Posted on 10/11/2021 9:58:49 AM PDT by george76
When my daughter was 12 she'd walk down the streets of Shanghai to get donuts," says the mom, Megan McMurry..
A federal judge has ruled that two cops who work at a public school in Midland, Texas, can be sued for seizing a 14-year-old from her family's apartment because she was there alone. Despite her pleas, the officers did not let the girl call her parents for hours, nor would they let her pick up the phone when her father called. They also searched the family's home without a warrant.
School Resource Officers Kevin Brunner and Alexandra Weaver do not enjoy blanket qualified immunity, ruled U.S. District Judge David Counts, in a case that began with a mom making painstaking plans for her children's supervision when she had to be out of the country for five days and her husband was deployed overseas.
In 2018, Megan McMurry was a special education teacher at a Midland junior high school, married to Adam McMurry, a soldier in the Mississippi Army National Guard. The family had lived in six countries over the course of 10 years, and her kids were used to independence.
"When my daughter was 12 she'd walk down the streets of Shanghai to get donuts," says McMurry.
When the family moved to Midland, the daughter, Jade, opted for online homeschooling. She was home alone for a good part of each day, which is perfectly legal, so long as a parent is not putting a child in harm's way.
In the meantime, McMurry took her 12-year-old son Connor with her to the junior high across town where she worked. He had perfect attendance.
But when the family learned their dad, overseas already, was being mobilized for another stint in Kuwait, McMurry thought the family should consider moving there to be together. She had a job offer at a Kuwaiti school and wanted to visit it before making her decision.
Her kids didn't want to come on the five-day trip—in part because Connor didn't want to ruin his perfect attendance streak—so McMurry arranged for the kids to be in the care of neighbors, Vanessa and Gabe Vallejos. Jade, the 14-year-old, babysat the Vallejos family's six-year-old for several hours every afternoon, so the families were close.
As for Connor getting to school, McMurry arranged for the school's counselor—another nearby neighbor—to drive him.
On Thursday night, October 25, 2018, she boarded the plane for Kuwait.
On Friday morning, the school counselor realized she wouldn't be able to pick up Connor after all, and asked the school resource officer—Weaver, who also lived nearby—to drive him instead. When Weaver didn't answer her telephone, the counselor arranged for someone else to drive the boy, according to McMurry.
Weaver called Child Protective Services (CPS) to report children left home alone. She also called her supervisor, Brunner, and the two went to the McMurry home for a welfare check on Jade.
This is where things got ugly.
The cops had the apartment building manager knock on the family's door. Jade answered and the cops told her she shouldn't be home alone. Jade started crying and asked to call her dad, McMurry says. But the cops wouldn't allow it. They did allow her to change into warmer clothes, since they were going to take her away for an interrogation. While she was in her room she managed to text her dad, "I'm scared! The police are here."
Meanwhile, Weaver went rifling through the cabinets.
The cops put Jade in the squad car and drove her to the middle school her brother was attending, according to McMurry. Bodycam footage shows her crying and begging the cops to let her call her father, but they refused to do so.
At the school, the cops kept Jade in their custody for several hours as they questioned her, asking things like, "Were you going to have a party?" They pulled Connor out of class and questioned him, too.
Meanwhile, CPS dispatched an investigator to the school. He asked the cops if they had called the parents.
McMurry says that when the cops said no, the CPS investigator was incredulous, since that's the first thing they're supposed to do.
Attorneys for Brunner and Weaver did not respond to requests for comment.
The CPS investigator was dismayed that the cops had told his agency that the children were abandoned and truant, because obviously Connor was at school, and the cops were also aware that Jade was homeschooled. (Believe it or not, Weaver and McMurry had been friends before this.) When Jade explained the arrangements her mom had made for their supervision, and CPS ascertained this was all true, it closed the case then and there.
But the cops did not.
When McMurry returned from Kuwait, she faced two felony charges of child abandonment. She turned herself in and spent 19 hours in jail before being released on bail.
Long story short, almost a year later—she was suspended without pay the entire time— McMurry's case came to trial. Brunner claimed to be on a prearranged vacation. McMurry, eager to get the case heard, allowed the trial to proceed without him.
Her neighbors, the Vallejoses, testified. The CPS investigator and his supervisors testified. The school counselor testified. Connor and Jade testified. When Weaver testified and was asked why she didn't let Jade talk to her dad, she replied she hadn't wanted to worry the man. In fact, here's some of the transcript:
Q: Do you not remember Jade telling you that her dad is trying to call her and you told her not to answer that phone?
A: Now that you've stated that, I do recall that occurring.
Q: So her father is trying to call her when you're taking her from her home to Abell Middle School and you're telling her…not to answer the phone when her father is calling?
A. Correct I didn't want to cause him any undue stress.
The trial took four days. The jury deliberated for five minutes and found McMurry not guilty.
Now McMurry is suing the officers for violating her Fourth and 15th Amendment rights. Her suit alleges that they searched her home without a warrant and seized her daughter illegally. The cops are not supposed to remove children from a home without alerting the parents, unless there is an immediate threat to the children's life and limb. Since the law is so well-established on those protocols that the officers had to have been aware of them, the federal judge has waived their plea for qualified immunity and is allowing the lawsuit to proceed.
This is particularly sweet for McMurry because she knows what actual abandonment looks like.
"My mother was a drug-addicted drug dealer," she says. "I grew up in foster care from the time I was 11. I would be in a two-week shelter, then a 30-day shelter, you know how it goes. I went to 25 different high schools by the time I graduated with a 4.0."
It was her hard-won resilience that got her to adulthood, and resilience is exactly what she and her husband are trying to instill in their kids. That's why she let them stay home without her. She knew they'd be responsible, and she knew this was not something impossible for young people to handle.
Clearly, the apple is not falling far from the tree. In a letter to the circuit court, Jade wrote that she wants everyone "to know what these two officers did to me and my family for no reason."
"My parents have taught me to work hard for anything I want and to self-advocate," wrote Jade. "I may not have known my rights that day, and they definitely didn't inform me either, but I knew what they were doing was wrong."
I would own those two idiots, and the people at the school so much, that their toenails 30 years from now would still be owned by me.
Use petroleum in any way? Thank a dreg. You’re welcome!
We had guns in the back windows of most country teenagers’ pickups, too.
It was completely fine and encouraged.
When I was in Tokyo a few years ago children as young as first graders were on the trains alone, sometimes in groups of four or five; one time this one girl’s group got on the train and the door closed before she could get on and left her on the platform. Several ladies came up to her and got her safely on the next one. She was there on the platform all alone.
These people belong in PRISON for a Very Long time, this is nothing short of Armed Home Invasion and Kidnapping, When will somebody finally step up to the plate and PROSECUTE Cops when they go Full JACK BOOTED THUG??
They work hard, and they play hard. Some harder then others, but, from what I've seen, the dregs don't last long.
When I was nine my dad was missing a lot (alcoholic) and my mom worked split shift for the phone company. I had a wandering range of about two miles from home during the day.
I'm not saying I didn't get into trouble. I just didn't get into serious trouble. (Not like the kid who screwed up trying to hop onto the ladder at the end of a freight car and died due to losing both his legs.)
Texas has the same problem every state has. Big minority populated cities where elections are always for sale.
I’m sure all the “good cops” in Midland stood up to denounce this scum and the prosecutor is preparing the charges…..oh I guess not.
i During the depression my father left home and went on the Hobo when he was twelve. I was born in 38 and seem to remember both my father and mother working 6 days a week so we were free to roam the woods or town as long as we wanted, no such thing as air conditioning or even tv so inside the home was the last place we wanted to be.
“This happened in Texas. There seems to be no escape from this sort of madness.”
Isn’t that disturbing? Next thing we hear is that Texas Rangers are all sporting man buns, and are 95% pussified. When Texas goes, we’re in big trouble.
fwdude, I am sure that you know about the Midland Odessa area, based on your FR moniker.
Midland is mostly white collar, and overall a bit wealthier than Odessa. I have always felt that Odessa was rougher and more blue collar. Both cities have their issues. After all, GWB found his wife in Midland ... ;)
Things have really changed if a 14 y.o. that is home schooled, can fall under the jurisdiction of an SRO "School Resource Officer" - especially one that knows the family. Even the Texas CPS, a bastion of illegal activities and general sinfulness, dropped it within a single investigation.
Something just doesn't make sense, and I think that the reporting is leaving out the female officer's role in all this.
(My mother passed away from polio when I was 11, and I became the unofficial parent in the house when my Dad was away working. What would happen today to us?)
After I got my driver's license, during hunting season, I would take the family van to school and my friends and I would have our shotguns in the back. After school we would drive south of town to one of our science teacher's farm and hunt with him.
“School cops are a “special” breed who can’t get on the real force.”
And your proof is what?
Probably meant the 14th Amendment which makes the first 10 applicable to the states.
Thanks for your kind reply
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Texas, like many other decent places is becoming infected with prog.
The only way to deal with them is to verbally or legally bi+ch slap them as soon as they start something.
I had to do that to two at my (soon to be ex) doctors office.
Went in to get shingles shot # 2 and they brought me into a room with two ( ? ) big gals and an unmarked syringe that had been prepped.
I had already gone a couple of rounds with the doctor about the "vaccine" and when I saw that I told them absolutely no way, get out and come back with the unopened vials and a fresh syringe.
They were stammering and wide-eyed, went and got the PA that immediately got it and them out.
The PA brought out the correct two viles, I inspected them, one was the vax and one was the mixer, all ok.
Walked out without the pneumonia shot I was scheduled for, told the assistant up front to bill me the co-pay.
Funnest thing, that was three weeks ago and I have not heard a word or gotten a bill from them.
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When I was 12 living a suburb of Los Angeles my folks would go to Las Vegas for a couple of days leaving my sister of 14 and I alone in our home together.
I knew how to cook, clean cut the grass, sew, do the dishes, laundry and nearly everything else I needed to take care of myself along with my sister.
We enjoyed their faith that we’d take care of each other and carry on like they’d taught us.
My father also taught me how to hunt as a kid in rural Michigan and I have never been afraid. I have since i was 10 how to use a weapon like any tool as necessary.
I am no different than so many other kids in the world whose folks taught them self reliance.
God bless you Mam.
Take care and Always be safe.
I was a city girl…..we were alone once my brother entered 2nd grade and I entered 5th grade. My mother had to work because my father died when we were 5 and 2.
We were very independent.
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