A Georgia couple say they are struggling with “indescribable pain” from losing custody of their five children — ages 7, 6, 3, 2 and 4 months — following a traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol that killed civil rights groups. targeted”. ”
“I’m used to waking up every two to three hours to breastfeed or when it’s time to go to school, wake up the kids, go to school, go to the bus stop. We take turns,” Bianca Clayborne, the children’s mother, told Yahoo News. “When it’s time to get out of school, we see the bus. It is painful because our children are not coming out of the bus.”
More than a month ago, on February 17, a Tennessee state police officer pulled over Deonte Williams, the children’s father, for an alleged traffic violation. The family had traveled from their home near Atlanta to Chicago for a relative’s funeral. Police say he was pulled over for having dark tinted windows and driving in a left lane without actively overtaking. The state agent searched the car after saying she 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 they followed Williams after he was arrested. They unsuccessfully tried to get the mother to submit a urine test as she did so waited in the parking lot with her children.
“The mother became very defiant and locked herself and the children in the vehicle,” the court said. “Officer Crabtree then placed spike strips around the vehicle so that the mother would not leave the premises.”
Hours later, as Clayborne sat in the justice center awaiting Williams’ release, DCS personnel approached her and removed her children. The agency says the children were “dependent and neglected” and that “no less drastic alternative to removal was available”.
Coffee County court records show that on Feb. 21, the couple was charged with simple possession of a controlled substance, a Tennessee felony.
According to the Tennessee Lookout, the parents were asked to submit urine drug tests when they appeared before a Coffee County juvenile court judge. Williams tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, on a urine test administered on Feb. 23. Clayborne tested negative for THC.
The agency then amended their claim on Feb. 24, claiming the children should be considered “severely abused” following the results of a rapid hair follicle test came back positive from both parents for methamphetamines, oxycodone and fentanyl. Clayborne and Williams have denied using those drugs. A Coffee County court administrator told the Lookout that rapid hair follicle tests are inadmissible in court. An expert said the tests could be unreliable and the fact that court staff are not trained lab technicians could lead to “too many false positives”.
“The state should never rely on instant results,” Greg Bowen, owner of the Nashville-based ReliaLab Test, told me. the lookout. (Bowen is not involved in this particular case.)
The couple called the National Action Network (NAN), a civil rights organization founded by Reverend Al Sharpton that promotes the right to equal justice under the law, after asking multiple lawyers for help after they couldn’t understand why their children were being taken away.
“I met Mr. Williams after a crisis meeting, and with my knowledge of policy and law, I knew right away there was a problem,” Christina Laster, an education consultant at NAN, told Yahoo News.
Smear claimed that the state police, who claimed they detained the family over tinted windows, “became judge, jury, and possibly the destroyer of the family at that point. And that is too much power for one entity. So we actively started seeking legal help.”
Smear said NAN began investigating the Tennessee code and encountered “vague and ambiguous language” in their composite laws about child welfare. Then she noted a subsection of the law that said parents could have their children removed for immoral reasons.
“There’s a connection here, a well-oiled machine, that transfers one thing to another, and they know how to target certain people,” Laster said.
“So then I asked where their ticket was. If you committed a crime I must understand, were you ‘Mirandized’? Slander said, referring to reading someone’s rights under arrest. “[Williams] said ‘they told Bianca to follow him to the station. It was just a ticket.’ But when she got there, DCS was waiting. So they had a great lack of understanding of their rights. That is the whole purpose of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.”
The parents are limited to texting, calling or using iPads to communicate with their children, which they do between traveling back and forth from Georgia to Tennessee for visits and following court orders, such as submitting drug tests.
The children are now in the foster care system and have been placed in multiple homes since February before being placed into the care of family friend Sheryl Huff of Nashville on March 1. Huff is also the interim president and executive director of the local NAN chapter. Huff had spoken to Clayborne representing NAN, who happened to be a family friend of Williams unbeknownst to Clayborne, after contacting the organization for help. After the children’s former foster family reported that they were overwhelmed by the number of children and that the children were in danger of being split up, Huff volunteered to go through the process with the DCS to take temporary custody of the children.
Huff enrolled the two oldest children to attend school in Tennessee, and will care for the younger children at her home. She complained that the transition was extremely difficult as she adjusts to the new lifestyle of having younger children in the home she shares with her husband and a 16-year-old foster child. She also said that the DCS brought the children to her without knowing the specifics of the case, the bare necessities and the formula for the baby causing stomach problems. One child has asthma and needs to use a breathing machine. But the former day care center says she is making the best of a traumatizing experience to protect their mental health.
“The kids wake up and they’re going to cry and say they want their mom or, mom and dad come get them today,” Huff explained to Yahoo News. “The two big guys are my big concern.”
“These kids are very smart and so you have to be careful what you say to them. DCS has been sitting and talking for the kids,” Huff continued, adding that she loves the kids. “The children ask me if I am their new foster mother. I say, “No, I’m your cousin.” They also ask me if they should go back to DCS. I say, ‘No, you all stay here until mom and dad come get you.’”
DCS told Yahoo News that on March 20, the judge in the case issued a gag order to the parties involved “prohibiting the parties and their attorneys from discussing the case or releasing documents to anyone not directly involved.”
“We intend to comply with court orders,” the DCS said in an email response.
Smear claims the gag order was issued due to a wave of public support. Civil rights organizations, including NAN and the NAACP, are calling on the public to file formal complaints against the state of Tennessee and launch a federal investigation into the Tennessee state justice system they deem nefarious and targeting “certain people.”
“One of the things the public can do is formally file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights if they believe the family was discriminated against,” Laster explains. “They can do that on the United States Health and Human Services virtual website. They have a complaint form from the Office for Civil Rights.”
“Organizations, community leaders in churches, and local businesses can also request that the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Education investigate and enforce compliance with the law, as well as raise the issue with the judge’s Ethics Review Commission, because if judges act unethically and outside the law, then they should be reviewed. Any citizen concerned about DCS abuse of power should call their legislature and demand that the legislature have some authoritative powers, investigate and make some demands,” Laster continued.
Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee called for the return of the couple’s children. State senator London Lamar told reporters on March 17 that the state’s action was “ridiculous” and an “excessive use of power,” describing it as “borderline discrimination.But the state’s prosecutor pushed back, saying officers were fulfilling their legal obligation that “law enforcement requires to ensure that minors are properly protected at any time a parent or child is taken into custody by contacting the Department or Children Services to alert them of the situation.”
Since the tests, attorneys for DCS have filed a wave of motions in Coffee County Juvenile Court, including seeking prosecution and sanctions against the parents and their attorneys, alleging that the couple violated the court’s confidentiality rules. The couple’s attorney, Courtney Teasley, has filed the March 17 motions “retribution” on Twitter — an attempt to stop her from sharing how the state of Tennessee “oppresses black people under the guise of confidentiality.”
“Certainly, there are more facts and circumstances that the defendants have chosen not to disclose in their efforts to try this case in the court of public opinion and politics. My office will only handle this case in criminal court,” said District Attorney Craig Northcott.
“I’m a wonderful mom,” says Clayborne, a stay-at-home mom who’s enrolling in college to study child development. “I have been painted for something I am not and that is slander of my character. I know how much I love my children and how much my children love me.”
“I want the world to know that situations like this still happen,” Williams told Yahoo News. “As a family, we can only be an example or lead the way in change.”
The parents’ efforts to regain custody remain in limbo, pending the results of the latest rapid follicle drug test ordered. But if the test comes back negative, the DCS and the judge agree that the children could be released into the care of their mother and father as early as this week.
