State doesn't know whether CPS workers are law-abiding, non-violent

State doesn't know whether CPS workers are law-abiding, non-violent (These are the people being entrusted with our children)
07:44 AM CST on Thursday, November 19, 2009

By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – The state, despite efforts to tighten background checks, still doesn't know for sure whether Child Protective Services employees are law-abiding and nonviolent.

CPS officials admit that the case of a North Texas supervisor, who didn't disclose her arrests on charges of drunken driving and assaulting her husband with a lamp, gives them pause.

"Yes we are, obviously" concerned, CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said Wednesday. "All employees are required to report these incidents – required to. It is not a suggestion."

Crimmins said state protective services agencies have "a solid policy" for staying alert to past and ongoing misconduct by employees. But CPS' ignorance of a Fort Worth mid-level manager's scrapes with the law illustrates how hard it is to fully vet a workforce of literally thousands of workers who hold sensitive jobs.

CPS and its parent agency, the Department of Family and Protective Services, rely on an "honor system" of self-reporting.

But after news stories last year that the department was unaware of employees' criminal convictions, officials decided to check each of its 10,660 employees every 12 months against a criminal-history database managed by the Department of Public Safety.

DPS' database is riddled with holes, though. The Dallas Morning News has reported extensively on failures by many counties, including Dallas County, to notify DPS of outcomes of many criminal cases, even though state law requires notification.

A newly passed law appears to have improved counties' reporting, but big gaps from past years have spawned a cottage industry of background-check firms, which buy lists from counties and do more thorough checks.

Crimmins said the department has not considered asking the Legislature for money to hire such firms, until the DPS system can be fixed, but "it is something that we could look into."

Sen. Jane Nelson, a Flower Mound Republican who is the Senate's chief social services policy writer, said Texas is making some progress. She cited her bill last session that requires FBI fingerprint checks of employees for private contractors who provide state-paid services to vulnerable populations.

"The accuracy and timeliness of criminal background checks have come a long way, but more work is needed," she said. "Because resources are limited, it is important that we prioritize our resources on the vetting process with individuals who have the most direct access with our vulnerable population."

Recent actions by Fort Worth CPS supervisor Lauren Taylor, though, show that the honor system and DPS-database runs are far from airtight checks.

Taylor, 27, who has worked for CPS for nearly four years, was arrested on misdemeanor assault charges at 1 a.m. on Sept. 11 at a luxury hotel in New York City.

According to a criminal complaint and an account in the New York Post , her husband, Jeffrey Taylor, told police she had struck him in the face with a lamp, scratched his face and bit him in the arm during an altercation.

Lauren Taylor said Wednesday that she didn't harm him and that the charge is bogus.

"We're working to get this false allegation dissolved and dismissed as soon as possible," she said.

She said a lawyer advised her to tell no one about the arrest. Taylor said she didn't realize she must promptly report any arrest to her supervisor, though all department employees had to sign a paper in October 2008 saying they understood they are obligated to report any arrest within five days.

She said she mistakenly thought the policy applied only to convictions.

In her job, Taylor has "no face-to-face contact with children or families," Crimmins said.

CPS, which did not know about the incident until The Dallas Morning News inquired about it late last month, also was unaware of Taylor's February 2008 drunken-driving arrest in Dallas until alerted by the newspaper, Crimmins said.

In October 2008, the charge was reduced to obstructing highway passageway, and she was given deferred adjudication. Though records indicate she had nine months of probation, Taylor said she recalls only having to pay fines.

Crimmins said his department checked all employees in North Texas against the DPS database in August but can't explain why it found nothing about the DUI arrest of Taylor, who at the time of her arrest was unmarried and went by another name.

"We do not know definitively why not, but it could have been the name change/limitations of the DPS system," he wrote in an e-mail.

DPS official Angela Kendall, who maintains the database, said promising new efforts are underway to improve counties' reporting, mainly because of a law authored this year by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano. It requires low-reporting counties such as Dallas to create panels of court clerks, police and computer specialists to craft remedial plans.

Most have, she said, and already there have been improvements. However, Kendall confirmed that in the DPS system, half or more of Dallas County arrests from 2001 and 2002 still show no resolution – whether conviction, acquittal or dismissal.

Crimmins said 20 protective services workers have self-reported their arrests since his department re-emphasized the honor system 13 months ago. Nine were for drunken driving. The most serious involved an altercation at a Houston-area apartment complex last January, in which a CPS caseworker reported running over the foot of an off-duty sheriff's deputy. Crimmins said that worker's subsequent dismissal was one of "a handful" caused by the self-disclosures.

Department records show Taylor was admonished two weeks ago for not reporting the New York arrest. She's ineligible for merit pay raises and certain other privileges for six months.

Taylor said she also was punished for not reporting last year's drunken-driving arrest, though she wouldn't elaborate, saying she'd been "instructed not to comment about my work status at this point or any punishment."

Crimmins said part of Taylor's job is to monitor how well 400 child-abuse investigators in Tarrant, Denton and eight other counties follow CPS policies. She is executive assistant to a regional program administrator over all of those workers.

"I do not believe that this affects my ability whatsoever to work for CPS," Taylor said. "I acknowledge that I did make that procedural mistake of not reporting, and that's not going to happen again."