2024-08-02_Dealing_with_CPS
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00:00:26.400 | That's The Kim Commando Show. K-O-M-A-N-D-O. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:32.160 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insights, and encouragement
00:00:35.440 | you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10
00:00:39.440 | years or less. My name is Joshua. I'm your host. For many years here at Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:43.920 | the most popular episode of the show was quite an unexpected hit, at least unexpected to me.
00:00:49.520 | It was episode 456, which was titled "Protect Your Money by Arrest-Proofing
00:00:54.480 | Yourself and Your Children." I used the information in a book called "Arrest-Proof
00:00:59.280 | Yourself" and talked about how it's so important that you or your children not be arrested and how
00:01:06.240 | important that is to your long-term financial life. It's no longer the most popular episode,
00:01:11.200 | but for many years it was. Today, I want to continue in another episode that in some ways
00:01:18.080 | will be similar to this by talking about what to do if you are ever targeted with regard to child
00:01:25.520 | protective services. First, a headline that I saw from the Daily Wire. Here's the headline.
00:01:31.360 | "An anti-Christian Reddit group falsely reported a family to child services. DeSantis," the governor
00:01:37.120 | of Florida, "says Florida won't stand for it," by Ash Show, published August 1, 2024.
00:01:44.320 | A Christian family camping in Florida was the target of false reports of child abuse,
00:01:48.480 | and now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the accusers will be investigated. J.D. and Brittany
00:01:54.720 | Lott, two military veterans from Texas, and their eight kids were camping and posting to their social
00:02:00.560 | media following of more than 600,000 when they were contacted by Florida's Department of Children
00:02:06.080 | and Families, DCF. The family explained the situation in a two-part Instagram series and
00:02:11.920 | included screenshots of the messages they received. Their story began just a few weeks after
00:02:17.280 | Brittany gave birth to their eighth daughter, Florida's Voice reported. Brittany told the
00:02:21.920 | outlet she received a message online claiming her child was suffering from "severe jaundice,
00:02:26.640 | severe sunburn, and lethargy," and Brittany deleted the message and blocked the sender.
00:02:31.120 | But according to the family's Instagram post, this wasn't just one person. Turns out it's an
00:02:37.280 | entire group of anti-Christian group working together on Reddit who concocted this crazy
00:02:41.520 | story about us, the Lott said. A top official in the Florida governor's office told the Daily Wire
00:02:47.280 | that the targeted harassment is "unacceptable" and will be pursued by the state. "Utilizing
00:02:52.960 | government entities to make false reports or harass others is unacceptable and will be referred
00:02:57.920 | to law enforcement for investigation and, ultimately, prosecution," Brian Griffin,
00:03:02.880 | communications director for Governor Ron DeSantis' office, told the Daily Wire. And it goes on.
00:03:07.920 | One more. "At the end of April, the family had just left Florida after camping at the Topsail
00:03:13.040 | Hill Preserve State Park when they received a message from the DCF saying they were under
00:03:17.680 | investigation. The Lotts knew immediately where the allegations had come from. An anti-Christian
00:03:22.640 | Reddit group had been targeting the family for years. The group had ramped up its accusations
00:03:27.040 | against the Lotts since their youngest child was born with a revolving door of false accusations."
00:03:32.240 | You can read the article. I'll link to it as well as the Florida's Voice article
00:03:36.000 | and the Instagram posts by the Instagram channel called American Family Road Trip.
00:03:41.360 | What interests me about this topic is that you need to be prepared with different information
00:03:49.040 | and different advice to deal with CPS, the Child Protective Services. I'm trying to figure out
00:03:59.200 | what name to use given they're kind of different in many states. You need to be prepared with a
00:04:03.520 | different set of advice to deal with CPS than you do with many other government agents. A number of
00:04:09.760 | years ago, I read a book called Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services by an
00:04:16.320 | author named Derek William Bootle, who is, if I remember correctly, is a psychologist and a mental
00:04:23.440 | health counselor and has also worked as an advocate and counselor for people interacting with Child
00:04:29.280 | Protective Services. What I learned from that book is that the standard protocols that you might use
00:04:35.600 | when interacting with the police don't necessarily apply when interacting with Child Protective
00:04:41.920 | Services. If you have children, I want you to be prepared with some of this information,
00:04:47.040 | and I'm going to do my best to give you an outline of what I know of that you need to be aware of
00:04:53.120 | to interact successfully with Child Protective Services, CPS, when they show up at your door.
00:05:02.560 | And I'm just going to standardize and say CPS because that's the one I'm most familiar with.
00:05:06.160 | Again, your state may have a different name or your country may have a different name,
00:05:10.880 | but most countries, most states within the United States have some version of this.
00:05:15.920 | There are a couple things that we need to be aware of. First and foremost, nobody
00:05:19.680 | wants children to be abused. And that's why most of our governments have some kind of government
00:05:26.640 | organization that is targeting ending child abuse. And that's probably right. That's probably how it
00:05:34.800 | should be. Now, am I for sure about that? No, but I don't want to see children abused, so I'm not
00:05:40.240 | going to make this my particular issue to fight about and say, "This is the thing that's got to
00:05:45.120 | be eliminated first." But abuse can go both ways. Abuse can go in the direction of children and
00:05:54.000 | abuse can go in the direction of parents. And in the same way that there are many stories about
00:06:00.640 | CPS doing a good job of protecting vulnerable and innocent children from abusers, there are also
00:06:08.800 | many well-documented stories of CPS abusing parents and for what outcome is unknown.
00:06:18.400 | This is a unique threat that we face in the modern age because most of our governments
00:06:23.920 | encourage anonymous whistleblowers as a way of keeping the population in line.
00:06:31.200 | My first personal experience with this was many years ago when I bought a house and I came home
00:06:37.680 | one day to find a big yellow notice on my front door that I was in violation of various parts of
00:06:45.200 | the code, of the county code of what I was allowed to have. Specifically, they complained that I had
00:06:50.640 | chickens, which I did, and they complained that I had a pile of brush in the backyard, which I did.
00:06:57.680 | They complained that my hedge was too tall, which as it turns out, it wasn't. And they complained
00:07:04.160 | that I had an unpermitted shed, which I did. And this was my first interaction with them.
00:07:10.400 | The thing that was surprising to me is that I considered myself to be innocent
00:07:15.200 | with all of these factors. With regard to the chickens, I had specifically purchased a home
00:07:20.160 | that was in an unincorporated part of the county because it was my understanding that I would then
00:07:27.200 | be allowed to have chickens. And so I had five hens and a small chicken tractor going around my
00:07:32.880 | backyard. I didn't have a rooster, didn't want a rooster, just had five hens that I moved around
00:07:38.400 | in a chicken tractor. But I quickly learned that on something like page 515 of the county
00:07:45.600 | regulations, as it turns out, I was mistaken, because while I was in unincorporated county,
00:07:51.440 | I was not in the unincorporated part of the county that allowed chickens. Okay, fine,
00:07:58.640 | let's be that as it may, that's how it is. So I got rid of my chickens. The brush pile was there
00:08:04.560 | because I was actively clearing brush and I was building a hugelkultur mound rather than burn my
00:08:09.280 | brush. That was no problem, I just got rid of it all and dealt with it. So I was doing a cool
00:08:14.640 | gardening thing that I thought would be fun experiment, but I did have a brush pile in the
00:08:17.840 | backyard. The hedge too tall, I fought and won on the basis that I didn't have a hedge, I had
00:08:25.840 | grasses. And nobody said that my grasses couldn't be 12 feet tall and the specific type of palm
00:08:31.360 | grass that I had was technically labeled a grass, it was not labeled a tree. And so I won that case
00:08:37.200 | and the government officer listened to me and I won that. So I didn't have to trim my hedges
00:08:44.560 | because my hedge was actually grass, not a tree. And then the fourth one, the unpermitted shed was
00:08:50.960 | rather funny because the shed, according to the aerial photos from the tax collector,
00:08:54.880 | was built sometime in the 1970s. And it was a big and large and beautiful shed, but somehow it
00:09:00.000 | wasn't, it hadn't been permitted at the time. So of course I'd paid extra, I was frustrated most
00:09:04.080 | about that one. I paid extra for the property and I thought it would be fine. And I went through a
00:09:09.360 | long process with the agents and back and forth and submitted architectural drawings and blah,
00:09:13.760 | blah, blah. As it turns out, my shed was about six inches over the appropriate setback and about 10
00:09:18.800 | inches too tall. So I wound up actually just tearing the shed down. That was the first time
00:09:24.320 | that I ever interacted with an anonymous tipster. And I realized how horrible your life can become
00:09:32.000 | if somebody makes an anonymous report against you, whether it's true or whether it's not.
00:09:37.520 | And once somebody makes an anonymous report against you, the government agents are legally
00:09:44.480 | required to investigate that report. So in the case of my chickens, the neighbor called it,
00:09:51.920 | some neighbor, I still don't know who, some neighbor called in and reported me for having
00:09:56.000 | chickens to code enforcement. And then of course, while code enforcement is out there,
00:10:00.400 | then they're going to do what the Department of Making Me Sad always does, and they're going to
00:10:05.200 | find as many infractions as possible, which is how I ended up with my four code enforcement
00:10:10.000 | fractions. It's a ridiculous story, rather entertaining now, but it's a ridiculous story
00:10:13.760 | just to show. So this is where Child Protective Services, though, can be used as a weapon
00:10:19.520 | against parents by people who wish them badly. And so if you go and you start hearing the horror
00:10:26.000 | stories of when Child Protective Services is wrongly called, then usually it has to do with
00:10:31.600 | the divorcing spouse, with upset in-laws, with nasty neighbor, and now with someone online.
00:10:41.120 | Now let's do a quick review of how to interact with other government agents,
00:10:47.120 | such as a local police officer or a federal law enforcement officer or any kind of government
00:10:52.400 | agent that you have to interact with. The most important thing is to do everything possible
00:10:58.480 | to never be mixed up with government agents. So you want to avoid any situation or anything that
00:11:05.040 | might lead to your being suspected as for something. So if you don't want to get pulled over,
00:11:11.440 | then one of the most important things that you should do is inspect your car.
00:11:15.520 | When I did previous podcast episodes on this topic, I talked about the importance of doing a
00:11:20.080 | quick car inspection. If you don't want to be pulled over, your vehicle should be in good
00:11:24.720 | running order. Your tires should not be bald. The vehicle shouldn't be loud. It shouldn't have,
00:11:30.800 | you know, no muffler or weird muffler. All the lights should be working. Your license
00:11:34.240 | plate should be clearly displayed, not showing anything. That's the starting point, is you just
00:11:40.960 | make sure that you're in good shape. Make sure that your car is in good shape. Stay with me,
00:11:46.000 | even if this takes me a couple minutes, though. You're going to see all the parallels to dealing
00:11:48.720 | with Child Protective Services. So give me a couple minutes to talk about law enforcement.
00:11:52.800 | The next thing that you want to do is think about your behavior. So again,
00:11:55.920 | if you are worried about interacting with the police, then you want to, as you should be,
00:12:00.160 | then you want to avoid anything that might give reason for a guy with a gun and a badge to pull
00:12:05.760 | you over on the side of the street or investigate you in any way, shape, or form. So you look at
00:12:10.480 | your driving patterns and make certain that you use your turn blinker, that you don't speed,
00:12:14.560 | that you don't break the law to the best of your ability, that you constantly do what needs to be
00:12:19.760 | done so that you don't have an interaction with law enforcement. If you're having a fight with
00:12:24.160 | your spouse, don't yell at each other. Don't raise your voices because if your neighbors hear that,
00:12:28.400 | then all of a sudden there's going to be a police officer knocking at the door for a domestic
00:12:32.480 | disturbance complaint, something like that. So just avoid the kinds of behaviors that lead to
00:12:38.960 | your interacting with the police. The way I think of it is, I forget who to describe it to,
00:12:44.880 | it's not original with me, but don't go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things. If
00:12:49.520 | you just avoid that, you avoid the vast majority of problems and you never need most of the advice
00:12:56.480 | that you're going to have. Now, the next thing that's really important, though, is if you are
00:13:02.560 | interacting with the police, and for clarity here, I'm specifically dealing with U.S. Americans or
00:13:09.360 | any person living in the United States, regardless of who that person is. You could be a tourist from
00:13:15.280 | Germany and all of this applies to you. But the key thing with interacting with the police is to
00:13:20.480 | exercise your rights. So you have various rights, especially under the Fourth Amendment and Fifth
00:13:25.760 | Amendment. Basically, you have the right to remain silent. And so when I train people on interacting
00:13:31.040 | with the police, there are a couple of things that are the foundation of it. Number one, you always
00:13:36.000 | want to be respectful. People who just have a bad attitude towards police officers, usually things
00:13:43.200 | don't go well for them. So you always want to be respectful and, if at all possible, you can be
00:13:48.160 | and be polite, be understanding. It's not your legal duty to be polite or understanding, but
00:13:57.520 | everything will go much better for you if you are polite and understanding. You also need to comply
00:14:03.280 | with the police. So you do what the police tell you to do, but you actively assert your rights.
00:14:09.760 | And so that's most important right is remaining silent and not answering questions. So what I
00:14:17.680 | teach people to do whenever I'm teaching on the subject is to use something that is very polite.
00:14:23.440 | Police officer pulls me over, starts asking me questions. I'm going to say very respectfully and
00:14:30.400 | politely, "Officer, I understand. I'm sorry to do this, and I understand that you're just doing
00:14:36.160 | your job, and it's not an easy one. But my attorney has always told me to never answer
00:14:42.880 | questions from the police. So very respectfully, I'm not going to answer any questions."
00:14:48.080 | So something like that. You need to actively assert your right, your right to remain silent,
00:14:53.760 | your right not to answer questions from the police. You need to actively assert that and then
00:14:57.680 | remain silent. And that is the continual answer to basically any and all questions when interacting
00:15:05.440 | with any law enforcement officer in the United States is, "Officer, I'm sorry. I don't answer
00:15:11.200 | questions. I don't answer questions." There are many, many important reasons for that.
00:15:16.400 | It's very hard for those of us who like to be kind and helpful and who care about things to
00:15:21.520 | know to do that. I don't enjoy using language like that. It's not my personality. But knowing
00:15:27.600 | how many ways I can be trapped into accusations of crimes that I've never committed, I have decided
00:15:34.000 | that is the only possible answer that can actually work. There's probably a little bit of texture
00:15:39.920 | here that most people should know of. You want to understand why the police are asking you questions.
00:15:45.360 | So if a cop runs up and says, "Did you see a guy in a red sweatshirt run down the street this way?"
00:15:52.640 | I probably should answer that and say, rather than, "Officer, no, I don't answer questions."
00:15:58.240 | In addition, if there's actually something that you're actively involved with,
00:16:02.240 | for example, I usually try to include Mossad Ayyub's advice if you've been involved in a
00:16:08.160 | self-defense shooting or something like that. While you can not answer questions and just say,
00:16:14.720 | "I'm not answering questions," that's not the best strategy. In a situation like that,
00:16:19.360 | you need to give a little bit of information and then wait for your lawyer. So those are the key
00:16:24.800 | points. Now, a lot of that holds true when dealing with CPS, but not all of it. So I want you to
00:16:31.680 | assume that you're in a situation like this Instagram couple is. You're publishing your
00:16:36.880 | life online, you're publishing your family online, and all of a sudden, some wacko in a Reddit group
00:16:41.920 | who hates you calls Child Protective Services and makes an anonymous complaint against you.
00:16:47.600 | First and foremost, I don't know if this is all states, but at least in my research on this
00:16:53.680 | subject, at least in many states, Child Protective Services legally can't ever tell you anything
00:16:59.760 | about who is actually making a complaint against you. So you're never going to find this out. And
00:17:06.240 | in many cases, they will have an anonymous tip line. So basically, any random person on the
00:17:11.520 | internet can call the tip line and file a complaint against you. So you need to be prepared for that.
00:17:17.520 | Whether it's in your personal life or public life, you just need to be prepared for it.
00:17:23.600 | So assume that you're at home, it's a beautiful Tuesday afternoon, and all of a sudden,
00:17:28.080 | there's a knock on the door and somebody appears. What should you do? In many cases,
00:17:35.680 | the answer is probably not actually answer the door. But there are, of course, individual
00:17:43.840 | circumstances would vary. There are many times in which you need to answer the door.
00:17:47.040 | But in many cases, when somebody random knocks on the door, it's probably best not to open the door.
00:17:53.280 | If you do answer the door, it's probably best to answer the door through some kind of intercom or
00:18:01.360 | video doorbell. That's usually a good plan, rather than appearing personally. However,
00:18:08.800 | I'm probably not that hardcore. I respect those who are. Normally, if someone knocks on the door,
00:18:13.920 | I'm going to answer the door, because we don't know what's going on. And as you'll see, as I
00:18:18.080 | uncover the specifics of CPS, especially when dealing with CPS, it is probably best to answer
00:18:23.920 | the door and speak to whoever happens to be there. So the most important protocol,
00:18:30.080 | anytime you're answering the door and it seems like there's somebody there with a badge, somebody
00:18:35.520 | there with an embroidered shirt, somebody official, do not ever invite that person into your home.
00:18:42.800 | The first thing that you do is step outside of the house and close the door behind you,
00:18:48.880 | and in some cases, lock the door behind you, but at least close the door behind you.
00:18:54.720 | You have an inviolable right to be secure in your home and to be protected from search
00:19:01.920 | or seizure in your home unless the person has an actual court-ordered warrant, court-issued
00:19:09.040 | warrant. And so don't ever invite a police officer, don't ever invite a child protective
00:19:15.040 | services agent, don't ever invite any government agent into your home. Step outside the house,
00:19:21.440 | close the door behind you, and then deal with the actual circumstances.
00:19:25.840 | What will ordinarily happen is that the CPS agent will identify himself or herself and start to
00:19:33.200 | explain to you that we've received a complaint, we're here for an investigation, and start to
00:19:38.720 | give you information. Now the first thing you need to be aware of is that CPS has a different legal
00:19:48.560 | approach or a different legal standard than someone like a police officer does.
00:19:54.880 | With a police officer, you can always invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
00:20:01.600 | So while, of course, there's probably some reasonable level of, "Hello, officer,
00:20:05.920 | why are you here?" pretty much at the first question, if the officer asks you a question
00:20:10.400 | and you get any sense that it's about you or something like that, then pretty quickly your
00:20:15.120 | answer should be, "I'm sorry, officer. I know you're just doing your job, and it's not an easy
00:20:19.760 | one, but I don't answer questions." And then ask for an attorney if you're going to answer any
00:20:26.240 | questions. You would never answer questions without the presence of your attorney.
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00:20:59.040 | not an endorsement. Other restrictions apply. That's because in the United States, you are
00:21:03.440 | always innocent until proven guilty. It is not your responsibility as a citizen to give a law
00:21:10.720 | enforcement officer evidence against you. If the government has evidence that you've committed a
00:21:18.000 | crime or are suspected of a crime or suspected of involvement in something, it is the job of the
00:21:24.240 | state to come up with that evidence and then bring that evidence against you. But you are innocent
00:21:29.840 | until proven guilty. And so you can and should always confidently assert your rights when dealing
00:21:36.320 | with law enforcement. With CPS, it is not that way. You must speak to CPS and you must answer
00:21:46.960 | questions. Why? Well, if a police officer comes to your door and knocks on the door and you don't
00:21:56.240 | answer any questions, then that officer goes back to his office and says, you know, I couldn't
00:22:00.400 | acquire any evidence of a crime, so we're done. However, if CPS has received a complaint, they're
00:22:07.840 | not allowed to drop the investigation until they get the information that they need to dismiss
00:22:14.000 | the complaint. So imagine that somebody calls in a report of a bunch of starving kids at the house
00:22:22.560 | next door. And a CPS officer receives this report of a bunch of starved children and comes out and
00:22:29.760 | knocks on the door and you step outside the house, kids are inside, you close the door behind you,
00:22:34.960 | and you just flat out refuse to answer questions. You don't talk to the officer at all. What is the
00:22:40.880 | officer going to do? Well, the CPS officer has a duty to the children to make sure that they're
00:22:47.120 | okay. And so he or she is going to immediately go to court, the judge is going to issue a warrant,
00:22:54.160 | and he or she will be back in an hour or two or very quickly with a police officer and a warrant
00:23:00.480 | in order to invade your home and do a full inspection and a full review of you. So what
00:23:06.720 | you're trying to do is you're trying to avoid that. And in order to avoid that, you have to
00:23:11.120 | give the CPS official the necessary information in order to be satisfied that no children are in
00:23:18.880 | danger, that children are well treated, that there's no abuse happening. You have to give
00:23:27.040 | the information that is needed so that they can say, "Yes, we've investigated this complaint,
00:23:35.520 | it's a spurious complaint, there's no evidence of abuse, and we're closing the complaint."
00:23:40.160 | That's the major difference, is they can't drop the investigation. And so you're basically
00:23:46.800 | presumed to be guilty until you can prove that you're innocent. That's very different than
00:23:52.480 | interacting with law enforcement. When CPS is involved, you're basically considered to be guilty
00:23:57.840 | until you can prove that you're innocent. So you need to speak to them, and you need to answer
00:24:05.200 | their questions. So, of course, you should go outside, and the first thing that you should do
00:24:09.760 | is turn on some kind of recording advice. You should take your phone out, you should turn the
00:24:13.920 | video camera on, and you should start recording the interaction immediately. And it should be
00:24:19.680 | evident in the recording that you are recording. So you always have the right to record public
00:24:28.000 | officials who are doing their duty. Public officials who are exercising their office
00:24:36.560 | have no presumption of privacy in that scenario. So you always can record all public officials
00:24:43.600 | who are doing their duty. And especially, remember, you are in your home, and so you
00:24:48.240 | have full right to record in your home. You can always record, and you should. You should record,
00:24:55.520 | you must record everything that happens with the officer, or with, I shouldn't use officer
00:25:01.600 | because we're talking about a CPS representative, with the CPS agent. Record everything. And that
00:25:08.160 | should immediately be standard operating procedure for everything. So if you have an interaction,
00:25:12.240 | a personal interaction, you record with video. If you're on the phone, you record video. At the
00:25:17.760 | very least, you put the phone on speakerphone, and you have a friend use his or her cell phone
00:25:21.840 | to record the audio of you and record all calls, record everything. That's the first thing.
00:25:27.600 | The next thing that you need to do is you need to understand and ask questions about what's
00:25:31.840 | actually happening. So your job is to identify why is this CPS agent here? What are they actually
00:25:41.440 | asking? What are the charges? So you should ask as many questions as possible about the charges
00:25:48.880 | and information. You should not try to volunteer any information to them in response to questions.
00:25:56.160 | The first thing you should do is ask questions yourself to understand all of the details of
00:26:01.840 | everything that is going on. Again, back to the same parallel with the police. You should be
00:26:06.720 | respectful. You should be kind. You should be polite. This is not the time to get angry. This
00:26:11.520 | is not the time to be belligerent. Remember that if you were to get angry, and let's say you started
00:26:16.800 | swearing at the government agent, you can legally swear at a police officer all you want. You'll
00:26:22.400 | probably get much rougher treatment. You'll probably get quite frustrated police officer.
00:26:27.040 | But swearing at a police officer and being incredibly rude to a police officer is not
00:26:31.840 | legally something that is a problem. You can do that. You'd be stupid to do it, but you can do
00:26:36.880 | that. A police officer has to deal with that. However, a CPS agent has the ability to interpret
00:26:43.280 | that in many other ways. And so if you start swearing and getting angry at someone, well,
00:26:49.600 | all of a sudden now going in your case that you've got anger issues, decent chance you're going to
00:26:53.680 | lose your children. And so you need to understand what they're actually going for. Let me read a
00:27:00.640 | short excerpt from Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services here. "Do not volunteer
00:27:06.000 | any information, even if you think it is going to be helpful in your case. This is not the time to
00:27:11.200 | open up your past and discuss your issues. People like to use personal historical information to
00:27:16.480 | support their position to address CPS accusations. This is a bad idea. When answering a CPS question,
00:27:24.000 | make the answer short and sweet with no backstory. An example of this would be when CPS says,
00:27:30.720 | "We have a report of drug use in the house." The incorrect answer is, "I haven't used drugs in
00:27:36.560 | five years. I went to rehab and have been clean and sober since." This answer just provided the
00:27:41.440 | CPS agent with information that will now be used to build a drug case against you.
00:27:45.520 | What is to say that you haven't gone back to using? Child Protective Services will use this
00:27:50.800 | as, "Parent has a history of drug abuse and could be trying to deceive us." The CPS agent will use
00:27:56.640 | any loose end like this as a way to manipulate you and turn your story against you. The only
00:28:01.200 | correct answer to this statement is, "No, I don't use drugs." With this statement, it leaves nothing
00:28:07.440 | for them to build a case, nothing that they could use as an "in" to your situation. In the report,
00:28:13.280 | the CPS agent will state, "Suspect denies drug use." Every statement stated to CPS must be thought
00:28:19.600 | of in this way. Do not give them a loose thread to pull or your family will unravel like a cheap
00:28:24.960 | sweater. The charges are going to dictate what steps to take next. Depending on the severity
00:28:32.720 | of the charges, this will dictate what you can and should do. If the allegations include direct harm
00:28:39.680 | to a child, assault, neglect, you will have to let them see the child. This does not mean you have to
00:28:47.120 | allow CPS into your house. Have them meet with the child on the front step briefly and in your
00:28:53.120 | presence and be sure to record the discussion. Inform CPS that the meeting is being recorded.
00:28:58.480 | Do not allow CPS to talk with the child alone, ever. Child Protective Services will be able to
00:29:06.160 | make up evidence they need from the child's testimony and you will have no defense against it.
00:29:11.600 | Children do not testify in court and the words they use are taken at face value. Even though you
00:29:17.200 | can explain it, that evidence will be used against you. An example would be if they took the child
00:29:22.560 | to the car and asked, "Has mommy or daddy ever put something in your behind?" The child will answer,
00:29:28.480 | "Yes." "What was it?" will be the next question and of course the answer will be, "I don't know."
00:29:33.920 | Now you are losing your son and facing 15 years in prison because you used a rectal thermometer
00:29:40.080 | on a three-year-old and the child couldn't explain you were taking his temperature.
00:29:43.360 | So be aware of these kinds of factors. Do not let CPS into your house. There is no reason
00:29:50.880 | to let CPS into your house in any circumstance. The only reason that a CPS worker can enter into
00:29:57.920 | your home is, first, an emergency situation. So just like a police officer, if a police officer
00:30:03.520 | is standing at your door and you've got the door open and he looks past and sees somebody being
00:30:07.680 | murdered in the back room, the police officer is now able to come in without a warrant because
00:30:12.960 | there's a situation happening. Same thing applies to CPS. If there's some kind of emergency situation,
00:30:17.680 | there's immediate and obvious danger, then the CPS officer can come in. Or they have to come
00:30:24.320 | with a search warrant or they come in with your permission. But don't give permission.
00:30:28.400 | There's no benefit for you of giving permission. Now before we go too hard line, let's think about
00:30:34.640 | and talk about what are the standards. When I've researched this subject, I'm doing my best to try
00:30:40.080 | to squarely be practical and understanding and straightforward. And I'm not scared to exercise
00:30:48.560 | rights because that's what we should always do. A right that is not exercised generally gets lost.
00:30:54.480 | But then the question is, what are they actually looking for? Do I need to be worried about what
00:31:00.320 | they find in my home? And so here is from a blog article by attorney Brett Pritchard
00:31:06.720 | that I read that I thought was really good. He says, "What CPS looks for during a home visit.
00:31:14.400 | CPS caseworkers are trained to look for anything that could be used against you.
00:31:18.800 | A CPS investigator will keep the following questions in mind during a home inspection.
00:31:23.120 | One, is there enough healthy food in the house? Two, is food readily available to your children?
00:31:28.800 | Three, what are the sleeping arrangements for the kids? Four, do the children have plenty of clothes?
00:31:34.000 | Five, how clean is the house? Six, are there any safety hazards in the house?
00:31:38.320 | Seven, are there any drugs, weapons, or chemicals left in the open?" So these questions to me seem
00:31:46.000 | reasonable, and any parent, we should all be able to pass a CPS home inspection at any time.
00:31:52.320 | Let's go into some more details. Here's a list of things a child protective services investigator
00:31:57.040 | will look for when visiting your home. Cleanliness, sanitary conditions, CPS will inspect the
00:32:01.760 | cleanliness of your house to ensure that your home has sanitary conditions for your kids.
00:32:05.360 | Your home should have sanitary conditions. Feces, it is a major red flag when a CPS caseworker finds
00:32:12.240 | human, animal, and rodent feces in the house. That should be self-evident. Infestation, the
00:32:18.560 | investigator will also look for insect and rodent infestation, so get rid of any cockroaches and
00:32:23.520 | other pests before the CPS visit. Trash, do not expect a CPS worker to ignore piles of trash in
00:32:30.240 | the home. Laundry, CPS will not be pleased about piles of dirty laundry scattered around the house.
00:32:35.760 | Smell, the very first thing a CPS caseworker will notice during a home visit is the smell.
00:32:41.680 | Get rid of any unpleasant odors, including the smell of cigarette smoke in the house.
00:32:45.360 | These seem like reasonable things to me, and so we should just live this way. We should not be
00:32:52.080 | in any fear of failing a cleanliness inspection. Next category, kitchen. Rotten food, there should
00:32:59.600 | be no rotten, moldy, or spoiled food in the house if you want to make a good impression on CPS.
00:33:03.920 | Healthy foods, food choices play a role, so make sure that your kitchen has plenty of healthy foods
00:33:09.600 | such as fruits and vegetables. Availability of food, food must be readily available to
00:33:14.640 | your children, so make sure that your refrigerator, pantry, and cupboards are
00:33:17.680 | stocked with healthy food. Knives and other sharp dangerous objects, any knives, matches,
00:33:23.120 | razors, and other dangerous items within reach of your kids will definitely catch the CPS
00:33:27.040 | investigator's attention. I'm okay with all of those things as well, those are standard things,
00:33:32.240 | just make sure that they're in place. Safety hazards, choking, strangulation, suffocation,
00:33:38.480 | and poisoning hazards. A CPS investigator will look for any objects or hazards that could cause
00:33:43.600 | choking, suffocation, strangulation, or poisoning, so it is vital to thoroughly inspect your home
00:33:49.520 | for those hazards before the CPS home visit. That to me of all of these is probably one of the
00:33:55.120 | biggest ones because the choking hazards, I think most of us wind up with various choking hazards
00:34:00.480 | as careful as you are, but pay attention to that and make certain that you eliminate hazards from
00:34:05.920 | your home for the good of your children. Slip, trip, and fall hazards, your home should be free
00:34:11.120 | of clutter, loose rugs, secured wires, slippery surfaces, and other slip, trip, or fall hazards.
00:34:17.840 | Electrical hazards, any electrical hazards are also a red flag for CPS during a home visit,
00:34:23.920 | make sure that there are no exposed electrical parts or wiring in the house.
00:34:27.360 | Burn hazards, CPS will look for any hazards including electrical equipment, chemicals,
00:34:33.200 | and thermal contact that could result in burn injuries to a child. Fire hazards, make sure
00:34:39.440 | that flammable items are far away from open flame in the house, a CPS investigator may also ask you
00:34:45.200 | if your house is equipped with smoke alarms. Chemicals and cleaning products, while cleaning
00:34:50.560 | your house is good, household cleaners and other chemicals should be stored out of kids reach.
00:34:55.440 | General safety hazards, broken appliances, malfunctioning utilities, or lack thereof,
00:35:02.080 | shattered glass, stairs without gates, mold, gas leaks, and other safety hazards
00:35:06.960 | may catch the CPS workers attention. Now before I go on, I again want to affirm these
00:35:13.680 | things, these seem like obviously important things. I can understand you might be in the
00:35:19.120 | middle of a remodeling project and you might have exposed electrical wires, well that's a reasonable
00:35:25.280 | thing that you might do, so I can understand why people can get in trouble with this, but these
00:35:29.040 | seem like good standards that we should pay attention to. I'll give you a tip though that I
00:35:32.960 | think is really important. Have a locking cabinet. I think before you go through all the hassle of
00:35:41.600 | installing a bunch of weird like child safety locks, you know what I mean, like the magnet
00:35:47.520 | things and things that people do, which is an enormous hassle, just have one locking cabinet
00:35:53.200 | in your house. If any kind of locking cabinet, you actually need a key to open or a code pad
00:35:59.600 | or something like that, and just put all the dangerous stuff in there so that you can be
00:36:04.400 | confident that it's actually locked up. As a parent, having a place, a home safe, we'll talk
00:36:09.120 | about firearms in a minute, but having a home safe, maybe just have a big gun safe or something
00:36:14.560 | like that, and knowing that my things that I need to be private from my children and from their
00:36:19.120 | little snooping fingers are properly locked away is a great feeling. If you don't have a locking
00:36:26.640 | cabinet, what I really like is those locking boxes. What are they called? The ones that the
00:36:32.080 | construction workers use, job box. They're called a job box usually. You can pick up a job box. You
00:36:37.440 | can pick one up brand new for a couple hundred dollars. You can pick them up used all the time,
00:36:41.680 | and they take a couple of padlocks and put one in your garage and keep your chemicals and things
00:36:45.920 | like that locked up so that they're there. If you have many chemicals, and we're not just talking
00:36:51.040 | about a bottle of bleach and a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, whatever you happen to have,
00:36:55.440 | then you should engage in that stuff of your own volition. If you're keeping things like hazardous
00:37:01.040 | chemicals around, you should have proper compartments for them, and a proper locker
00:37:05.120 | is a standard part of chemical safety. So have a place where the stuff is actually locked up,
00:37:10.960 | and that will give you enormous peace of mind as a parent. Next, sleeping arrangements. Children
00:37:16.720 | under 18 months. Children under 18 months should sleep in a crib with no pillows, blankets,
00:37:21.840 | stuffed toys, or other materials. That's standard parenting advice. Bunk beds. If your children are
00:37:29.600 | sleeping in bunk beds, they should have railings on both sides to prevent falls. It is not safe
00:37:34.240 | for children under the age of six to sleep in a top bunk. Again, I got no problem with that.
00:37:39.040 | Opposite-sex children. If you have a boy and a girl, they must sleep in separate bedrooms
00:37:43.760 | at ages five and older. Firearms. Guns and weapons. If you possess any firearms or weapons,
00:37:51.200 | they should be stored unloaded and in a locked cabinet out of reach of children.
00:37:55.920 | My only contention here is what's the point of having an unloaded gun? So certainly if they're
00:38:01.280 | not in use, they can be stored unloaded, but the most important thing is just that they're loaded
00:38:04.720 | and ready to go, but that they're in a locked cabinet out of reach of children. Ammunition.
00:38:08.560 | Ammunition should be stored separately from firearms. Again, I don't know what the point
00:38:12.400 | of storing ammunition separately from firearms is, but I guess if I had a CPS inspection,
00:38:16.800 | then I would probably do that. But obviously, ammunition should be stored inside firearms or
00:38:22.240 | they're useless when you need them. Alcohol and drugs. Illegal drugs. There should not be any
00:38:26.880 | illicit drugs or substances in the house. Prescription and over-the-counter medications.
00:38:32.000 | Medicine should be stored in a locked cabinet out of sight and reach of children. Alcohol.
00:38:37.040 | Any alcohol in the house should be stored out of kids' reach. Again, those seem like
00:38:42.080 | obviously important things. Have a locked cabinet for your medicine. Have no illegal drugs in the
00:38:47.680 | house, obviously. And alcohol should be out of reach of children. Outside. Swimming pool. If
00:38:52.880 | you have a swimming pool in the backyard, it should have fencing to prevent younger children
00:38:56.000 | from drowning. Duh. Road safety. If your house is near the road, your property should have fencing
00:39:00.480 | to limit the play area of your children and to make sure that they stay away from the road.
00:39:05.600 | So recognize that in most cases, I think those are fine. With the exception of my comments about
00:39:13.840 | unloaded weapons, I think those are all perfectly fine and reasonable expectations. So let's not,
00:39:21.280 | let's not, you know, get too crazy with this. Now, if CPS enters your house, again, you would
00:39:28.320 | want them to enter your house with a warrant. If they want to come into your house, you should
00:39:33.120 | tell them, "No, I'm not comfortable having you in my house." And so they're going to ask, "Why?
00:39:39.760 | Why are you not comfortable?" And you just say, "I don't trust you and I don't know who you are.
00:39:43.760 | So why would I have you in my house?" Back to defending the innocent from Child Protective
00:39:50.560 | Services. If they ask to enter your house, let them know that you're not comfortable having
00:39:54.240 | them enter your house. They'll ask why as they investigate for information to use against you.
00:39:58.160 | Just let them know you do not trust them and you do not know who they are. I know it sounds bad,
00:40:02.560 | but you have to come up with an excuse that they can't use against you, saying, "I don't want you
00:40:07.040 | to," or, "It's not clean," gives them another thread to pull. Asking, "Why do you want to go
00:40:12.320 | in? What are you looking for?" places the focus back on them. If they insist on entering your
00:40:16.640 | home, you'll have to invoke your Fourth Amendment right of no unreasonable search and seizure.
00:40:21.120 | It won't stop them from going in, but it lets them know your rights. It lets them know that
00:40:25.920 | you know your rights and are willing to fight in court for them. Although your Fourth Amendment
00:40:29.920 | right, no unreasonable search and seizure, should prevent CPS and the police from entering your home
00:40:34.160 | without a court order, it doesn't. Child Protective Services isn't under the same legal jurisdiction as
00:40:39.280 | police. Child Protective Services is not constrained by the police rules of conduct, and the evidence
00:40:44.000 | obtained from an illegal CPS search will not automatically be disqualified by obtaining
00:40:48.800 | evidence illegally, fruit of the poisonous tree. This is a very touchy subject and should be
00:40:53.120 | understood carefully. Child Protective Services are not allowed in your house without an invitation,
00:40:58.320 | but if they walk in and conduct the search without a warrant, the family court judge will
00:41:02.560 | take the evidence and suggest the parent file charges in criminal court. As well, 33 states
00:41:07.600 | in America have occupational immunity, which covers the CPS agent in case of illegal actions performed
00:41:13.760 | while in the performance of their duties, which means you may not be able to file a civil or
00:41:18.160 | criminal grievance depending on where you live. Also, a CPS agent who is willing to go to the
00:41:22.960 | judge to get a search warrant for your house will most likely use the same information
00:41:26.880 | to obtain an emergency removal order from the same judge. It doesn't take much to get a court order.
00:41:31.920 | The CPS agent tells a judge, "We have a report of abuse, and the guardian will not allow us to
00:41:36.320 | check on the safety of the child." Child Protective Services, now with a police escort and a warrant,
00:41:41.120 | is in your house, and the child is in foster care. Your actions depend partially on the
00:41:45.440 | charges presented to you while you're talking to CPS. If it's a severe charge, similar to assault
00:41:50.240 | or neglect, they will have to see the child to ease their concerns. You may have no other choice,
00:41:55.440 | but allow them into the house to appease the CPS agent. You may have no choice but to let them in,
00:42:00.400 | and if you do, expect a long court trial. So the point is that you have to be careful,
00:42:07.040 | and the goal is to provide the necessary information for the CPS agent to end the
00:42:13.520 | investigation. So you have the information of what the allegations against you are,
00:42:18.560 | and if the agent says, "Hey, we got reports of your child being malnourished," then bring your
00:42:27.760 | child out on the front porch and say, "This child is not malnourished, obviously." But the goal is
00:42:33.440 | to just give the minimum information, and then as quickly as possible get a lawyer and deal with
00:42:40.320 | things with a lawyer and with representation. Now, one of the things that I really appreciate
00:42:45.280 | about the Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services book is that the author
00:42:51.360 | talks about the difference between trying to get a gotcha moment with the CPS and actually
00:42:58.720 | getting what you're trying to do, which is to actually protect your child and not have your
00:43:04.560 | child taken away from you wrongfully. So when you go on YouTube and you spend time
00:43:12.000 | seeing things on YouTube, you see somebody recording something and someone, in many cases,
00:43:16.960 | standing up for his or her rights, and that's fine. That's good, except that you don't necessarily see
00:43:22.000 | what comes next. Your goal is not to win an interaction by having this person turn around
00:43:28.160 | and leave. Your goal is to present the evidence necessary for the CPS officer to do his or her
00:43:34.720 | job and close the case. Be cordial. Having your children removed by CPS or being threatened to
00:43:42.080 | have your children removed is an emotional situation. I can't think of a worse thing to
00:43:46.240 | do to a parent than to take the kids they love and forcefully adopt them out to strangers,
00:43:50.400 | just because an anonymous tip from someone you may or may not know caught the ear of a CPS agent,
00:43:54.640 | and they decided to come for an investigation. The Italian mafia has rules against targeting
00:43:58.880 | children, but our government does not. Child Protective Services understand this will be
00:44:03.840 | a stressful time for you and will use it to their advantage. They will document everything you say,
00:44:08.800 | everything you do, and fully use it against you in court. Take warning of Dave and Sonia's case,
00:44:15.200 | a case discussed elsewhere in the book. Do not threaten violence or harm on the CPS agent. Do
00:44:19.760 | not convey hostility or aggression towards them. Talk in a calm, civil tone with no swearing.
00:44:26.000 | This topic is as important as recording them and not allowing them into your house.
00:44:30.240 | Your demeanor is the data CPS obtains from you at every meeting you have with them.
00:44:35.600 | If you threaten to harm or commit violence against anyone in front of a CPS agent,
00:44:40.080 | the CPS agent will perform an emergency removal of your child and place a restraint order upon you.
00:44:45.200 | Then, expect those words to be used against you in not only CPS cases,
00:44:50.000 | but as evidence against you in any state or federal case in the future.
00:44:53.200 | Ten years down the line, you will be considered a threat, even if you've been to counseling,
00:44:57.360 | taking medications, apologized, or died. You will be in your state CPS record forever.
00:45:02.480 | CPS documents every action. If you come across to them as reasonable and understanding of the
00:45:09.440 | situation, you can manage your way out of CPS charges, as detailed in the next scenario with
00:45:14.800 | Frank and his daughter. But if you automatically swear at, threaten CPS, and slam the door in the
00:45:19.520 | CPS agent's face, accept police and a court order for search, seizure, and removal of the child
00:45:25.280 | within 30 minutes. Your presentation is crucial. How you say things and how your body language is
00:45:31.520 | in the first few minutes of contact is paramount to your success in defeating the investigation.
00:45:36.560 | If you come across as defensive, the CPS agent is automatically going to be suspicious of you.
00:45:41.360 | Getting angry and asking over and over, "Why are you here?" and "Who sent you?" will only make a
00:45:46.480 | great YouTube video. What doesn't make for great YouTube videos is the long fight with CPS and the
00:45:52.400 | expensive court battle that is set against you, which could have been avoided with a different
00:45:57.840 | approach. Your approach should be calm and pleasant, as if this is an ordinary, everyday
00:46:03.600 | occurrence. Listening to what's being said and providing short and to-the-point direct answers
00:46:09.760 | can avoid a long, expensive fight later. Don't give CPS any reason to return. Please and thank
00:46:18.880 | you go a long way to saving thousands of dollars in court costs and your children's future. Many
00:46:26.800 | of the cases in family court do not need to be there. If you know how to handle yourself and the
00:46:32.000 | CPS agent, you could be out of trouble before a case is formed. Knowing how and what CPS does
00:46:38.160 | helps in managing these issues. So the point is, you don't win by being combative with CPS.
00:46:47.760 | You win by understanding that almost certainly this officer cares about children, and it's his
00:46:54.400 | or her job to make certain that innocent children are not being harmed, and he or she undoubtedly
00:47:00.800 | cares about that. So your job is to present the necessary evidence so that the agent can be
00:47:08.720 | satisfied that this child is not in danger, is not in harm. Most lawyers agree when talking to the
00:47:15.600 | police, the less you say, the better. The police are looking for information to charge you with a
00:47:20.400 | crime. Child Protective Services is looking for information not to identify a crime, but to
00:47:28.000 | substantiate or refute the accusation. There is a big difference between talking to police and
00:47:34.160 | talking to Child Protective Services. With police, you have the right to remain silent, and it cannot
00:47:39.840 | be used against you. This is not the case with CPS. The worst thing you can do with CPS is to refuse
00:47:46.560 | to meet with them and ignore the charges. If you refuse to cooperate with CPS and refuse to attend,
00:47:53.040 | it will be written in the report. Then the refusal will be used against you, and worse, have your
00:47:58.400 | child removed from the house. CPS will use any refusal to participate as evidence against you.
00:48:04.720 | The judge, always siding on the safety and welfare of the child and CPS, will automatically infer
00:48:11.120 | that you are hiding something until you prove otherwise. Remember, unlike criminal charges,
00:48:16.800 | your right to remain silent is not guaranteed when dealing with CPS.
00:48:22.880 | When you talk to the CPS agent, discuss only the charges. See if you can figure out who contacted
00:48:30.880 | them and why they did so. If there's any concern, try to normalize the behavior.
00:48:35.680 | Just like Frank, previous story, you don't take your kid to the doctor every time they get the
00:48:40.560 | sniffles. By behaving normal and explaining the circumstances around it, you look less like an
00:48:45.440 | abuser and more like a regular parent doing their best for their child. Look for information.
00:48:51.280 | Interviews are not one-sided discussions. Feel free to ask questions of the CPS agent.
00:48:56.640 | Ask who filed the charges. Child Protective Service is not legally allowed to tell you,
00:49:00.960 | but sometimes they make mistakes or give hints about who filed the charges. Sometimes you can
00:49:05.360 | read their body language to receive clues of whether it's a family member, neighbor, teacher,
00:49:10.000 | or enemy. Ask what the accusations are. Information is vital because you can only defend yourself
00:49:16.080 | against what you know. Ask for specifics on how or what they believe happened and why that is a
00:49:21.600 | problem. For example, if someone claimed you hit your child, ask, "With what? How hard were they
00:49:27.200 | hit? Where on the body were they struck? Could it have been someone else?" Then discuss how it wasn't
00:49:32.160 | you and who else it could be. Now, in the book, the next specific advice is always hire a lawyer,
00:49:43.200 | and that's always good advice, is to have a lawyer and have representation. You should
00:49:47.200 | additionally have witnesses whenever possible, so you should not be with CPS alone. Your child
00:49:55.040 | should never speak to CPS alone, and so you should have a lawyer who's able to be there.
00:49:59.440 | There may be times in which your child needs to speak with a CPS agent. You would do that under
00:50:03.280 | the advice of the lawyer with your lawyer present. Again, you have to provide enough
00:50:08.160 | information to specifically demonstrate that the complaint against you is a false complaint.
00:50:18.400 | Now, what is the big picture that we can do? Well, first and foremost, that's why I went
00:50:24.240 | through kind of the examples, just do the proper thing. Live a life and a lifestyle that is above
00:50:30.800 | reproach so that if at any point in time somebody knocked on your door, your house would be put
00:50:35.680 | together, your children would be well taken care of. Create a lifestyle of care. And a lot of the
00:50:41.760 | things that I would do and that you would do automatically protect children. Children who
00:50:47.920 | are born into a family and they have a mom and a dad and there's no extra people involved and
00:50:54.080 | there's not a bunch of random people coming through the house and there's just one set of
00:50:58.720 | children have extraordinarily low rates of abuse. A single parent with various boyfriends and
00:51:05.840 | girlfriends passing through the house, broken homes, children coming and going, all of a sudden
00:51:11.600 | the rates of abuse go up enormously. And so you need to build the environment around your children
00:51:18.880 | so that they are in a safe environment at all time. You want to always think ahead of what
00:51:26.720 | would happen if you were charged with something. So what would happen, what would your defense be
00:51:34.480 | if CPS came against you? And then do the things that would be necessary to actually provide the
00:51:41.440 | defense in court. So, for example, number one, don't be neglectful of your children. Make certain
00:51:47.920 | that you hire a proper babysitter if you're going to be away, that you understand what your state's
00:51:52.880 | laws are and what good practices are, that you take your children to the doctor, that they have
00:51:57.920 | regular medical checkups, that they have good medical care. All the stuff that you would do
00:52:02.080 | as a good parent is the stuff that you would present in court that would show that you're
00:52:06.960 | a good parent. So this is always the important things. And recognize that you should collect
00:52:13.200 | and have the data for this kind of thing. So strategy. Your strategy should begin before
00:52:18.320 | the first contact. It should be a plan for if CPS comes to your house. I'm fully aware that I'm on
00:52:26.320 | a CPS list somewhere as a problem person just because I wrote this book. So before I started
00:52:31.120 | writing, I planned what I want the first CPS contact to look like and how to manage it.
00:52:35.920 | This strategy includes four goals. Diffusing the CPS charge, information. Proving CPS wrong,
00:52:42.560 | data conflicts, keeping CPS out of my life, and maintaining custody of my children,
00:52:47.680 | court. Everything I plan to do is based on these four goals. Being right, being belligerent,
00:52:53.840 | or asserting constitutional rights are nowhere on this list. In every defense, you need strategy,
00:52:59.600 | plan, and tactics, actions. The approach is predicated on the situation you find yourself in,
00:53:04.960 | what the charges are, and what you want as an outcome. A strategy is a plan of action to diffuse,
00:53:11.040 | redirect, and redirect the charges that are presented. A strategy is not, "I'm going to make
00:53:15.840 | fools of CPS," or, "I'm going to tell the judge what I think and she's going to do what I say."
00:53:19.840 | These are only wishes and will make you look like a fool in court and to lose your child.
00:53:24.400 | You may have noticed in this book, I've referred to everything as a defense.
00:53:28.800 | That's because everything you do with CPS is a defense. A family court hearing is not the
00:53:34.800 | place to attack CPS. It will make you vulnerable and considered emotionally unstable, and the judge
00:53:40.480 | doesn't care. If the CPS agent walks straight into your house, took a beer from your fridge,
00:53:45.040 | and drank it in front of you, it is irrelevant to your case. That needs to be addressed in a conduct
00:53:51.840 | report to CPS superiors or in a lawsuit for misconduct, but not in family court. Remember,
00:53:58.240 | the court cares only about the court proceedings and the welfare of the child. This means crimes
00:54:04.480 | perpetrated against you by Child Protective Services will not be addressed in family court.
00:54:09.360 | The focus is on you, not them. You need to show evidence none of the things occurred or show
00:54:16.160 | third-party evidence that Child Protective Services is wrong. You are defending yourself,
00:54:21.600 | and the mindset should be only of that. Each line in the CPS service plan must be argued and
00:54:28.480 | defended. It is imperative to take each of the items from the progress plan and isolate each
00:54:33.920 | one, then provide evidence directly countering each charge. Defense isn't just for the main
00:54:38.960 | issues, but as many as possible. A good lawyer will be able to present this to the judge.
00:54:43.360 | There is a possibility CPS will surrender the case at this point due to the counter evidence.
00:54:47.520 | However, as a defendant, do not consider this a probable conclusion. Each item should be listed
00:54:52.720 | and some document provided to disprove the issue. This becomes the crux of the defense.
00:54:57.600 | It is vital to provide these documents to the court. The records become the witnesses that
00:55:02.720 | CPS cannot argue. It is easy to confuse a witness on the stand. It is easy to ignore a parent's
00:55:09.040 | rights, but documentation becomes a thorn in the side of any prosecution. These documents can be
00:55:14.560 | almost anything from grocery receipts, video to medical reports, psychiatric evaluations to
00:55:20.560 | checking account records. Every paper and video proves something that can be used to chip away at
00:55:25.680 | the CPS case. You can go on, read more in the book about tactics, things like that. It's a good book.
00:55:33.680 | It's not nearly as good as Arrest Proof Yourself. And I don't know how, I mean, the guy believes
00:55:40.640 | strongly that CPS has an incentive and a desire to kidnap children with a financial incentive.
00:55:49.280 | I don't know if this is true or not. I know that it is true in some places with some people in
00:55:53.760 | some countries and some counties and some prosecutors. But I would guess that those are
00:55:58.560 | the exception, not the rule. And I hope I'm not wrong about that. So I don't worry too much about
00:56:04.320 | that. But certainly we've heard enough horror stories with ex-spouses and angry people and
00:56:12.560 | wackos on the internet. You should take this seriously. At its core, I think how I think
00:56:20.800 | about this subject is basically two things. Number one is be a good parent and be the kind
00:56:29.760 | of person that is providing all that a child needs. If you are doing that and intentional
00:56:36.080 | about doing that, then that in and of itself is probably going to be the number one key.
00:56:43.280 | If you are doing something that makes you vulnerable, then pay attention to that and
00:56:49.920 | document your performance. So the biggest vulnerability that a guy like me would have
00:56:56.640 | would be homeschooling. Now, this was a huge issue in the United States in 1960s and '70s
00:57:03.360 | and '80s. At that time, I know lots of homeschooling families that they had to be hyper
00:57:09.360 | aware of basically the truant officers and child protective services and asserting their rights as
00:57:15.280 | homeschoolers. At the time, it was very legally questionable what their actual rights were
00:57:20.240 | in the United States with regard to homeschooling. So I've talked to many older ladies who the idea
00:57:27.840 | they would never, ever take their children out during the day to the grocery store, something
00:57:32.880 | like that, because then someone's going to file a complaint. Why aren't these kids in school?
00:57:36.720 | And so they would always make certain that they were home and that there was no obvious evidence
00:57:44.160 | that their children were home at that time. Now, thankfully, in the United States, we pretty well
00:57:48.880 | won that battle. And so the legal situation of homeschooling is very well ensconced now in law
00:57:55.120 | and in the vast majority of states. You hear some whining from various states here and there,
00:58:00.240 | but in general, it's one of the best total victories of a political movement that I care
00:58:05.600 | about in the United States, that that's not really a risk at this point in time for most people.
00:58:11.440 | I know a lot of people around the world, though, who still have that, who are very careful that
00:58:15.680 | if it's a school day, their children are not outside in the backyard, but they're inside
00:58:19.440 | studying. What I always just imagine is I just say I have a higher responsibility.
00:58:24.160 | So if I'm going to homeschool, I need to make certain that I'm not being neglectful of children.
00:58:32.880 | Some people are super into student-directed education and unschooling and all that. I think
00:58:38.960 | there's a place for that, but I believe I have a responsibility of a higher degree of performance,
00:58:46.000 | higher degree of academic performance than others do. And so I keep careful records,
00:58:52.320 | want to make certain that I can demonstrate the academic performance of my children and have good
00:58:56.400 | records about what we're actually doing, even though my state doesn't require that. So I still
00:59:03.040 | am going to do it. And I think that same basic thing applies. Imagine that CPS knocks at your
00:59:08.720 | door today. Just imagine it. And then ask yourself, well, what would my vulnerability be?
00:59:14.640 | If it's homeschooling and are you giving your child the education that he deserves,
00:59:19.120 | then make certain that you are and that you have the data to demonstrate it. If it's cleanliness
00:59:25.120 | of the house, then fix the house. Do whatever you need to do to fix the house. If it's a bad
00:59:29.760 | relationship with mom and dad are yelling at each other all the time and the cops are going to knock
00:59:33.920 | at the door, then fix it. Take some classes on how to communicate better and how to resolve
00:59:38.800 | conflict and fix the relationship. And if it's unfixable, I guess recognize that it's unfixable.
00:59:45.040 | The point is, think about it. What would happen? And do you have evidence of it? So keep records
00:59:50.240 | of an annual checkup from your physician and keep records of your dental cleanings and keep records
00:59:57.120 | of the food in the house and make sure that there is the food in the house, things like that.
01:00:00.480 | If you have those documents, then you should win your case. And that's what you need to know.
01:00:08.560 | So that's the first thing that I want to emphasize is just have the environment that is going to be
01:00:14.560 | appropriate so you don't have a problem. And then the second thing that I wanted to emphasize is
01:00:18.560 | what's different about dealing with CPS versus dealing with the police. For the fourth time,
01:00:24.800 | you can't have the same basic approach with CPS that you do with the police.
01:00:32.720 | With the police, the only safety you have of any kind of law enforcement officer,
01:00:39.920 | any kind of police officer, any kind of any government agent,
01:00:43.920 | the only safety you have is not to answer questions. If you lie to a police officer,
01:00:50.480 | remember, if you lie to a police officer, even inadvertently, that's a felony offense.
01:00:56.400 | You could be put into jail just for lying to federal officers. Martha Stewart, a little bit
01:01:01.840 | long in the tooth now in terms of the case is a little bit old, but remember, Martha Stewart
01:01:06.160 | didn't go to prison for insider trading. She went to prison for lying to federal officers.
01:01:14.000 | Your only possible pathway of navigating a very difficult legal system with officers of any kind
01:01:22.400 | is do not speak to them actively. And by the way, just remember, it's not enough to just remain
01:01:29.040 | silent. You can't just not speak. You have to specifically state, "I am exercising my right to
01:01:35.840 | remain silent and I want a lawyer. I'm remaining silent. I'm not answering questions. I want a
01:01:40.640 | lawyer. I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer. I'm not answering questions. I don't answer questions. I
01:01:45.440 | want a lawyer. I'm sorry, officer. I don't answer questions. I want a lawyer." That's your only
01:01:51.440 | possible pathway. Because if you mess up, if you say something wrong, if you give them information,
01:01:57.120 | there's no protection for you whatsoever except, "I don't speak and I want a lawyer."
01:02:02.320 | And then you go into the court process as necessary. You deal with all of the appropriate
01:02:07.120 | depositions with the advice of your lawyer. That's the only way to deal with it with the police.
01:02:12.240 | CPS is not that way. And that's why I'm emphasizing this so much because when I learned this,
01:02:18.160 | I realized this is important. You do have a Fourth Amendment right to keep CPS out of your house.
01:02:25.120 | And as the author of that book stated, 30 minutes later, the CPS agent will be back
01:02:32.240 | with a police officer and a warrant, and your child is not sleeping at your home that day.
01:02:36.640 | So you need to exercise your rights actively. Don't give away more information than is necessary,
01:02:45.280 | but you need to answer the questions because your goal is to demonstrate to the CPS officer
01:02:51.680 | that your child is safe, your child is not in a dangerous condition, and then to figure out
01:02:58.160 | what is necessary for the CPS worker to end his or her case and say that it's been fully
01:03:03.680 | investigated and there's no problem and no danger there. And that requires a different strategy
01:03:09.280 | than the basic strategy with law enforcement. That covers what I wanted to cover in today's
01:03:16.240 | podcast. I hope it's useful to you. I'll link to a couple of these articles to this book
01:03:21.120 | in the show notes. You can read more, you can think more.
01:03:24.080 | Basic principles are the same, but live your life above board. Live in such a way that
01:03:33.680 | you can always be investigated and not have any problem. But recognize that just because
01:03:40.800 | you're living that way today doesn't mean that things can't be there in the future.
01:03:44.880 | I know many people, and again, I'm not talking to a U.S. audience necessarily here,
01:03:48.320 | I know many people around the world who are absolute morally upright people who something
01:03:54.240 | changes and now their government is enforcing upon them a situation that is different than
01:03:59.120 | what it is. And they are now required to stand up for what is morally right, and now what they're
01:04:05.360 | doing is legally wrong because they're standing up for what's morally right. It's wonderful if
01:04:11.120 | morality and legality are aligned, but it's very rare in the world to have those conditions for
01:04:17.440 | an enduring period of time. Frequently, morality and legality are crosswise with each other.
01:04:25.120 | And so you need to be wise in how you negotiate this, and you need to do what is morally right,
01:04:30.880 | and also stand up for your legal rights. And recognize that when you go and put your family
01:04:35.680 | online, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I've wrestled and wrestled and struggled with it,
01:04:40.000 | and I've just thought, like, it's important. If all of us who, you know, are good parents and
01:04:45.040 | loving parents, if those of us who are loving husbands and take care of our family and provide,
01:04:52.560 | if we just all disappear from the world, then what happens is people are just surrounded by
01:04:57.120 | stories of wackos and perverts and, you know, jerks and all of that, and then they think that
01:05:04.640 | everyone's like that. And in kind of the enormous isolation that we live in, people tend to think
01:05:10.160 | that that's normal. It's kind of like the old thing with the news. If all you do is watch the news,
01:05:14.480 | then you think there's a murderer behind every tree, but you have to stop and recognize the fact
01:05:19.600 | that the reason you think there's a murderer behind every tree is that you're watching the
01:05:23.760 | news, and the news is going to always present that which is sensationalistic. So you're not
01:05:29.280 | getting an accurate view. Well, the same thing is happening all the time now with social media.
01:05:34.000 | And so if men like you and I disappear from social media and we're replaced by a bunch of wackos,
01:05:42.000 | then we have a problem because now other people are just consuming the wackos. So
01:05:47.280 | I think there are very good reasons for husbands and wives and mothers and fathers who have just
01:05:55.520 | normal, healthy families, healthy relationships. I think there's very good reasons for you to put
01:06:00.960 | your children online and to create content and things like that. I support it. I really like it
01:06:07.280 | when normal, well-adjusted people who have family values and are loving spouses and things like
01:06:14.800 | that, I really love it when they just create ordinary, normal content because I think that's
01:06:18.960 | important, but it also comes with a significant risk. So you should expect that if you've got
01:06:26.480 | 600,000 Instagram followers and you're live blogging your travels, that it's not too hard
01:06:35.280 | for someone to track you down and call the government on you as kind of an internet debate
01:06:39.760 | tactic. It's pretty easy for a wacko on the other side of the country or the other side of the world
01:06:44.320 | who doesn't like you and doesn't like how you live to weaponize government. So you need to
01:06:48.960 | be prepared for that, which is why I'm trying to create this podcast for you. I hope this
01:06:54.960 | information is valuable. If it has been, I would ask you for one favor. Go and teach it to somebody
01:07:02.320 | else. Just make a comment about it with somebody. I find that this kind of advice, most people don't
01:07:10.320 | go out looking for it. And frankly, most people aren't interested in it, but still those who need
01:07:15.600 | it, need it. And so I really try hard to teach people who are likely to interact with the police
01:07:24.800 | how to do that. So if someone is poor or somebody is an immigrant or something like that and there's
01:07:32.800 | a decent chance that person could be taken advantage of, I always do my best to teach
01:07:37.360 | rights. And same thing, teach this to other parents so they understand. Take something here
01:07:43.600 | and teach it to someone else so that you can just inspire them to go and look for their own advice.
01:07:48.160 | Thank you for listening. I'll be back with you soon.
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