Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Intercepted video signal leads to arrest in suspected abuse

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:28:04 -0500

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/feb04/208097.asp

Intercepted video signal leads to arrest in suspected abuse
By JOHN DIEDRICH
[email-masked]
Posted: Feb. 16, 2004
As William Brookins surveyed the images on a monitor from his home security
cameras Sunday night, two young girls with their hands overhead flickered
onto the screen.

Milwaukee

Surveillance Camera
A video, which Milwaukee resident William Brookins said he picked up on his
security system, shows two youngsters and a woman apparently striking one of
them. A woman was later arrested.

The 57-year-old snowplow driver realized he was intercepting images from
another camera. He called neighbors trying to figure out whose home he was
watching.

All the while, the kids kept their hands high.

After 25 minutes, the 2-year-old's arms began to sag. A woman charged into
the picture and hit the toddler in the abdomen and then the face, knocking
her to the floor.

As the woman gestured, the girl scrambled back to her feet and again put her
arms overhead.

That was enough for Brookins.

"I said, 'I got to call the police. This isn't right,' " he said.

Detectives scoured the neighborhood and early Monday arrested Theresa Smith,
a foster mother who lives in the 3200 block of N. 41st St. The girls in the
video were foster children.

Smith, 39, was arrested on suspicion of physical abuse of a child, according
to the police jail log. The district attorney was reviewing the case.

Six children lived in the home: the 2- and 4-year-old girls and a
5-month-old boy, all in foster care, plus Smith's own children, ages 14, 12
and 10, police said. Investigators did not find signs of abuse on the infant
or older children.

The younger children went to different foster homes. Child welfare workers
took custody of Smith's children.

Smith doesn't have a criminal record, and there were no other allegations of
neglect against her during her three years as a licensed foster care parent,
said Denise Revels Robinson, executive director of the state-run Bureau of
Milwaukee Child Welfare, which oversees the foster care system.

The bureau put a hold on Smith's status as a foster mother, meaning no
children can be placed at her home while an outside agency conducts an
investigation that could take 60 days, said Revels Robinson.

Revels Robinson said it was "totally intolerable" that children who were
sent to a foster home to escape neglect or abuse may have faced the same
treatment in what was supposed to be a safe place.

"I am very appalled," she said. "This is very much the exception, but one
child is too many."

In 2003, the bureau received 465 allegations of abuse by foster parents, 49
of which were substantiated, Revels Robinson said. The bureau supervises
1,600 foster homes in Milwaukee County where 3,900 children live, she said.

Police and social workers alike said Monday that they had never heard of
alleged abuse being captured by an intercepted video signal.

Home security cameras operate in a relatively narrow frequency band, and it
makes sense that one signal could pop onto another system, said Don Larson,
who runs Security Electronics Inc., Muskego.

"That is bizarre, but it's definitely possible," he said.

Brookins bought the cameras off the Internet a couple of years ago to keep
an eye on his snowplows. Each night, he flips among several cameras,
videotaping the action off the monitor.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, the other picture crept onto Brookins' screen. He compared
it to having a call cut in on a wireless phone.

After watching the girls stand with their hands overhead for a while,
Brookins called friends who take care of children to see if they thought
that was abuse. Making young children do that for so long was wrong, they
said. The girls stood for 90 minutes with the arms up before they were
allowed to go to bed at 10:40 p.m., he said.

"That is too long for anyone," Brookins said. "I couldn't do it."

Besides striking the 2-year-old, the woman in the video hit the 4-year-old
on the head with what looked like a stick, Brookins said.

Police officers arrived and were initially stumped about how to find the
suspect. Detectives Sean Lips, a technology buff, called the camera maker
and figured out that the other camera must be within 300 feet.

Brookins gave police a tape of the abuse and went to bed.

He woke at 4:18 a.m. to find his system still receiving the other camera's
picture. He was shocked to see the 4-year-old girl again standing with her
hands up.

She stayed that way for more than two hours, until 6:30 a.m., when police
arrived. Brookins saw the woman take the girls from the room and then a
police officer came on his screen.

Monday night, Brookins was back to watching his cameras for burglars.

"They work well for me, and in this case they stopped some abuse," he said.

>From the Feb. 17, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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