In two and a half years as a Monterey County supervisor, one social worker said her workers removed children from their families 20 to 30 times. How many of those times did they get a warrant from a judge first? Not once.

That’s sworn testimony from the county’s own designated witness. And the public only knows about it because one family sued.

This is the Father’s Advocacy Network podcast. I’m Adam Neuerburg. Today’s story comes entirely from public federal court records. Twins taken from their mother with no warrant, and a county routine laid bare in a federal judge’s order.

May 4, 2018. A teacher reported a concern that one of the twins, a girl, may have been sexually abused by a relative. Nobody disputes that a report like that has to be investigated. This case is about what investigators learned that afternoon, and what they did next. County social worker Linda Castillo interviewed both children at school, then called police. Salinas officers Guadalupe Gonzalez and a trainee, Blake Ziebell, arrived shortly before 5 p.m. and did more interviews on body camera. According to the court, both the girl and her mother told Officer Ziebell that the relative had not been to the home in about a month. The mother said he had his own apartment. Castillo’s shift ended, and a standby emergency response worker, Justin Ricks, took over. Ricks gave the mother two options. Send the children to a family member, or the county would take them. She chose her sister. That plan fell apart on a three-way phone call. The sister, herself a former county social worker, insisted the children should stay with their mother. Ricks then suggested a teacher’s aide who was a licensed foster parent. The mother said no. Ricks called his supervisors, Charlene Lord and Christine Lerable. Then, according to body camera footage described in the order, Ricks came back and told the mother the children were being taken. As quoted in the order, he said: This has gone up the chain, supervisor and program manager knows what’s going on. The mother followed her children to the car, saying, That’s not what we agreed on. Police officers moved her back as the car pulled away.

Later, in federal court, the county’s social workers argued that police made the removal decision, not them. A Salinas officer did sign the protective custody notice. But the county’s own investigation log, called the Delivered Service Log, told a different story. The court quoted it directly. Officer Ziebell testified the decision came out of conversations and agreements among Sergeant Dana Cornelison, Officer Gonzalez, Ricks and himself. The judge found the county had not shown who made the decision. This is how the system protects itself. The social worker points at the cop. The cop points at the social worker. And two children are gone. Now here’s the law. In California and across the Ninth Circuit, the government can take a child without a judge’s order only in a real emergency: when officials have reasonable cause to believe the child is likely to suffer serious bodily harm in the time it would take to get a warrant. The judge found the evidence supported a belief that the girl was at risk, enough to justify an investigation. But risk is not the same as imminent danger. And nobody even tried to show how long a warrant would have taken. For her twin brother, the court found the county and the city offered no evidence at all that he was in danger. And the law requires each child to be judged on his or her own. No evidence he was in danger. And the boy was taken anyway.

The judge also ruled that this rule was clearly established long before May 2018. So the workers and officers could not use qualified immunity to escape the lawsuit.

But the most damning part of this order is about how Monterey County operated. The county’s own designated witness, Jessica Perez-Martinez, testified she never applied for a protective custody warrant in eight months as an emergency response worker. And in two and a half years as a supervisor, she said, her workers removed children 20 to 30 times without once obtaining a warrant. She had gotten a warrant herself, she said. But not in Monterey County.

Justin Ricks testified he had never obtained a warrant to remove a child, and had never heard of any Monterey County social worker doing it. Charlene Lord, the acting supervisor that night, testified she never received any training on how to apply for a protective custody warrant. The county pointed to a written program directive on training. The judge ruled that what the staff said under oath was enough for a jury to decide whether that training was adequate. And the judge wrote that a reasonable jury could find the county’s training so inadequate as to amount to deliberate indifference to the violation of the constitutional rights of Monterey County families.

The police side looked the same. Sergeant Cornelison, with Salinas police since 1991, testified that in 29 years he knew of no case where a Salinas officer turned down a social worker’s request to sign a removal form. Twenty-nine years. Not one no. Officer Ziebell testified he was never trained on how to request a warrant to remove a child. The judge ruled a jury should decide whether the city’s practice of simply signing off on removal at the County’s request was the driving force here. So here’s the machine. Nobody in the county gets warrants. Officers always sign. And the judge, the one person who is supposed to stand between the government and your children, never hears about it until the kids are already gone.

Because of potential conflicts of interest, Santa Cruz County took over the investigation. Social worker Chelsea Chacon drafted the juvenile court petition from the investigators’ notes, and it was filed on May 8, 2018. According to the court’s summary, the twins spent three months out of their mother’s custody. Then the juvenile court case was dismissed after a contested trial. Three months of a childhood. Gone. And the case against the family didn’t survive a trial.

The family sued in federal court in April 2019. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled on March 26, 2021. She refused to throw out the constitutional claims over the warrantless removal against all seven of those social workers and officers, or the failure-to-train claims against the county and the city. And she let punitive damages go forward, writing that a jury could find one or more of them acted with reckless or callous indifference to the family’s rights. One claim was thrown out: that the juvenile court petition was deliberately falsified. The judge said its missing and inaccurate details showed the reporting may have been careless or inaccurate, but there wasn’t enough evidence anyone did it on purpose. Careless or inaccurate. And under the law, careless wasn’t enough to hold anyone accountable for it. The case never reached a jury. In March 2022, the court approved a $1.2 million settlement with all of the defendants. Half went to the family’s lawyers. The mother received $245,000, and each child $122,500, paid over time. No jury ever decided liability, and settlements usually come with no admission of wrongdoing. A county’s routine got laid out in a federal court order, and then the case closed with a check.

And the rule in this case comes from the Ninth Circuit, which covers nine Western states, including Arizona, Washington, Oregon and Nevada. A child abuse report is not, by itself, an emergency. If there’s time to get a judge’s order, the government is supposed to get one.

If CPS or police ever try to take your children, here’s what can protect your rights later. This isn’t legal advice. FAN is not a law firm. One. Stay calm, and do not physically resist. Ask clearly: Do you have a warrant or a court order? Write down the answer. Two. Get the full names and badge or ID numbers of every social worker and officer there, and their supervisors. Offer a safe relative or friend who can take the children, and write down what the worker says about it. Three. Keep a copy of any paperwork you’re given. Write down a timeline as soon as you can: who said what, and when. Four. Talk to a civil rights attorney quickly, because federal civil rights claims have filing deadlines. Put your questions and requests to your attorney in writing. And you don’t have to organize it alone. Go to fathers advocacy network dot com slash case help.

The full story, with every source, including the federal court order and the settlement order, is at fathers advocacy network dot com. If this made you angry, share it. And follow the show, so you don’t miss the next one. I’m Adam Neuerburg. This is the Father’s Advocacy Network. Let the silenced speak.