New York homeless children's search for shelter often ends in handcuffs

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/16/new-york-homeless-shelter-missing-children-handcuffs

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A New York City shelter that houses homeless children before placing them in foster care filed almost 1,600 missing persons complaints to the local police precinct, and often had the children brought back to the facility in handcuffs once they were found, according to an investigation by local news site DNAinfo.

The shelter for the Administration of Children’s Services filed 1,583 missing persons reports between February 2013 and March 2014 when children didn’t return as expected, the investigation found. In some cases, two reports a day were made about the same child.

“They could care less if the kids are dead or alive,” Rosemarie Rutigliano told DNAinfo. Rutigliano’s 16-year-old daughter went missing for two weeks after she walked out of the facility. Her daughter returned to her mother’s home two weeks later.

A spokesperson for ACS said staff at the facility currently file missing person reports and ask for a family court warrants when children don’t return as expected. When a warrant is issued, police arrest the child and bring them back to the facility – sometimes in handcuffs. Critics say the practices criminalizes children when they’ve done nothing wrong.

Staff at the facility allow children as young as 12 to come and go as they please, and the shelter is not locked.

ACS spokesperson Chris Mckniff told the Guardian the administrators are attempting to avoid warrants for children, but couldn’t answer whether that would necessarily decrease the number of children brought back to the facility handcuffed.

Instead, Mckniff said the family court was responsible for handcuffing children. “That’s part of the instructions that come from the family court, whether it’s handcuffs or no handcuffs,” said Mckniff.

Mckniff said the facility has changed procedures and now calls police after waiting up to 24 hours.

“So [when] a child a 16-year-old child wants to go to the store, this is not something where, I don’t think the children’s services needs to get involved,” said Mckniff, referring to children in ACS custody coming and going from the facility. “We engage the young person before they leave, we ask them where they’re going, what time they’re going to be back, um, in certain circumstances we’ll encourage them not to go, but again, this is not a locked facility,” said Mckniff.

The OCFS, a New York state office, did not immediately return calls to the Guardian for comment, but told DNAinfo that it “conducts regular site visits”.

DNAinfo also discovered that the shelter has operated without a proper certificate of occupancy since it opened in 2001 in a converted office building. A certificate of occupancy, often called a “C-O-O”, proves a space is safe to use for a specific purpose.

“If they want to use the second floor the way they want to use it, they need to modify the [certificate of occupancy] to reflect that,” New York City Department of Buildings spokesperson Alex Schnell told DNAinfo Tuesday morning. “They’re in the process of modifying it.”