by Roger Phillips
I spent more than three hours Friday with our first police truancy officer Ken Lee. It was enlightening and, frankly, it was disturbing.
Most disturbing of all was the case of a 13-year-old boy — I’ll call him Johnny — I saw at the beginning and end of my time with Lee.
At the beginning of the day, Lee was following up on a case he’s been dealing with in recent weeks. It seems Johnny’s mother had never registered him for school this year. During his previous visit, the mother had told Lee she was planning on registering him in the county office of education’s One alternative program. It seems Johnny was expelled from XXXXX Elementary during the school year last year.
So at around 8:30 in the morning, we went to the dingy apartment Johnny lives in with his mother and father. Lee knocked on the door and the mother answered. Looking in, Lee could see that Johnny was still sleeping on the couch. Lee asked the mother if she’d registered Johnny for school. The mother produced a document that indicated that she had an appointment with the county office a couple of weeks down the road. That was that.
So Lee and I walked downstairs and stood on the street. Lee checked with the county office and confirmed that the meeting with the county office was, indeed, scheduled. Lee also decided to check to see if there were any outstanding arrest warrants for the mother. It was just a suspicion he had based on the situation we had witnessed. Turned out, there was a warrant for the woman — theft, I believe — and within a few minutes Lee and other officers arrested her.
Johnny, a cute little boy, rushed to his mother as she was being placed in handcuffs. She said to him, “Get away from me. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
Later, Lee would say, “Obviously, she feels it’s his fault. The police wouldn’t be at her door if not for him.”
Johnny was left in the apartment with his father. Lee had no choice.
Anyway, from there Lee and I drove to several other locations, following up on situations where kids who should have been going to school weren’t. Late in the morning, Lee received a call that a child who should have been in school was instead hanging around in the Cesar Chavez Library (not the school, the downtown public library). We went to the library, and there sat Johnny, by himself at a table quietly leafing through a book.
Lee sat down next to Johnny and asked him softly why he wasn’t home with his father.
“I just don’t want to be there right now,” Johnny said, barely audible.
Johnny said his father blamed him for his mother’s arrest.
“He said it was my fault,” Johnny said.
Lee told Johnny, who lives within walking distance of the library, that he would have to get a note from his father if he wanted to stay at the library until he’s enrolled in a school. A librarian had other ideas; she said Johnny had not behaved well while in the library.
So Lee drove Johnny home. He asked Johnny if he wanted to be in the alternative education program or to try to return to the school from which he was expelled last year. Johnny chose the latter option. And then, Lee dropped Johnny off at the apartment, to return to his father. Lee said there was no other option.
I asked Lee as we drove away if it bothered him to leave Johnny there. Of course, he said it did.
“We’re not going to forget about this young man,” Lee added. “I think we can make a difference for him. His parents can barely provide for themselves. He didn’t ask to be born into this situation. There’s a bright light behind those eyes. I think with a little intervention on our part, we can get him into the right programs so he can be successful.”
Amen. Lee also told me something else: After seeing situations like this on a daily basis, he’s lucky if he gets three hours of sleep a night. (Stockton, CA)
Two months ago Lee was credited with the arrest of three bank robbers. A year before that he rescured a class room of handicapped children and their teachers from two hostage takers. Lee was offered the truancy job because of his excellent record and ability to work with the community. He accepted it because he wants to help those kids he’s encountered for years as a street cop, while busting the errant parents for any number of crimes from auto theft to homicide.