How often would LE be called? What could they do? Assemble a search team ? And then the child is found hiding under a bed within half an hour?
Two hours seems long to call LE, though.
I don’t think LE would go for using resources like that very often
I worked in a similar facility in SD but our kids were 10-18 and our center was in town. When I first started the center was licensed as a group home but after the new building was built, we transitioned into a psychiatric residential treatment facility. Here is how ours runaway protocols worked.
When kids ran, staff could only follow to the property line. So if a resident left the property and kept running, protocol was to radio/call the supervisor so they could call the on-call person. On-call was one of the following people: the program director, associate program director, and 2 therapists. After that short call, the supervisor called 911. It typically took 15-30 minutes for an officer to arrive but could take longer if there were emergency type calls (domestic violence, serious car accident, assaults, etc.) Sometimes, LE arrived quicker if an officer was closer.
When we could follow the runaways, we still called on-call but then they might go look or call in extra staff to go look for the resident that ran. 911 was still called though.
I would imagine that BHCH would have something set up to get extra people to help search but who knows. Especially with their location. I can't imagine they have a bunch of extra staff on the weekends.
We didn't have a lot of places to hide in the new building but our old one did. In that case, it would be a short but thorough search 10-15 minutes. We didn't have large building and only a small fenced in yard so not too hard to search. If the resident wasn't found, we would follow the above procedures.
We were always told it was better to report it to 911 and then call back to say they were found. Especially since the arrival time for officers could be longer. The info went out over police communication but it was a brief description. If a child ran and returned on their own, a police officer (typically 2) came to talk to them. If it happened during school ? then sometimes it was one of the public school resource officers that came to talk to the resident.
I get that the staff thought she was inside but it was inside only one building because we were told the the doors leading into the buildings were locked. So she could only be in the school/gym building. I can't see there being a ton of accessible places to hide there that would take them an hour + to search. Plus, the staff knew by 11 am Serenity was outside because of the witness that saw Serenity at the cattle guard. So why search inside for so long? Again, conflicting info.
I personally, based on years of experience and training, believe the almost 2 hour delay was a huge error! Not only would staff know it would take at least 20 minutes before an officer would arrive, they likely knew about the incoming weather so that should have made the situation more dire. I get hindsight is 20/20 but I can't get over that delay. I don't understand how the Sheriff's Office spokeswoman stated there was no standard of even to call for help when discussing the delay. She is right for private citizens and such but as a PRTF or even group home, BHCH should have strict protocols regarding all that, not even just BHCH protocols but ones that come from outside agencies like DSS, licensing, accreditation boards, state and federal governments all can come into play with that.
“There is no set standard for how long people should waitwait before they call for help. It’s case by case with a lot of variables,” she said.
Children's Home staff called 911 later than initially reported
I do agree LE would likely get fed up if resources were wasted. They would likely tell BHCH to step up safeguards to prevent runaways as much as they can, change something but they would still assist because that is their job.
The thing is though, having 1 officer arrive by 11:30 am, would have allowed that officer to access the situation and then they could have gotten more ER personnel in to search the property and had SAR on standby. If she did indeed run, that might have been enough to find her alive.
MOO
