Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Mom’s Chilling Welfare Check Before Girls Starved to Death

Transcript

Mom’s Chilling Welfare Check Before Girls Starved to Death · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when a system fails a vulnerable person,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: it happens in the shadows. Like we assume nobody was looking. Right.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We talk about people, you know, falling through the cracks,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: which kind of implies this accidental oversight. But what if
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I told you about a house that police and social
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: services visited, I mean, more than a dozen times in
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a single month?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: It's staggering.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It really is. A house where the alarm was pulled
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: 21 separate times. by terrified family members, by neighbors, by
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the father of the children. I mean, all eyes are
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: literally glued.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: To this situation. Yeah, the spotlight is right on them. Exactly.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And yet, despite the responders literally standing on the front
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: porch time and time again, two toddlers inside still slowly
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: starve to death. So how does a safety net fail
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: that catastrophically when it is, you know, draped directly over
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the crisis?
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it forces us to completely reevaluate what
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: a safety net actually measures. Right. Because we are looking
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: at a scenario where the sheer volume of intervention actually
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: became a shield.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Wow, a shield.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because this isn't a story of a forgotten family
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: in some, you know, underfunded county. This is a story
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: about the terrifying space between what the law is authorized
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: to enforce and what a family intuitively knows to be true,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: but just cannot legally act upon. Right.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And that is really the mission of our deep dive today.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: We're looking at the newly released body cam footage of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the 911 call logs, and these incredibly grim court documents
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: surrounding the deaths of two-year-old Emery Deacon and 15-month-old Harlow
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: in Ladson, South Carolina.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: That's a tough one to get through.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And we are not here to just recount a tragedy.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: We want to dissect the anatomy of the systemic failure. Like,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we need to look at the interactions between the mother,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Justine May, and the various authorities to understand how these
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: massive warning signs were just, well... totally and how narratives
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: were manipulated by a person in crisis and what this
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: ultimately exposes about the fundamental limits of our institutional welfare checks.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Because when you look closely at the raw source material
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: you realize that justine may managed to create this um
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: this systemic optical illusion.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: An optical illusion yeah i like that phrasing yeah.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: She basically figured out how to use the machinery of
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: the state to build a fortress around herself and those
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: children right.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And that optical illusion is exactly what we need to
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: deconstruct today The authorities are looking right at a crisis.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, they are shining a tactical flashlight directly on it,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: but they only see what the person in crisis wants
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: them to see.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: And I want you, listening to this, to consider how
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you evaluate the safety of the people around you. If
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: someone you love was spiraling into a profound psychiatric emergency,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: how much faith would you have that a 10-minute police
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: wellness check at their front door could actually uncover the truth?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: You'd hope a lot, but Right.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: But the mechanics of what we're about to explore show
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: just how easily that 10 minute check can be entirely
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: weaponized against the very people trying to help.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And to understand the catastrophic end here, we cannot
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: just look at the final days. We really have to
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: start with how Justine May conditioned the authorities to see her.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: OK. Condition them how?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Well, we need to establish the baseline of her early
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: interventions with the system because she essentially like trained the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: police on how to treat her. Oh, wow.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: OK, so let's look at the sheer scale of the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: contact first, because between August 10th and late September, 21
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: calls were made to the Charleston County Sheriff's Office regarding
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Justine May. 21. 21. And deputies physically went to her
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: home more than a dozen times. That is just an
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: astonishing drain on municipal resources and a massive amount of contact.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And we have body cam footage from this crucial visit
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: on August 30th. So deputies arrive alongside a social services worker,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a DSS worker. And as they pull up to the driveway,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the door to the house is visibly open, but Justine
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: physically shuts it as they approach the porch.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Right, which immediately sets a tone.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Like, instantly.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally defensive. Exactly. Now, the stated goal of that
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: DSS worker as captured on the body cam is incredibly straightforward.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: They are there because they received a report that Justine's
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: mental health is allegedly declining after she separated from the
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: children's father, Zachary Deacon.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So the worker explicitly states that they need to make
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: contact with her and lay eyes on the kids because
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: nobody has seen these little girls in over a week.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: And furthermore, the father, Zachary, had recently been formally trespassed
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: from the property.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's focus on the dynamic of that August
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: 30th visit because the manipulation is almost flawless here. You
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: watch this footage and Justine frames herself entirely as the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: victim of malevolence from the outside.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: She tells the deputies that Zachary chased her to her car,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: that he tried to beat the car window in, that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: he refused to let her leave. And she doesn't stop
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: with him, right? She claims her own parents are aggressively
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: harassing her because they simply refuse to give her quote-unquote space.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she uses that word a lot, space.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Right. She paints this highly coherent, legally actionable picture of
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a woman besieged by a toxic, erratic ex-partner and this
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: overbearing family.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And the word coherent is vital there. Law enforcement officers
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: are trained to identify and protect victims of stalking, harassment,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: and domestic abuse. Justine presents them with a perfectly wrapped
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: narrative that slots exactly into that training.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Wow, she plays right into their protocol.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She's calm, she's cordial to the police, but she
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: is highly controlling of the physical environment. She steps out,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: she closes the door behind her, and she successfully pivots
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the authority's attention completely away from her children's welfare.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Which was the whole reason they were there.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And she redirects all of their focus onto her
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: ex-partner's alleged harassment.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: This highlights a deeply concerning mechanic within our legal system,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: which is this first-to-complain advantage.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: If you are the first person to call dispatch and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: file a formal trespass notice, it seems like the authorities
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: inherently categorize you as the victim. It inadvertently shields you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: from scrutiny because you've handed the police a villain. Yeah.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: You give them a bad guy.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Right. She essentially says, look at this guy banging on
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: my door. He is the threat. So the police stop
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: looking for the threat inside her home.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It operates heavily on confirmation bias. Once the deputies cognitively
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: categorize Justine as the harassed victim, every subsequent action her
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: family takes to try and check on those unseen children
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: is interpreted through that specific lens of harassment.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: That is so tragic.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: It really is. When the grandfather bangs on the door
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: a week later, the police don't see a desperate attempt
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: to save his grandchildren, you know, They see a man
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: violating a victim's established boundaries.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. And the authorities don't just passively accept her narrative.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: They actively assist her in isolating herself.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: On that body cam, they start giving her advice on
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: how to secure a stronger harassment warrant against her ex
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: and her family. They tell her to document everything, to
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: take screenshots of their texts, to go down to the magistrate.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Which is standard advice for a domestic abuse victim.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Right. But in this case, they are coaching her on
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: how to build a legal barricade against the only people
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: trying to save her kids.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Because they genuinely believe they are protecting a victim of
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: domestic harassment. I mean, the paradigm of domestic response is
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: built around empowering the victim to legally sever ties with
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: the abuser. Yeah. But when the person claiming victimhood is
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: actually the danger, the state inadvertently becomes her private security detail.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: That is such a haunting way to put it. Her
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: private security detail. And to show how terrifyingly disconnected the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: bureaucracy gets from reality, during this August 30th visit, while
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: she is spinning this narrative of harassment, the social services
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: worker simply hands Justine a safe sleep brochure.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that part is unbelievable.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Let that sink in. She's got an ex-partner claiming she's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: spiraling into madness, a family calling 911 constantly, the kids
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: haven't been seen, and the state's official response is to
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: hand her a pamphlet on the dangers of co-sleeping with infants.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: A pamphlet.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: It is a chillingly standard bureaucratic reflex to a situation
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that is practically screaming for intervention.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: And it perfectly illustrates the limitations of the institutional toolkit.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: They operate on checklists. They have forms to sign, brochures
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: to distribute. And visual observations to record. If the surface
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: level interaction appears coherent and non-threatening, the bureaucracy checks the
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: box and moves on.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: They lack the mechanism to measure the nuance of a
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: psychological decline.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: But the allegations that actually brought DSS to the door
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: that day were not nuanced. They were explicit and honestly terrifying.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Very much so.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Like the baseline interaction seems calm. But what happens when
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the state official actually confronts her with the report? The
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: DSS worker stands on the port and reads these allegations
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: aloud to Justine on the body cam. And we need
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to go through this list because it is staggering. Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: The allegations suggest an acute, severe mental health crisis coupled
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: with gross child neglect.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The worker says they received reports of Justine writing
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: on the walls of her home in calligraphy, specifically described
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: as a Countdown with daisies.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Which is incredibly ominous.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Totally. And she is suspected of escalating to daily hallucinogenic
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: mushroom use. There is a specific medical report that 15-month-old
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Harlow has an untreated, severe, crusty infection in her vaginal area.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: One room of the home is supposedly covered in dog feces.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: The house is reportedly kept entirely dark with the blinds drawn.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: And DoorDash is being delivered three times a day because
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: she allegedly stopped cooking. And perhaps most alarmingly, There are
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: reports of text messages suggesting she wants to sacrifice.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, any single one of those allegations should trigger
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: a massive red flag. A countdown written on the wall
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: alongside talks of sacrifice implies sacrifice. premeditation or a severe
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: break from reality.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And the severe untreated infection implies physical neglect. And yet
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: the way Justine deflects this barrage of terrifying accusations is
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a masterclass in manipulation.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: She doesn't even blink. She just effortlessly bats them away.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: She says there's no truth to anything in that report.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Just a flat denial. Yep.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: When they bring up the writing on the wall, she
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: calmly claims it was her ex, Zach, who did it
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: before he left. She flatly denies the dog feces. She
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: admits she used mushrooms, but frames it as something she
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: did in high school, entirely unrelated to the present.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Deflecting the timeline.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the most shocking part of this entire interaction
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to me is the diaper rash. When the worker specifically
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: asks to examine 15-month-old Harlow's severe, allegedly crusty infection, Justine
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: just refuses. She stands on our porch and says, I
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: really don't feel comfortable doing that. She claims the baby
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: is just a little shy around strangers and that she
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: has a perfectly normal diaper rash.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And that refusal is the crux of the institutional paralysis.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: The state worker doesn't push past her. They just accept
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: the refusal.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Wait, OK, I have to challenge that completely. How is
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that possible?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I know it sounds crazy.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: If a state agency receives a credible report of severe,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: untreated physical neglect on a toddler and the mother refuses
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to let them see the child, how does the worker
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: just walk away?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Doesn't the suspicion of a severe infection coupled with a
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: countdown on the wall constitute some form of exigent circumstances? Like,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: can't the police breach the door if they suspect a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: child is an imminent physical danger?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It is a phenomenal question, and it really strikes at
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: the heart of the Fourth Amendment.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, lay it out for us.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So the Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: seizures in their own homes. For law enforcement to breach
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: a door without a warrant, they must be able to
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: articulate exigent circumstances, meaning they must have clear, immediate, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: visible evidence that life-threatening harm is actively occurring in that
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: exact moment.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Visible evidence. Right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: A report of a diaper rash, even a severe one,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: does not legally meet the threshold of imminent life-threatening peril
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: required to kick down a door.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: So because the harm isn't like a gunshot wound or
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a fire, because it's a slow-moving medical neglect, the Fourth
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Amendment basically acts as a shield for the abuser.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: In cases of covert or slow-moving neglect, yes. Justine leverages
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: her constitutional rights perfectly. She denies the allegations, she minimizes
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the concerns, and she explicitly restricts physical access to the child.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That's just wild.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Without a warrant and without the police hearing a child
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: actively screaming in pain or seeing blood, their hands are
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: tied by the Constitution if the parent politely refuses cooperation.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And her method of refusal is what I find so
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: sociologically fascinating. She doesn't just say no. She weaponizes the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: modern lexicon of mental health.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely she does.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Throughout these body cam videos, she repeatedly uses terms like
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: setting a boundary. needing my space and demanding that her
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: family respect my space. She is using culturally bulletproof language
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: to justify cutting off all family members and the father
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of her children.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: It is a dark evolution of modern psychology. Terminology like boundaries, self-care,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: toxic individuals, and gaslighting has migrated entirely out of the
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: clinical setting and into the mainstream consciousness.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Right, which usually is a good thing.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Generally, giving people the vocabulary to articulate emotional abuse is
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: a positive societal shift. But what we see here is
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: how perfectly those concepts can be co-opted. Someone in the
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: midst of a severe psychiatric crisis or a calculated abuser
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: can use that exact same language to socially and legally
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: enforce their own isolation.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I look at it like a hacker who figures out
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: how to use a computer system's own security protocols against it.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: The system is designed to protect the user, right? By
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: invoking the language of boundaries and trespassing, she triggers the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: legal system to build a firewall around her. The police
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: are essentially acting as her antivirus software, keeping out the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: very people who are trying to sound the alarm, all
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: because she framed their familial concern as a toxic violation
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of her mental health boundaries.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: The state is structurally obligated to respect a boundary. But
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: as we see here, a boundary can very easily double
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: as a barricade.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And she recognizes that if she adopts the posture
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of a victim advocating for her mental well-being, the authorities
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: are institutionally bound to support her. But a boundary is
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: meant to protect you from harm. It is not meant
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: to be a smokescreen to hide the harm you are
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: causing to dependents.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Right. So she successfully uses these bureaucratic checkboxes and therapy
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: buzzwords to repel the standard DSS visit on August 30th. But,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you know, her situation obviously continues to deteriorate rapidly.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: The family doesn't stop calling. And so what happens when
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the state escalates? When they realize a standard police check
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: isn't enough, they send in clinical experts. Yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Things change here.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: We jump to September 12th, roughly two weeks later, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the body cam reveals a drastically different scenario. It is
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a highly agitated Justine facing a mobile crisis unit that
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the deputies have brought to her door. Right.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So we need to define what a mobile crisis unit
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: actually is for context. These are mental health specialists, often
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: licensed clinicians or social workers, who partner directly with law
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: enforcement to assess individuals who might be experiencing an acute
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: psychological emergency out in the field.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Their presence on September 12th indicates that the sheer volume
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: and severity of the 911 calls from Justine's family have
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: breached a threshold. The police know they need clinical backup.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: They suspect a standard domestic dispute is actually a psychiatric breakdown.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: But the moment Justine opens that door, her entire demeanor
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: has shifted. She's no longer the calm, cordial victim, carefully
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: managing her image. She is immediately combative.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Very defensive.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: She refuses to let the clinical workers inside the house.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: She stands in the doorway and repeatedly asks them, is
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: this mandatory? She tells them she is getting really tired
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of this, and aggressively complains that the police are knocking
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: on her door every single day.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Which, I mean, is an understandable reaction from someone who
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: feels harassed, but it's also a really common defense mechanism
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: for someone desperate to hide a deteriorating reality. Right. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: observe the methodology the crisis workers are forced to deploy
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: on the porch. Because they cannot get inside to evaluate
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the environment, they launch into a rapid-fire clinical checklist of questions.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: The checklist.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Are you currently suicidal? Are you hearing voices? Are
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: you seeing things that aren't there? How many hours are
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: you sleeping? Are you eating enough? Are you taking any medications?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Are you using any illicit drugs?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: And she stonewalls the entire clinical assessment. She answers no
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: to everything or she feeds them perfectly normal, socially acceptable answers.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Just giving them what they want to hear. Exactly.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: She claims she sleeps about seven hours a night. She
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: says she eats two or three meals a day. She
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: flatly denies experiencing any depression, any anxiety, or any medical
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: issues whatsoever. In fact, she flips the script again, claiming
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: that the only thing giving her anxiety is the police
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: department showing up at her house to harass her.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: She also inadvertently reveals the bizarre nature of the family's
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: concerns during this interaction. She tells the crisis workers that
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: her mother had called the police on her the day prior,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: claiming that Justine believed she was Nyx, the goddess of night.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that detail is wild.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: But Justine doesn't present this as a delusion, right? She
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: presents it to the police as absolute proof of her
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: mother's harassment. She frames it as this absurd, malicious lie
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: fabricated by a toxic family member trying to get her committed.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Which, if you are a police officer standing on a porch,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: sounds incredibly bizarre. Like, who makes up a lie about
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the goddess of night?
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It almost sounds too weird to be true, so
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: they might think the mom is the crazy one.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Right. Justine also claims that her only history of mental
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: health issues was a single, isolated panic attack back in December.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: She blames that entirely on external factors, saying a previous
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: ex committed suicide and Zachary screamed at her, causing the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: panic attack.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Always externalizing. Yeah.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: She does admit she was on medication for about two
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: weeks after her youngest, Harlow, was born, but says she
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: got off it quickly and is now fine. Everything is externalized.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Nothing is her fault.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: We really need to deconstruct the fundamental flaw of this
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: checklist method used by the mobile crisis team.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, please.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: They are deploying direct binary yes or no questions to
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: a subject who is highly motivated to lie, who is
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: legally allowed to lie, and who is exhibiting immense hostility
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: toward their mere presence. Right. When Justine refuses to engage
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: meaningfully and refuses to tell her side of the story
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: beyond her victimhood, the crisis workers are forced to make
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a massive clinical determination based on a brick wall of denial.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the mechanics of that assessment, because this
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: is where I struggle with the entire psychiatric protocol of
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: front-door wellness checks.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It's definitely flawed.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I have to seriously question the efficacy of looking a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: person in the eye and asking, are you hallucinating or
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: are you delusional? Isn't it a known clinical paradox of
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: severe mental illness that the sufferer fundamentally lacks the insight
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to know they are ill?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I always think of it like a computer with a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: deeply corrupted operating system being asked to run a diagnostic
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: test on itself it will always report that it is
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: functioning perfectly because the very tool doing the checking is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the thing that is broken.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to describe it.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: If she actually believes she is the goddess of night,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: she's not going to politely inform a state clinician that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: she's currently experiencing a fascinating delusion. She's going to view
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the clinician as an imposter and tell them to get
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: off her porch.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: The clinical term for what you're describing is anosognosia.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Anosognosia. Right.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: It is the anatomical inability to recognize one's own mental illness.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And it is a hallmark symptom of severe psychotic breaks,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: particularly in schizophrenia and severe bipolar mania. The frontal lobe
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: of the brain, which is responsible for self-reflection and reality testing,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: is compromised. So the system's reliance on self-reporting during an
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: acute crisis is structurally flawed. They are asking for an
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: objective reality check from a deeply compromised narrator.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And we cannot ignore the physical environment during the September
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: 12th assessment. It is pure chaos. Two-year-old Emery is actually
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: in Justine's arms at the door while she is arguing
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: with the clinicians.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Right, right there in the middle of it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And throughout the body cam footage, you can hear the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: children screaming and crying incessantly in the background. Justine uses
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: this auditory chaos as a shield.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: She leans right into it.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: She tells the cops, I have my girls in here.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: They just got up from a nap. This is like
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: so annoying right now. She leverages the crying kids, essentially
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: saying they need her attention and that she is clearly
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: not crazy, but just a stressed mother dealing with an annoyance.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: There is a highly revealing and ultimately tragic quote from
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: one of the crisis workers in that specific footage.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: What did they say?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: The clinician looks at Justine and says, It makes it
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: hard to make a determination if we don't know your side.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: We only hear one side, and so at this point,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: we're worried about you.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: That statement. Perfectly. devastatingly encapsulates the institutional paralysis at play.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: The state requires the patient's voluntary, rational cooperation in order
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: to legally diagnose their irrational non-cooperation.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: It's madness. The state is essentially standing on the porch pleading,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: please help us legally prove that you are a danger
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to yourself. Otherwise, our protocol dictates we have to leave.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, they leave.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: While the authorities are treating Justine as this frustrated citizen
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: who just wants her privacy respected, her family is seeing
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: a completely different reality. We have to look at the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: massive contrast between the state's clinical gaze and a family's
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: absolute terror because this leads us right into the fatal
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: gap in surveillance.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the authorities see a woman refusing a voluntary assessment,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: which is her right. The family sees a woman whose
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: entire core personality has been consumed by a crisis. They
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: aren't looking at a checklist. They're looking at a stranger person. Exactly.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And the documentation of this terror is profound. On September 13th,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: literally the day after that tense mobile crisis visit where
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the state found no actionable cause for alarm, Justine's mother
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: sends her a desperate, heartbreaking text message.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: It's a very difficult text to read. It is.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: I want to read this because the language is haunting
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and incredibly specific. Her mom writes... This weekend I saw
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: darkness and blackness in your eyes. The look of Justine's eyes,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: but her light not being behind them, but something sick
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and sinister is a look I'll never forget. I believe
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you have an Adderall addiction, are suffering from postpartum depression,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: or both.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Notice what the mother is doing there. She is explicitly
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: identifying physiological and profound psychological changes that a 10-minute police
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: wellness check on a porch is entirely unequipped to catch.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: A deputy who meets Justine for the first time on
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: a Tuesday cannot possibly know that the light is missing
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: from her eyes. The mother is articulating the absence of
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: her daughter's soul, essentially.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And she goes further. She brings up the ultimate worst
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: case scenario. Her mom asks if Justine has watched the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: news recently regarding the Lindsay Clancy trial.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Now, for anyone listening, unfamiliar, the Lindsay Clancy case is
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the absolute textbook nightmare scenario of postpartum psychosis turning lethal.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: where a mother tragically killed her three young children.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Right, a horrific national story.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Justine's mom is drawing a direct, horrifying parallel. She begs
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: her daughter, writing, This could lead to you harming the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: girls and or yourself. Would Justine do this? No. Would
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: this dark entity that is behind Justine's eyes do this?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: This haunts my worst nightmare.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: You have a grandmother clearly articulating an imminent, lethal threat
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: to these children. She is not talking about dirty diapers
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: or messy rooms. She is predicting a homicide based on
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: a psychiatric break, invoking a known national tragedy as a
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: direct parallel.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: It's chilling.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering piece of intuition. And how does
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Justine reply to this agonizing, incredibly clear-eyed plea?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Justine texts back, If you guys start to respect my space,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: then I will talk to you.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: There it is again.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: The weaponization of therapy language. Respect my space. It's a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: shield made entirely of modern psychological buzzwords. She doesn't address
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the accusations of darkness or the fear for the children's lives.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: She just retreats behind the fortress of boundaries.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: If we contrast the mother's highly specific, agonizingly perceptive text
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: with the police's generic clinical checklist, we see the fatal
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: flaw in the entire welfare system.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: It's glaring.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: The family knows with terrifying certainty that she is spiraling
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: into something sinister. But the state's threshold for forced intervention,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: which usually requires imminent articulable physical danger like a weapon
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: or a confession of suicidal ideation, has not been met
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: in the eyes of the responding deputies or clinicians.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Let's look at how that gap in authority plays out chronologically,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: because this is where the system completely irreparably breaks down. Right.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: The timeline is crucial here.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: That desperate text from the mother was on September 13th.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: The final official welfare check by authorities was made on
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: September 20th. And according to the sheriff's subsequent statements, deputies
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: did not make eye contact with the two little girls
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: on that day.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: They didn't even see them. No.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: They showed up for a welfare check exactly nine days
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: before the children were found dead, and they failed to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: physically lay eyes on them.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: This explores a profound legal and ethical friction that society
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: has yet to solve. At what point does a grandparent's
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: documented terror, their absolute certainty of an incoming crisis, override
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: a biological mother's constitutional right to privacy in her own home?
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where is the line?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: We discussed the Fourth Amendment earlier. The state cannot simply
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: kick down a door because a grandmother is deeply afraid
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: of a dark entity behind her daughter's eyes. The law
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: requires material evidence. But the deeply unsettling question is, why
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: does the system defer completely to the parents' rights and
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: up until the exact moment of irreversible tragedy.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of two completely different early warning
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: radar systems operating simultaneously but unable to communicate.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Well, the police radar is incredibly sophisticated, but it only
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: pings if a crime is actively occurring right in front
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: of them. If the door opens and no one is
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: visibly bleeding, the radar shows clear skies. But the family's
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: radar is picking up a massive Category 5 incoming storm.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: They can see the pressure dropping. They can see the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: clouds gathering, but they don't have the legal authority to
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: sound the town alarm or force a mandatory evacuation. They
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: are forced to just stand on the beach and watch
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the hurricane hit the house.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: That is tragically accurate. The family lacks the authority, and
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: the authorities lack the contextual history. And in that massive
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: fatal gap between authority and context, you have two vulnerable
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: toddlers who are entirely dependent on a caretaker who is actively,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: systematically dismantling her own reality.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: They're just trapped.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: The children are trapped in the blind spot of the law.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the horrific conclusion. The warnings have
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: been ignored by the state. The family has been legally
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: blocked from the property. And the authorities have been successfully
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: repelled by a combination of closed doors and therapy buzzwords.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: The system failed them at every turn.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: We move from the realm of a potential crisis to
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: an irreversible tragedy.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: September 29th, the day the psychological fortress finally collapses.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: On September 29th, a neighbor calls 911. I find that
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: detail incredible. It wasn't the family because they'd been pushed away.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: It wasn't the police conducting their 20-second check. It was
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: just a neighbor looking out their window.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Just a normal person observing something off. Exactly.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: They tell dispatch they haven't seen the kids in weeks,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: but they saw Justine walking aimlessly down the road. about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: three to five houses away from her property, without her children.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: That single detail, a mother wandering the street aimlessly, separated
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: from her toddlers, is what finally breaches the legal threshold
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: for the police to take action.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Because it finally provides the objective, articulable observation of erratic
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: behavior that the police needed to justify an emergency entry.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Right. Deputies respond to that neighbor's call. They enter the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: home and they make the horrific discovery. Two-year-old Emery and
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: 15-month-old Harlow are found deceased.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: It's awful.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: The official documentation notes that they were obviously deceased and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that no life-saving measures could even be attempted.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were too far gone.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: According to the arrest affidavit, Justine answers the door for
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the police crying and speaking entirely incoherently. The articulate woman
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: who was setting boundaries two weeks prior is gone.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: The mask completely fell off.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: She tells the police that the last two... weeks had
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: been a blur. She says she didn't remember the last
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: time she fed or gave her two children something to drink.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And she stated to the police that she, quote, believed
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: the children died because they did not eat.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: The physical reality of that statement is almost too horrific
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: to process. We have the document from the Charleston County
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: deputy coroner stating definitively that the children died of starvation
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and dehydration due to severe neglect. And the official manner
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of death is homicide for both children.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Starvation and dehydration. I want to pause on the mechanics
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: of that because we have to discuss the timeline of starvation.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: This is not a sudden accident. It is not a
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: brief lapse in judgment.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Starvation is a slow, agonizing process. It takes days, if
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: not weeks, for a human body to shut down from
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a lack of water and food. During that final nine-day
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: gap between the September 20th police check, where the deputies
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: failed to see the kids, and the September 29th discovery,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: those children were slowly dying behind a door that the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: police had previously knocked on over a dozen times.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, multi-level institutional failure. The system was
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: physically present during the exact window of time when intervention
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: would have absolutely saved those lives.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: But they were unable or legally unwilling to pierce the
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: veil of Justine's autonomy to check on the dependents inside.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And the tragic irony of how the legal system operated
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: in the periphery of this case is simply staggering.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is the part of the timeline that genuinely
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: makes my blood boil. Zachary Deacon, the father of these girls,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the man who was sounding the alarm from day one,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: who was begging the police to intervene, who was trespassed
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: for trying to see his kids, he was actually arrested
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: in September.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unbelievable. Why?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Because he showed up at Justine's house in a desperate
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: attempt to check on them, thereby allegedly violating the restraining
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: order and trespass notice that Justine had successfully weaponized against him.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It perfectly encapsulates the failure. The system worked flawlessly. with
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: absolute efficiency to arrest the desperate father who was trying
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: to check on his kids.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: The state mobilized its resources to protect the mother's boundary,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: but it completely failed to arrest or even mandate clinical
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: treatment for the mother who was slowly starving those children
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: to death. Zachary's lawyer released a searing statement saying these
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: deaths could and should have been prevented, and pointing out
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the brutal reality that Zach was arrested for trying to
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: get help.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I see the legal binds the police ran.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: But I still have to challenge the sheriff's department's priorities here.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Was the department so concerned with avoiding a civil rights
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: lawsuit from a local citizen? Were they so terrified of
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a harassment complaint from a woman who knew exactly what
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: modern buzzwords to use that they entirely lost sight of
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerable people in that house?
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: That's a valid question.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: These were toddlers who couldn't speak for themselves, who couldn't
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: open the door, who were entirely reliant. on the adults
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: in the room seeing through the bureaucratic nonsense.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It is a vital, necessary critique of how modern law
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: enforcement is trained to handle domestic disputes versus child welfare emergencies.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: When policy and protocol dictate that law enforcement must take
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: a complaint at face value regarding harassment, it creates a massive,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: dangerous blind spot.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: A huge blind spot.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: The officers on the scene prioritized mediating an adult domestic
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: dispute over investigating a child welfare emergency. Why? Because the
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: domestic dispute was loud, legally actionable, and happening right on
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the porch.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: And the child welfare emergency was silent.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It was hidden behind a closed door and protected
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: by a polite, constitutionally-backed refusal.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And again, it wasn't the 21 state-sanctioned police checks that
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: ended this nightmare. It wasn't the mobile crisis unit or
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: the DSS worker with their safe sleep brochure. It was
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: a neighbor. A neighbor noticing a woman walking down the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: street without her babies.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a regular citizen.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: The contrast between high-level institutional failure, all the deputies, the clinicians,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded safety nets, and grassroots
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: neighborhood observation is stark. The whole multi-million dollar system failed,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and it was a neighbor looking out their kitchen window
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that finally stopped the clock.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Which leaves the legal aftermath. Justine May is currently facing
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: two counts of homicide by child abuse.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Her arrest warrant affidavit explicitly notes that she was aware
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: that not feeding her children was neglectful, which goes directly
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: to establishing her state of mind and culpability despite her
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: psychiatric deterioration. She is next due in court on November
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: 20th to face these charges.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So as we step back and look at the anatomy
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: of this failure, what have we actually learned? We have
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: a mother who expertly used the language of victimhood and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the rhetoric of boundaries to to build an impenetrable legal
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: fortress around herself. We have a family, specifically a grandmother,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: whose dire, terrifyingly accurate warnings of a clinical breakdown were
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: overridden by bureaucratic checklists and standard operating procedures. And we
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: have a father who was literally criminalized by the state
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: for trying to pierce that fortress to save his daughters.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It forces us to severely interrogate the systems we inherently
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: trust to protect the vulnerable. The institutions we rely on, police,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: social services, mobile crisis teams, are bound by strict rules
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: of engagement.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Right. They have to follow the book.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: They have to respect constitutional rights. And they have to
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: operate within the bounds of the Fourth Amendment. But as
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: we've seen in devastating detail, a highly motivated person, even
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: one in the grips of a severe mental crisis, can
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: easily manipulate those exact rules of engagement to hide in
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: plain sight.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: They can use the shield of civil liberties... to conceal
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: profound abuse.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: And that brings me right back to the optical illusion
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: we started with at the top of the hour. You know,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: you think that because a police car is parked in
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the driveway, safety is actively being measured. We assume that
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: presence equals protection.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: No. But I want to leave you with this final thought.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: When our social safety nets rely almost entirely on the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: concept of physical check-ins and verbal checklists, What happens when
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the caretaker simply learns the script to pass the check-in?
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Are our welfare systems actually measuring the safety of children
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: behind closed doors? Or are they just measuring a parent's
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: ability to act normal for 10 minutes in a doorway?