Parents win lawsuit against police

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

San Jose ordered to pay $3.2M in child seizure suit

In the largest recent judgment against San Jose police, a federal jury on Friday awarded a family $3.25 million after siding with the parents, who accused officers of stealing their young children and placing them in protective custody.

The award came two days after a U.S. District Court jury in San Jose ruled that detective William Hoyt and Sgt. Craig Blank violated the constitutional rights of Tracy Watson, Renee Stalker and their children after the officers entered their home without a warrant in 2005 and seized the children, who were kept from their parents for more than a year.

"It's the most horrific thing (that) no parent should ever have to go through, no child should ever have to go through," Watson, 49, a marketer who now lives in Napa, said Friday. The "police charging into your house, stealing your kids."

At the time, police had become alarmed by the strange sexual behavior exhibited by the family's 8-year-old daughter, and the father's lack of cooperation during their abuse investigation. But the family argued the girl had never told investigators she had been molested, and there was no evidence of abuse.

This sounds like my case, in that the cops seized my daughters from our home, my girls made no allegation of molestation or anything else irregular, and the govt investigators found no evidence of abuse. My case was different in that I had cooperated fully with investigators, and the cops had a warrant from Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph. Cmr. Joseph issued an order without even seeing the CPS report that said that no instance of abuse had been found, and that there was nothing unusual about the kids' behavior.

The bigger scandal is that it took 1.5 years for these parents to get their daughter back, and it has taken me over 3 years so far to get my daughters back. These authorities are evil. There is no milder word that is appropriate.

I have been waiting a year for a decision from the current judge, Judge Heather Morse. No one has even presented any allegation of abuse in her court, and yet she keeps stalling. I don't know how these people sleep at night, when they are carrying out such destructive policies.