Daniel Heimpel

It didn’t take George Floyd’s killing at the hands of the police for me to recognize that I have been complicit in state-executed violence against black families. But it did take his murder and the protests that have roiled the nation since to compel me to articulate it, which is shameful.

On Thursday, March 19, Jerry Milner of the federal Children’s Bureau is teaming up with former foster youth and tech entrepreneur Sixto Cancel to co-host a virtual town hall inviting foster youth to contribute to the fight against the coronavirus. 

At 2:50 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, I picked up my 5-year-old boy from school for the last time in the foreseeable future. Teddy hugged two of his little friends while I ushered him out, alongside my neighbor and his little girl Odette.

This week, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) released a much-anticipated report focused on its response to the nearly 4,000 allegations of serious child abuse it had marked “no investigation” from January 2018 through June 2019.

This summer, a 4-year-old boy named Noah Cuatro was allegedly tortured and killed by his parents in Palmdale, a high desert exurb of Los Angeles County. The tragedy is still sending shockwaves through the county’s $2.9 billion child welfare agency and local government.

The first recorded sign of trouble in the brief life of Noah Cuatro came before he was even born. In August 2014, when his mother was nine months pregnant with Noah, she allegedly threw her baby sister, fracturing the 10-month-old’s skull in two places.

On Monday, the tension that has gripped Los Angeles County’s child welfare establishment since the mysterious July death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro spilled out into public view. At a meeting of the county’s Commission for Children and Families, the chiefs of both the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the Office of Child Protection (OCP) grew visibly and audibly frustrated with commissioners’ questions about the Cuatro case.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County’s Office of Child Protection (OCP) released a report absolving the county’s child welfare system of wrongdoing in the suspicious death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro.  The boy died on July 6, a day after his parents had called 911 to say that he had drowned.

On August 30, the Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection (OCP) submitted a potentially explosive report on the mysterious July death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro to county attorneys. Despite being requested by the county’s powerful Board of Supervisors, the report has yet to be made public, leaving yawning questions unresolved as L.A.’s