No More Violence Week is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week as an event designed to raise awareness in the community about challenging topics, including child abuse, intimate partner violence, family violence, trauma, human trafficking, missing and murdered indigenous people, addiction, suicide, mental health, isolation and more.
As part of that effort, local law enforcement officers are involved through a national drug endangered children training and approach to spot, investigate and hopefully prevent dangers to children.
These interviews are part of a collaboration between The Electric, REP Space and the No More Violence Week organizers.
Det. Katie Cunningham of the Great Falls Police Department oversees the special victims unit and school resource officers.
She’s also the past president on the board of the Dandelion Foundation.
Cunningham said it’s a relatively new school of thought to focus on the children exposed to drugs.
She said they’ve come to understand it more through the opioid epidemic, and realized there was a gap in awareness during COVID, when children weren’t in school or seeing healthcare providers or other mandatory reporters who could make law enforcement aware of any child abuse, neglect or endangerment.
“There’s a main victim in all of these drug offenses and it’s the kids being raised in these homes that have drug misuse or alcohol misuse. What’s happening is these kids are testing positive for illicit narcotics, they’re ingesting narcotics and nearly dying. We’ve had children pass away from ingesting narcotics on accident,” Cunningham said. “It’s really sad to see these children living in these homes. Because not only are they at risk for the exposure, they’re at risk for neglect, physical abuse, they’re rates of sexual abuse skyrocket for risk. Going to school, and sometimes schools are the only safe environment for these kids, and they’re coming back home to a neglectful family because of this addiction and substance misuse that are happening at home.”
During COVID when children weren’t seeing the same people regularly, such as teachers or daycare providers, law enforcement took a step back and realized they needed a better plan to watch for and investigate these types of cases, Cunningham said, so they decided to offer the national DEC training.
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They brought in the trainers to educate a group of locals on how to recognize drug endangered children and ways to help. People in that group are now able to help train others in the community, raising awareness, Cunningham said.
“A lot of parents are using in the home and they don’t realize that they’re exposing their kids. They think they’re being safe about it. They’re using it in the bathroom, or they’re using it in the garage or the car,” Cunningham said. “But what they weren’t realizing at the time, when they ingest these drugs in any particular way, it’s leaving the particles and the hazards around them, on their body and the surfaces around them, and the kids were getting exposed that way. Because what do toddlers do, they put everything in their mouth. So when they’re walking around and putting things in their mouth they’re actually getting exposure that way.”
She said part of the effort is also education, to make parents aware that they might be exposing their children to drugs without realizing it.
Historically, she said referrals to law enforcement for drug endangered children were difficult because they didn’t know how to address them in terms of keeping families together but also holding parents accountable.
She said it was decided it best to have GFPD’s special victims unit handle those cases and work with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services help investigate and manage.
The idea grew out of the Dandelion Foundation, when they saw the need for the program and trained about 23 community members on DEC and then be able to administer the training to others on how to intervene and help change the trajectory of children’s lives, she said.
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Law enforcement’s manning and ability to investigate these types of cases has significantly diminished, she said, “we just don’t have the resources. We still see it as a priority and we still address them all together, but there’s a lot of them that we just don’t get to and it’s really hard to swallow that pill.”
Cunningham said that came with the need to involve other agencies and resources to help address the cases and associated issues.
Part of that is getting the community interested and participating.
“What piece can I do, what part can I play as a community member to keep kids safe? It’s really hard for people to step out of their own personal life and kinda look at that and be like what can I do to help these other kids. It’s not always going to be about money. It’s not. It’s going to be about am I a positive person in these children’s life and am I seeing what I need to be able to see ot report,’ Cunningham said. “It’s that piece, it’s getting the interest too sometimes. It’s a hard subject to talk about, same thing with sexual abuse, people just don’t want to find the time to talk about sexual abuse, it’s a hard topic. Drug endangered kids and kids dying from drug exposure is the same thing.”
Cunningham said she wished the community had a better understanding of how pervasive drugs were in the community.
“I wish we as a community could see the impact that drugs are having on kids. People often times will look and say oh drugs it’s a victimless crime, people have said that for years. But it’s not. The victims are right in front of us. The victims are the kids walking in out of these homes with these caregivers,” Cunningham said. “They’re the ones that are being exposed and they’re the ones that we can really truly give our time and attention to and truly make a difference in somebody’s life so I wish we had a better grasp on that as a community.”
She said children, ranging from toddlers to high school seniors, know what drug use is because they’re seeing it their homes.
There’s resources available to help them get out of the situation and move the family forward in a healthy new direction.
“People need help, especially if you’re struggling with a substance issue or an addiction, you’re very unlikely to get that help my yourself. You’ve got to reach out,” Cunningham said. “It’s really hard to watch people struggle day in and day out knowing the resources are right in front of us and we’re not taking the opportunity to use them.”
The DEC training is helping raise awareness, she said, and helping with prevention or reporting instances of drug endangered children.
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“It’s going to increase caseload, it’s going to increase our work,” Cunningham said. “But in the long run, we’re really hoping in makes a difference in this community specifically, because our drugs in the city run deep. They run deep in every circle of our society and if we don’t do something to make a difference now, I’m concerned on where we’re headed.”
Det. Angel Creech of the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office is now the president of the Dandelion Foundation and is also a DEC trainer.
Creech said there’s a “huge nexxus” between child abuse and drugs.
She said that the foundation’s effort is to work on child abuse prevention through education and awareness and in her work as a detective, she investigated crimes against children.
“Education is a huge challenge that we’re facing in our community. People really understanding the effects that substances and substance use can have on children. That it’s happening everywhere,” Creech said. “I think that we’re all aware that there is a drug problem in our community and just seeing that this is affecting our children.”
She said she wishes the community was more aware of the impact on children, whether it be their own substance use or whether they know of someone using substances.
“That goes for not only our illegal drugs, but also our legal drugs. We know marijuana is now legal, alcohol is legal, prescription medication is legal. But any time that we have those substances around children or using those substances and being the caretaker of a child, it really puts our children at risk,” she said. “If you suspect that a child is at risk of being exposed to drugs, or being mistreated, abused or neglected, I really wish that people understood that coming forward is better than not doing anything at all. Because if we don’t know what’s happening in the community, we can’t help those kids. So I really wish people understood it’s’ better to speak up and to be wrong than to say nothing at all and to be right.”
She echoed Cunningham and said those struggling should reach out of help as there are resources in the community.
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“What we want is our children to be able to not carry on those traits and substance abuse issues that we have,” Creech said, and early intervention is helpful. “Our motive isn’t to separate families or take children away from their parents, but it’s really to get those families healthy again. I think it’s just really important that we all understand that this is happening in our community. It’s not something that’s’ isolated to bigger cities or more populous states. Cascade County, this is a problem that we are facing, so for people to be aware to protect the kids that they have the ability to protect and then to speak out for those that maybe don’t have a voice speaking for themselves.”
Det. Scott Fisher is a detective with GFPD’s special victims unit and he focuses on drug endangered children cases.
He said that traditionally the drug task force investigates drug cases, but it became apparent that they needed something more specialized in dealing with children. Special victims unit detectives are specifically trained to handle cases involving children, he said, so now he takes those cases while the task force continues handling the adults.
Previously, children were often being placed with families or friends that, for lack of a better process, were also dealing with substance abuse issues.
Fisher said his job is to prevent child abuse or do what he can to hold those accountable and make sure they get treatment or help so it doesn’t happen again.
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“There’s a huge misconception that whenever detectives go out that were just there to arrest everybody,” he said. But in drug endangered children cases, “yes they need to be held accountable for their actions, but addiction is just that, it is a disease, so if we can keep the family together by getting the family members or the parents the help that they need, that’s the ultimate goal.”
It doesn’t always work, he said, but they try to educate parents on how they’re exposing their children.
“We’ve had success and failures, just like any other type of organization, but the successes are what keep you pushing on,” he said.
Children who have been exposed will exhibit the same symptoms of intoxication and withdrawal, which is challenging for law enforcement and other involved agencies.
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Fisher said that in the case of newborns who are testing positive for drugs, law enforcement can’t do anything since the exposure happened in utero and in Montana, a child isn’t a child until it’s physically born. In those cases, he said they rely on DPHHS to intervene and help with services.
He said he went from having one or two cases every few days to daily over the last five years.
“We need to figure out a way as a community how to help these children out, not just the children, but also help the families out. Do they need to go to jail all the time, yeah, some of them do. But more importantly, we need the recovery. We need a way to get them back on the right track, that’ll save these children from falling into the same cycle as their parents did.”
He said that since they started the DEC training and increasing awareness that they’re getting more cases. He said that awareness, coupled with increases in drug use, is driving the case load up.
“We have a dire need for these kinds of resources in the City of Great Falls, who’s going to step up and help. That’s the challenge,” he said.
They’ve had cases of a child being removed from a home at 18 months old with drug exposure and it could be a decade before the child is back to living what most would consider a normal life.
In some cases, drug exposed children get adopted, which can also be hard for the child and the families as they navigate those symptoms and withdrawals.
“I want the community to know, it’s a long-term problem. We have short-term fixes, but what’s going to happen in the long-term? We need that long-term fix, we need that long-term care for the child that maybe was exposed at six months, and it takes a couple years for that child to realized that’s not the norm. What happens when we remove a child at 12 years old, that’s all they’ve known for 12 years? How can the community help us wrap around that child and get them to this is not your norm, let’s get you to what is normal. That’s what I want the community know, we need help.”
To drug endangered children in the community, Fisher said he’d tell them, “you’re not alone. There are groups of us out there that are specifically tasked with your safety. We are going to come help you.”
To other community members, Fisher said, “we need your help. There’s no ifs ands or buts about it. It’s not just our road to travel. It’s not just DFS’ road to travel or the center for mental health. It’s the cashiers at the grocery store that can witness something or see something off. It’s the cable repair guy that’s in the house and maybe sees something that’s not right tp him that reports it. It’s everybody involved. That’s where the community needs to get involved so It’s not what you’d call stereotypical first responders, or somebody that deals with children on a daily basis like the daycares or the schools. It’s the community members. It’s the ones that you wouldn’t even think about seeing. It’s the department store workers that see the parents and their children walking into their store, do they see something odd that they don’t really know. That would be something to report. It could save a child’s life or it could be nothing. We don’t know unless you let us know.”
