Multiple employees with the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) were terminated last month after posing for a photo wearing shirts that said “Professional Kidnapper” on the front.
The shirts were apparently worn during work hours and also said “Do you know where your children are?” on the back, according to photos obtained by the Arizona Republic.
One former employee confirmed she was fired for the shirt, but refused to elaborate or identify herself. According to the report, her firing and other staffers in Prescott left the field office understaffed — purportedly with just one investigator — to look into complaints of child abuse and neglect.
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The shirts were a misguided attempt to make light of critics who blast DCS workers who remove children from their families, some who have even accused them of being kidnappers, the newspaper reports.
Christina Sanders, a former DCS unit supervisor, said she saw a photo of the investigators posing in the T-shirts and contacted the agency’s director, claiming it showed some of her former co-workers.
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In one photo that appeared to be taken in a parking lot outside the Prescott office, several staffers posed to show both sides of the shirt while one employee wore her work ID badge, according to the report. Sanders told the newspaper:
“They think they’re so untouchable, they don’t think they can get caught.”
The executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Arizona, Claire Louge, said the message on the shirt “really illuminates that people in the system are biased against parents” in some instances.
