LAPD vows to audit 4,000 cases of serious child abuse not investigated since 2018
The top commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s juvenile detectives faced tough questioning from L.A. County commissioners Monday, a day after revelations that thousands of cases of serious child abuse in the city were not investigated over roughly the past year-and-a-half.
Capt. Paul Espinosa, chief of the LAPD’s Juvenile Division, said his staff would conduct an audit of the reports his detectives apparently did not follow up to determine what happened in each case.
An investigation by The Chronicle for Social Change, in partnership with the Southern California News Group, found the LAPD did not investigate at least 4,000 cases of serious child abuse from January 2018 to July 2019, according to data from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.
The cases all came to LAPD detectives from a countywide electronic cross-reporting system or were reported to city police stations.
Commissioners alarmed
Members of the L.A. County Commission for Children and Families — still reeling from the deaths of two children at the hands of their parents this year and last, even after multiple interventions by the Department of Children and Family Services in both cases — said they were alarmed at the number of cases that were not investigated over nearly the same time span.
Of about 24,000 cases of child abuse reported to LAPD in 2018, about 10 percent were not investigated, according to the analysis. In some divisions, however, the rate was lower — in LAPD’s 77th Division in South L.A., for example, fewer than 80 percent of cases were investigated over the 18-month period.
“Some of these cases are quite serious,” Commissioner Wendy Garen said. “What I’m most troubled by is that in some of the jurisdictions, the non-response rate is even higher than 10 percent. … There’s something very troubling going on there.”
Sometimes, these cases end in death. In L.A’s County’s Service Protection Area covering South L.A., 20 children were killed in homes previously investigated by DCFS from 2015 to 2018.
Most cases referred to LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department come through DCFS. Those cases include “allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, severe neglect, emotional abuse, and exploitation,” according to the agency’s guidelines. Agencies countywide share reports of child abuse through the E-SCARS cross-reporting system, which was developed for DCFS, the Sheriff’s Department and the D.A.’s Office.
‘Nothing has gone untouched’
Espinosa declined to answer questions about the discrepancy between different LAPD divisions until after the audit is finished. He also said some of the 4,000 cases could be duplicates.
He told commissioners that detectives often defer investigations on child abuse cases if the behavior reported doesn’t rise to the level of a crime. Both LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department require officers to investigate all suspected reports of child abuse.
“Everything is looked at,” Espinosa said. “Nothing has gone untouched or un-looked at.”
Questions about what happened in some of the county’s most egregious examples of child neglect that ended in death remain unanswered.
In July, 4-year-old Noah Cuatro was found dead at his Palmdale home. His parents, who told sheriff’s deputies their son drowned in their pool, were arrested in September and eventually charged with murder and torture in the boy’s death.
Before the family moved to Palmdale, Cuatro was living with his parents in North Hills, within LAPD jurisdiction. District Attorney’s Office records show the LAPD was informed twice of allegations that Cuatro was being sexually abused inside the home. Those calls came on April 17 and May 15. DCFS also investigated Cuatro’s mother numerous times since 2014.
The L.A. County Office of Child Protection requested information from LAPD investigators about what action the department took in Noah’s case, but has received no information. Multiple LAPD officials have declined to comment about the particulars of the case.
Jeremy Loudenback of The Chronicle for Social Change contributed to this report.