This story appeared @Yahoonews today. This case exemplifies why the Fascist Republican party continues to push for states’ rights as they try to demonize the federal Government.
The idea is to continue the system of oppression and abuse that the United States has engaged in since the start of the Republic. More importantly, the story speaks to the unchecked power placed in the hands of police to make decisions they are not qualified to make but decisions that are extremely dangerous to people they want to use the color of the law to oppress.
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A Georgia couple say they are grappling with “indescribable pain” of losing custody of their five children — ages 7, 6, 3, 2 and 4 months — after a traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol that civil rights organizations have called “targeted.”
“I’m used to waking up every two to three hours to breastfeed or when it’s time to go to school, waking the kids up, going to school, going to the bus stop. We alternate,” Bianca Clayborne, the mother of the children, told Yahoo News. “When it’s time to come from school, we see the bus. It’s painful because our kids are not coming off the bus.”
More than a month ago, on Feb. 17, a Tennessee state trooper pulled over Deonte Williams, the children’s father, for an alleged traffic violation. The family had been traveling from their home near Atlanta to Chicago for a relative’s funeral. Police say that he was stopped because he had dark-tinted windows and was driving in a left lane without actively passing. The state trooper searched the car after saying they smelled marijuana and claimed to have found five grams of it. The trooper arrested Williams, while Clayborne was cited and released.
According to court records, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services approached Clayborne’s car in the parking lot of the Coffee County Justice Center where she followed Williams after he was arrested. They tried, unsuccessfully, to get the mother to submit a urine test while she waited with her children in the parking lot.
“The mother became very defiant and locked herself and the children in the vehicle,” court records stated. “Officer Crabtree then placed spike strips around the vehicle so the mother would not leave the premises.”
Hours later, as Clayborne was sitting down at the justice center waiting for Williams’s release, DCS personnel approached her and removed her children. The agency says that the children were “dependent and neglected” and there was “no less drastic alternative to removal available.”
Court records from Coffee County show that the couple was charged with simple possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor in Tennessee, on Feb. 21.
According to the Tennessee Lookout, the parents were asked to submit urine drug tests when they appeared before a Coffee County juvenile judge. Williams tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, on a urine drug screen administered Feb. 23. Clayborne tested negative for THC.
The agency then amended their claim on Feb. 24, claiming the children should be deemed “severely abused” after results of a rapid hair follicle test came back positive from both parents for methamphetamines, oxycodone and fentanyl. Clayborne and Williams have denied the use of those drugs. A Coffee County court administrator told the Lookout that rapid hair follicle tests are inadmissible in court. One expert said that the tests can be unreliable, and the fact that court staff are not trained laboratory technicians can lead to “too many false positives.”Read the full story here.https://news.yahoo.com/parents-plead-for-their-kids-return-after-children-taken-into-custody-during-traffic-stop-090005992.html