potential legislation I've got3 or4 things that I've jotted down here that you know I've looked at as was like well isn't this worth
a consideration of us talking about it amongst ourselves about whether or not this would warnt legislation and let me end it with this I think I'm accountable for the mishaps of the ball being dropped just like you are Tiffanylourri . I mean
when state government fails don't need to know what position what title let's collectively put our all selves in there there's a failure in this system and at the end of the day what people want is they want an acknowledgement that it failed and I believe we're getting that today but more just as importantly you know what the hell we're going to do to fix it. Everybody in this rooms know there's no such thing as a 100% guarantee , 100 % failproof process I wish to goodness there was I'm sure you all do too but when there's a failure there's got to be an acknowledgement of it I appreciate the conversations
we've had today. it's important that we do it in public and that we do it in a way that is constructive and I understand Senator Clark's committee is going to meet in private I don't think that y'all senator it's it's it's closed to the public and the members of the media some members can attend but there's a strict confidentiality portion of that but I know you Alan and I know how seriously you take this work and I know how you work with people you agree with how you disagree with because you're actually interested in trying to you know make the system better and if one thing that we can all take of this day is like
we can't get this young man the 10 years that he's essentially lost off his life back. but we can be working together to make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable and that we're doing more than just holding ourselves accountable that we're actually working together to come up with real worldid ideal you know, solutions that are viable and that we can implement and that we can show the people of the state and measurable results and I'm looking forward to working with you all to do that and then to make sure that I don't wanna hear anymore if there's a if a prosecutor or law enforcement agency asks for a specific case file.
let's get them what they got. if it's if they're legally entitled to it there doesn't need to be I mean it should be a very simple straightforward you know, straightforward process you know it Mrrethers shouldn't have had to reach out to me should have never had it happen but in that the people of the state I think there's good one of you all down there I know personally a good person I think my colleagues here on this side good people
sometimes you know good people can make mistakes or the people under us can make mistakes we're still accountable for that but all that the people of this state deserve our very best and in getting our very best that means sometimes we have to have hard but necessary conversations in the public
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Chairs
C. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Chairs to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Committees
D. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the May 22, 2024, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit D]
E. Discussion of Child Abuse Case in Baxter County [Exhibit E] - David Ethredge, Prosecuting Attorney, Baxter County
F. Overview of Child Abuse Hotline Procedures and Agency Roles
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — STATE AGENCIES & GOVT'L AFFAIRS-SENATE, Oct 8, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D -- Draft Minutes 5-22-2024 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit E -- DHS Letter to Prosecutor | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Scott Flippo Chair
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
David Etheridge
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 16
Speaker 24
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Speaker 52
Speaker 54
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Speaker 61
Speaker 69
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 32
Speaker 92
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 41
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
Speaker 110
Speaker 111
Speaker 28
Speaker 132
Speaker 136
Speaker 138
Speaker 143
Speaker 145
Speaker 149
Speaker 150
Speaker 162
Speaker 163
Speaker 34
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 175
Speaker 147
Speaker 142
Speaker 198
Speaker 203
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 217
Speaker 218
Speaker 222
Jason Aaron
Unverified
Speaker 227
Speaker 231
Speaker 235
Speaker 237
Speaker 230
Speaker 250
Speaker 148
Speaker 182
Speaker 209
Speaker 197
Speaker 277
Speaker 279
Speaker 285
Speaker 289
Speaker 292
Speaker 302
Speaker 306
Speaker 251
Speaker 309
Speaker 291
Speaker 154
Speaker 317
Speaker 329
Speaker 333
Speaker 335
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified