The Arkansas Department of Human Services is performing a review after West Memphis Police Department officers couldn’t get ahold of agency personnel to assist with a baby found in a restaurant parking lot this week, an agency spokesman said Saturday.
Capt. Joe Baker, who oversees all enforcement operations for West Memphis police, said finding the baby Wednesday was just the latest of his department’s “chronic problems” with the Department of Human Services that span years.
“At ground level, it is a horribly run organization,” he said Saturday.
On Wednesday, officers were called to the Krystal at 1804 N. Missouri St. around 2:20 p.m. on a report of a baby being left in the parking lot. The restaurant’s manager and a customer brought the baby, who was in a carrier, back inside and waited for police, Baker said.
Officers determined he was unharmed but found a prescription pill with him in the carrier. The parents, who had realized they left their child behind, arrived at the restaurant after police. Baker said both Chris, 19, and Savanna Poindexter, 20, were taken into custody and face child-endangerment and drug charges.
As the parents were arrested around 2:55 p.m., police began calling numbers on a list that the Department of Human Services had given them in September. Dispatchers tried two numbers that were unsuccessful, and Baker’s calls to the area director and local DHS office also went unanswered.
“At that point, we kind of ran out of options,” he said.
Police then managed to contact to baby’s grandmother, he said, and determined she could care for the child in lieu of his parents.
Amy Webb, a Department of Human Services spokesman, said the four employees on the list were each unavailable when West Memphis police called Wednesday. One of them was on leave, another was in Little Rock without cell-phone service and the last two were busy in an interview.
Two and a half hours after the baby was found, Cyndi Rowlett, the area director, was able to speak with Police Chief Donald Oakes.
“We’re working to address it so we don’t have this issue again,” Webb said. “The process just didn’t work in this situation.”
That process was instituted after DHS officials met with West Memphis police in September. Baker said he, Oakes, Rowlett and Division of Child and Family Services Director Mischa Martin were there to implement the agency’s phone-call system.
The meeting came after a Sept. 19. incident in which police found a 15-year-old boy who had been hit in the head with a pool cue by his mother, Baker said. The boy had a cut that needed stitches.
It took 17 calls — 22 minutes — to contact the Crittenden County’s Department of Human Services caseworker who didn’t want to drive to West Memphis to help take the boy to a hospital in Memphis, Baker said.
After 41 minutes, the paramedics decided to take the boy to Forrest City Medical Center in St. Francis County — out of the case worker’s jurisdiction.
It wasn’t the first time West Memphis officers were taken off the street to care for children. Baker said officers and dispatchers in recent years have been forced to babysit for hours, sometimes even buying diapers and food.
Police decided to keep the September issue out of the public eye, but after the processed failed Wednesday, Baker and Oakes publicized their displeasure with the Department of Human Services in an attempt to force action.
“We’re to the point where they have to do something to make some changes,” Baker said.
The department is reviewing Wednesday’s situation and administrators “understand [officers’] frustration,” Webb said. She added that Rowlett will visit the West Memphis area more often and the department is looking to hire additional case workers.
While a sharp critic of the department, Baker said West Memphis police want to partner well with the department, saying he was “cautiously optimistic” upon seeing its response.