Honestly, the hits just keep coming for the Washington state Department of Children, Youth and Family Services (DCYF) when it comes to the Green Hill School juvenile detention center in Chehalis.
As reported in The Chronicle (see page Main 4 of this edition), someone affiliated with DCYF notified the Chehalis Police Department of a possible crime — someone potentially introducing contraband to the facility and distributing it to residents.
That sounds serious, and there is history at Green Hill of this kind of activity. So, as you’d expect, Chehalis police responded to investigate.
That is where, in my view, the perfect example of a state agency’s incompetence was on full display.
When police came to investigate, they were told to file a public records request for the information they needed.
They did. It was denied.
They were then told they’d need a search warrant.
Chehalis Police Chief Randy Kaut said in a news release that “at this time, we do not know why DCYF referred potentially criminal activity involving a staff member to our agency and then refused to provide us with the information necessary to properly conduct an investigation.”
My reading about this all started with the report to them on July 28.
As of last Wednesday, police were still waiting on the information in the search warrant.
Anyone who has ever watched a police show knows that when the police present a warrant, they get to search almost immediately.
Of course, they only have an hour to discover, investigate and complete the entire process — minus commercials, of course. It has taken years of mismanagement and indifference by many of our state agencies, including DCYF, to perfect bureaucratic incompetence, but it looks like they have.
Now, the director of external communications has provided us with an explanation which, in my view, only makes them sound foolish in light of the fact it still appears that Chehalis police don’t have the information they need. The response also highlighted that having several departments, with who knows how many people, involved in the process was not efficient.
“Nancy Gutierrez, DCYF director of external communications, confirmed on Wednesday that the department’s Licensing Division/Child Protective Services (LD/CPS) had referred an intake to Chehalis police,” The Chronicle reported. “Gutierrez said the referral involved a young person who had accused a staff member of ‘providing an illegal substance to a different young person’ no longer at the facility.”
She went on to say, “We do not tolerate staff misconduct.” I don’t know how this case makes that point. How does she know there isn’t “staff misconduct” here if it hasn’t been investigated?
She also suggests something in the employee bargaining contract dictates some kind of control over a criminal referral or complaint. I am pretty sure crimes can be investigated regardless of a union contract.
It appears to me this whole thing comes down to which alphabet state agency makes the referral — Child Protective Services (CPS), Juvenile Rehabilitation (JR) or DCYF — and the Chehalis Police Department is expected to know which one made the referral and proceed accordingly.
What a bunch of nonsense.
She said law enforcement isn’t expected to go through the public records process when it comes from CPS — but apparently this one did. Well, that’s good to know, and I learned something, too. DCYF, JR are acronyms I was familiar with but Licensing Division/Child Protective Services (LD/CPS) was new to me.
It’s no wonder no one knows what they are doing, but thanks to the statements from DCYF, we now know what the hangup was — Chehalis police simply just didn’t call the right place or talk to the right people.
That explanation only makes sense in a giant bureaucracy like DCYF, not to most of us.
“We want to be clear; we are fully reporting to our law enforcement partners,” Gutierrez said. “We want support from our law enforcement partners when we discover criminal activity.”
That seems weird, since as of as last Wednesday, Chehalis still awaited the information to investigate this, but she says she is looking forward to sitting down and talking more about this.
If we know anything about bureaucrats, it’s that they’re great at talking and short on doing.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@gmail.com.
