No Guns
December 15, 2012
The young father
who sat on our leather sofa in our cozy office about 15 feet away from me on
Saturday morning had done nothing to cause me concern. All he was doing was
visiting his 4-year-old son, whom he hadn’t seen in over a year. The boy seemed to be enjoying himself,
despite the gap in parenting time.
I knew, of course, from both the Family Services referral form and my
own “background check” that this young father had been in jail for at least a
year in his past for the crime of Threatening, 2nd degree and he had been
arrested many other times for possession of narcotics and controlled
substances. His biggest crime that
morning was not paying enough attention to his little boy at departure time,
but that was reasonable considering how emotional supervised visits can be combined
with little recent parenting experience.
But when the
little boy stacked up plastic fruit for his dad to “scan” with our toy cash
register, I thought to myself, “what
if he has a gun?”
The only reason
that this thought popped into my head that morning was because of the horrible
tragedy in Newtown only a day earlier and twenty miles down the road. I had no reason to suspect this young
man; even his rap sheet didn’t indicate any illegal firearms or threatening
with a deadly weapon. But we don’t
have a metal detector in our office. Our toughest enforcement is number 5 on
our Conditions for Participation agreement: No guns or dangerous instruments
will be brought into the visitation center.
Number 5. Not
even number 1. Number 1 is that both parents will arrive on time and call in a
timely manner to cancel a visit if necessary.
Saturday’s
father was not our only parent with a criminal record. One of our parents had actually been
jailed for threatening with a deadly weapon. About half of our parents have restraining or protective
orders and have been accused by either their exes or the police of harassment,
threatening behavior, assault. In
fact, both Angelo and I have been verbally threatened by parents in our program;
both visiting and custodial parents, both moms and dads. One of the parents who threatened me
had other charges pending against him for assault as well as an equal number of
convictions for that same crime.
But even as I
sat quietly behind my desk, hoping that no outward evidence of the disturbing
thought in my mind was showing up on my face, it did not occur to me that maybe
we should have a gun. Despite the often-sketchy
backgrounds of most of our parents, we are not a high risk program. The courts screen these families and if
they think that they are a risk, they are not referred to us. Our policy is to complete intakes on
both parents to determine the best way to proceed, which may include not doing
a visit at all. We have security measures in place in
our office--we’re not that idealistic--and we know what to do and how to do it
when certain situations arise. Our
job is to protect the children in our care and we will do that to the best of our
abilities. But not with a
weapon.
When monsters
appear, there is little to do to stop them. They are not a part of our everyday
life; to fight a monster, you have to become a monster. That is not a realistic
solution. If I had a weapon in my office, I believe that it would be more
dangerous to the children we promise to keep safe than it would serve to
protect them. If someone came
through my door intent on abduction or violence, there would be little I could
do to stop it, no matter how hard I tried. We do our best,
with the help from the courts and the local police, to provide a safe place for
children. And a safe place for
children has no guns.
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