Salinas, Calif. — For two and a half years, a Monterey County social work supervisor oversaw staff who took children from their parents somewhere between 20 and 30 times. In not one of those cases, she testified, did anyone get a warrant.
That sworn testimony is in a federal court order that grew out of one Friday afternoon in May 2018, when county social workers and City of Salinas police took 8-year-old twins from their mother at school without a court order. A federal judge later ruled that a jury could find the removal unconstitutional, that the county’s training could amount to “deliberate indifference” to families’ rights, and that the individual workers and officers could face punitive damages. The county, the city and the individual defendants then settled with the family for $1.2 million.
Father’s Advocacy Network reviewed the 34-page order and the settlement order. Below are the key passages, highlighted, so you can read what the court actually said. We have blacked out the family’s names and the case number to protect the children.
What happened on May 4, 2018
A teacher reported a concern that one of the twins, a girl, may have been sexually abused by a relative. County social worker Linda Castillo went to the school and interviewed both children, then called police. Salinas officers Guadalupe Gonzalez and trainee Blake Ziebell arrived shortly before 5 p.m. and did more interviews on body camera.
Nobody disputes that a report like that has to be investigated. What matters in this case is what investigators learned that afternoon. 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 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, when the sister, herself a former county social worker, insisted the children should stay with their mother and threatened to call Ricks’ superiors. 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:
This has gone up the chain, supervisor and program manager knows what’s going on.
Social worker Justin Ricks, as quoted in the federal court order
The mother followed the children to the car saying, “That’s not what we agreed on.” Police officers moved her back as the car pulled away.
Who made the call? The county’s own log
In court, the county’s social workers argued they couldn’t be held responsible because police, not the county, made the removal decision. A Salinas officer did sign the protective custody notice.
But the county’s own investigation notes, called the Delivered Service Log, told a different story. The court quoted it directly:
Officer Ziebell testified that the decision came out of “conversations and agreements” among Sgt. Dana Cornelison, Officer Gonzalez, Ricks and himself. The judge found the county had not shown who made the decision and refused to let the social workers off the hook on that argument.
No warrant. No proof of an emergency.
Under 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. California law gives social workers and police a way to get that warrant from a judge.
The judge found that the evidence supported a belief that the girl was at risk, which is why an investigation was warranted. But that is not the same thing as imminent danger, and nobody tried to show how long a warrant would have taken:
For the girl’s twin brother, it was even simpler. The court found the county and the city had offered no evidence at all that he was in danger. The law requires each child’s situation to be judged on its own, and the boy was taken anyway.
The judge also ruled that the rule was “clearly established” long before May 2018. Earlier Ninth Circuit cases, the court wrote, “gave clear notice of the law to social workers responsible for protecting children from sexual abuse and families from unnecessary intrusion.” That meant the workers and officers could not use qualified immunity to escape the lawsuit.
20 to 30 removals. Not one warrant.
The most damning part of the order isn’t about this family at all. It’s about how Monterey County operated.
The county’s own designated witness, Jessica Perez-Martinez, testified that she never applied for a protective custody warrant in her eight months as an emergency response worker. In two and a half years as a supervisor, she said, her workers removed children 20 to 30 times and never once obtained a warrant. She had gotten a warrant herself, she said, “but not in Monterey County.”
- Justin Ricks, the worker at the school, 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 and didn’t know of any worker under her who ever applied for one.
- The county said its workers were trained on emergency removals and warrants, and pointed to a written program directive. The judge ruled that the staff testimony was enough for a jury to decide whether that training was adequate.
Based on that testimony, 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.”
Salinas police: we sign when asked
The order describes a similar pattern at the Salinas Police Department. Sgt. Cornelison, with the department 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 protective custody removal form.
Officer Ziebell testified he was never trained on how to request a warrant to remove a child, and didn’t know of any officer who had ever asked for one. The judge ruled that a jury should decide whether the city’s practice of “simply signing off on removal at the County’s request” was the driving force behind what happened to this family.
Three months, then the case was dismissed
Because of potential conflicts of interest, the county arranged for Santa Cruz County to take over the investigation, but it could not start until the following Monday. Social worker Chelsea Chacon drafted the petition to juvenile court, which was filed on May 8, 2018, based on the investigators’ notes.
According to the court’s summary, the twins spent three months out of their mother’s custody. The juvenile court case was dismissed after a contested trial. The family sued in federal court in April 2019.
What the judge ruled, and what she threw out
U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman signed the order on March 26, 2021. It was unsealed and filed publicly on April 12, 2021.
- Denied summary judgment to social workers Castillo, Ricks, Lord and Lerable, and to Salinas officers Gonzalez, Ziebell and Cornelison, on the claims that the warrantless removal violated the family’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
- Denied summary judgment to Monterey County and the City of Salinas on the claim that their failure to train caused the violation.
- Denied summary judgment on punitive damages. The judge wrote that a jury could find that one or more of the individual defendants “acted with reckless or callous indifference” to the family’s rights.
- Granted summary judgment on the family’s claim that the juvenile court petition was deliberately falsified. The family pointed to missing and inaccurate details in the petition. The judge said those problems showed the investigation and reporting “may have been careless or inaccurate,” but there was not enough evidence that anyone did it on purpose. Claims against Chacon and social worker Rebecca Barron were dismissed, and the family dropped three other claims.
The $1.2 million settlement
The case never reached a jury. In March 2022, the court approved a $1.2 million settlement between the family and all of the defendants. Under the approved split, $600,000 went to the family’s lawyers as a 50% contingency fee and $110,000 covered case costs. The mother received $245,000 and each child $122,500, paid over time.
The settlement means no jury ever decided whether the defendants were liable, and settlements usually come with no admission of wrongdoing. But the court found evidence of a routine that should alarm every family in Monterey County: take the children first, and skip the judge.
Why this matters to every family
This case is from California, but the rule it applied comes from the Ninth Circuit, which covers nine Western states including Arizona, Washington, Oregon and Nevada. Federal courts in other parts of the country apply similar rules. A child abuse report is not, by itself, an emergency. If there is time to get a judge’s order, the government is supposed to get one.
If CPS or police are trying to take your children, these steps can protect your rights later:
- Stay calm and do not physically resist. Ask, clearly and politely: “Do you have a warrant or a court order?” Write down the answer.
- Get the full names and badge or ID numbers of every social worker and officer present, and the names of their supervisors.
- Offer a safe relative or friend who can take the children, and write down what the worker says about it.
- Ask for a copy of any paperwork you are given, and keep it.
- Write down a timeline as soon as you can: who said what, and when.
- Talk to a civil rights attorney quickly. Federal civil rights claims have filing deadlines.
FAN can help you organize your records and timeline. Start a free, confidential case file.
A response from Monterey County or Salinas?
Father’s Advocacy Network welcomes a response from Monterey County’s Department of Social Services, the City of Salinas and any of the people named in this story. We will add any response we receive.
Sources
- U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal., Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgment, March 26, 2021 (filed April 12, 2021) (Justia)
- Order approving minors’ compromise ($1.2 million settlement), March 25, 2022 (GovInfo)
This story is based entirely on public federal court records. Quotes from testimony are as summarized in the court’s order. FAN redacted the names of the mother, the children and other family members, along with the case number, in the images above to protect the children’s privacy. Officials named here are identified as they appear in the court record.
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