Feb 8, 2020 By: yunews
Daniel Pollack, professor at , has co-authored 鈥淭he role of law enforcement in child welfare checks鈥 with Carly Sanchez in the January issue of . Sanchez is a personal injury attorney in the Law Offices of Booth &Koskoff in Torrance, California, where she focuses on representing child abuse victims in civil lawsuits.
After analyzing the tensions between the requirements of law enforcement and child safety, they conclude that 鈥渂alancing the privacy interests provided in the Fourth Amendment and children鈥檚 protection from abuse and neglect is challenging and fraught with uncertainty. While courts cannot condone law enforcement officials routinely conducting warrantless searches in the name of preventing child abuse, the need to ensure that children are safe in their homes is a paramount concern. Courts have tried to marry these two conflicting needs with the community care-taking exception to the Fourth Amendment, and both social services and law enforcement need nuanced instruction on exactly when child welfare checks are warranted to save children from extreme harm.鈥
