Crime & Safety
Kids Wander Streets Near-Naked; Mom Gets 24th Child Welfare Call
Tosa officers and citizens try to help and eventually return boys to their mother, but it turns out she's not keeping the best nest, with 23 prior complaints of neglect.
Wauwatosa police were inclined to some sympathy with a mother whose two tots were found wandering almost naked in East Tosa.
Then they found out she already had 23 referrals to Milwaukee County Child Welfare, including more in which the the now 4- and 5-year-old kids had been out of the house without supervision while she slept.
In this case, she conked out on the couch with an infant third child early in the evening while her two little boys left the house barely clothed and couldn't – or wouldn't – show concerned citizens or police the way home.
According to police reports:
At 8:41 p.m. last Friday, police were called to the 2600 block of North 65th Street by a woman who said she'd seen one of two very young children almost hit by a car while they ran around nearly naked in the neighborhood.
One was wearing a diaper and the other underpants, and both were wearing rain boots, but nothing else. One ran south almost to Meinecke Avenue, she said.
The woman stopped and caught up both boys and walked with them in an attempt to find their home. She stopped at a neighbor's house to see if he might recognize the children. He didn't, and they decided to call the police. The man provided the boys with his own undershirts so they would have some kind of clothing.
A tense walk in the park
When police arrived, one boy said their mother was "at home" but didn't say where that was. Beyond that, he would say only that he wanted to go to the park. The other child was completely uncommunicative and appeared to have some sort of cognitive disability.
The officer, boys and witnesses began to walk toward Center Street Park, and the officer asked the kids to please tell him if they recognized their home. They didn't, and all arrived at the park.
There, the officer said, both "became interested in the playground equipment" and he couldn't even get their attention again. He called the Milwaukee police to see if they had any reports of missing children in the area, but they had none.
After about 10 minutes of this futility, he reported, two women came walking down 64th Street from the north, calling out names. It was by then 9:15 p.m.
'Sincerely scared' mother appears
One of the women said she was the boys' mother, and the officer reported that she seemed "sincerely scared for the boys' safety." She said she had put them to bed at 7:45 and then lay down on the couch with her baby to get her to sleep.
Instead, she said, she fell asleep, woke up around 8:30 and went to check on the boys. Seeing they were gone, she became frantic, she said, and asked neighbors to help her find them and to watch her baby while she was gone.
The woman kept telling the younger boy, the officer said, that "You know better," even as he pointed out that the child had just turned 4.
She also told a complicated story about having a chain lock on her back door but none on her front door, so she jams a putty knife between the door and jamb to keep it secure. She said the boys could turn the deadbolt but couldn't reach the knife – however, she had forgotten to wedge the knife in after they had been out playing with squirt-guns in the afternoon.
She also admitted the boys had gotten out once before, over the winter, under similar circumstances.
The officer asked her to repeat the entire story for verification, which she did, and when he asked her if she was co-sleeping on a couch with her infant, she said, "Yeah, like everyone else."
The officer discussed the situation with a supervising sergeant, and with some hesitation they decided the woman's story was plausible and they released the children to her without arrest. But, they said, they would have to contact the Child Welfare office.
Not the 1st time, nor the 23rd
When they did, they heard a different story.
A Child Welfare officer told Tosa police the woman had 23 prior complaints, 20 of which resulted in face-to-face contacts with Child Welfare officials. She also told them that one incident in the fall of 2012 also involved the two boys running around unsupervised in the same area.
A check of Wauwatosa police records also turned up a report filed on Jan. 19 in which officers found the boys running around the Center Street Park area. When they took them home, they had found the boys' mother asleep.
Given all that, a full report of last Friday's incident was forwarded to Child Welfare for review and possible action.
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