COLUMN ONE : Custody Wars Have New Front Line : Police stations in O.C. have become battlegrounds where parents transfer children for court-ordered visits. Officers decry roles as referees of angry disputes.

It was just one more skirmish on the latest battleground for estranged parents, but the kindergartner’s precocious declaration stuck in the police officer’s mind.

As his mother softly coaxed the boy and his father glared a few yards away, 6-year-old Michael marched up to the counter at the Westminster police station, peered up at the desk officer and demanded that the policeman talk to him in private.

When the officer led him to a glass interview booth away from the lobby’s Friday evening buzz, the boy said he had second thoughts about spending two weeks with his father on a court-ordered visitation.

It would be in his own best interest, young Michael explained patiently, that the visit be cut to three days because his father “assaulted and abused” him on his last weekend visit, taking him outdoors without sunscreen and not giving him cough medicine on time.

Michael’s heart-to-heart seemed stiffly rehearsed to the officer, who called the watch commander to deal with the parents. But the boy’s role in the open warfare playing out in police station lobbies across Southern California was all too clear.

Here, under the weary gaze of officers and clerks, parents wrangle over court-ordered custody swaps just about every Friday and Sunday evening, and sometimes during midweek visits, too.

For about a decade, attorneys, family court mediators and judges have turned to police stations as a last resort for parents who can’t seem to swap the kids peaceably.

As rancorous divorces, domestic violence, substance abuse and child abuse have skyrocketed, so have the police lobby exchanges.

At its worst they are hostage swaps, recorded by moms and dads carrying video cameras, accompanied by insults, shouts, shoving, hair-pulling and--in some cases--arrests and criminal charges. Often, one parent wants to file a police report, vying to outdo the other with allegations of abuse and court-order violations.

Even at best, psychologists, police and family law experts agree, custody swaps in police lobbies leave an indelible impression on the children. “We’re not getting anywhere,” said Westminster Detective Thomas Green, who handles child abuse investigations and is saddled by the mounds of allegations parents file against one another to arm themselves for family court.

“Mom and Dad are the two Ping-Pong paddles and the kids are the balls. We’ve got kids out here who are breaking down. [The parents] make them feel less than children. They make them feel like dirt, and spies.”

As officers struggle to keep the peace in a time of shrinking budgets, the bickering couples increasingly call on their time, file police reports that rarely lead to prosecution and thrust police into the uncomfortable role of referee.

If the lobby swaps are the only alternative to domestic violence, police say, they are happy to participate. But many contend that the stations have become just another forum for feuding parents to escalate their tit-for-tat battles.

Even for the parents who genuinely pose a physical threat to one another, police add, there has to be some other approach that doesn’t subject children to such fierce manipulation and hatred, and leave them with a sour memory of law enforcement.

“I think it’s bad for the children,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge Jonathan H. Cannon, the family law court presiding judge. “It’s bad for the police department. The kids are frightened by the process many times. It’s just horrible.”

Better Alternatives Needed, Many Say

Parents regularly hand off their children at Los Angeles Police Department divisions from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro, and across Southern California. On Father’s Day, a woman sat waiting at the Simi Valley police station for her estranged husband to drop off their two children--only to learn over the crackle of a police radio that her husband had fatally shot himself and their 4-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.

The swaps have become so prevalent in Orange County in the past two years that police chiefs there asked the county marshal to raise their concerns about the custody exchanges with the Superior Court presiding judge.

“Unfortunately, it gives either one of the parties involved the supposed protection to say things that they would not normally say,” said Buena Park Police Chief Richard Tefank. “Then you get to the issue of the one-upmanship: ‘I’m going to come two minutes early or two minutes late.’ ”

Orange County Marshal Michael Carona recently surveyed police departments to gauge how many were the scene of swaps and how often those handoffs turned volatile.

All but two of the county’s 21 police agencies reported that their stations have been the site of exchanges, although police and court officials said no one keeps an exact tally of how many swaps occur each week.

Sixteen departments reported “incidents of violence or other behavioral problems during a court-ordered custodial exchange.” Five of those--Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Tustin--reported a dozen or more volatile incidents over the past year.

“We’re doing nothing more than supervising the family disturbance in our lobby,” said Orange Police Lt. Timm Browne. He recalled taking a father into custody on assault charges as the man yelled to his little boy in the lobby, “I didn’t do anything wrong. Mom did.”

The outbursts are most prevalent at stations that do not have a sworn peace officer sitting at the front desk, the survey showed.

The marshal recently presented survey results to Orange County Presiding Superior Court Judge James L. Smith, who said he plans to create a committee of judges, lawyers and a police chief to look for solutions. Smith said he will also urge family law judges to find alternatives to police lobbies when issuing court orders.

“It’s become progressively more problematic as we go along,” Smith said. “In today’s environment, they don’t have an ‘NYPD Blue’ front desk with a burly, rude, cigar-smoking sergeant out there who’s running the place like a stock exchange. They don’t have that type of resource to work with.”

Los Angeles County also does not track the number of exchanges ordered at police stations. But court officials said the transfers are climbing as domestic abuse cases and custody disputes balloon.

During the recent Friday night exchange in Westminster, the tension between Michael’s parents--33-year-old Susie and 34-year-old Kevin--was all too familiar to Capt. Andrew Hall.

Just the week before, he had dressed down the couple for arguing in the lobby, ordering them to “sit down and shut up” as if they were children.

“If there’s a victim of domestic violence, we all understand” the need to meet in a safe environment, Hall said. “That’s what lobby transfers should be for. It’s the bickering couples that we don’t care to have to mediate. There’s too much work and too many divorces for us to police bickering parents.”

On this evening, the captain took Susie into the glass booth and explained that police can’t fiddle with Michael’s court-ordered vacation with his father.

Susie and Kevin agree on little, but both conceded the bitter exchanges have taken a toll on their son. The barrel-chested boy with a shock of dark brown hair has made a parade of visits to police interview rooms to discuss his parents’ abuse allegations, and he parrots the parlance of the legal system in a manner far beyond his years, Kevin said.

Michael, who has asthma, balled up his fists on a recent dinner outing and pounded his head under the restaurant table, screaming that he wanted to kill himself, Susie said in tears.

“Michael has been going through this trauma,” said Susie, an out-of-work beautician who relies on welfare to support her son. “Social workers told me to hire someone to do the exchanges for us. I said, ‘I’d love to, but I can’t even afford toilet paper.’ ”

Neutral settings, such as a mall, fast-food restaurant, school or a neighbor or relative’s house, would be preferable to police stations and likely leave the parents less inclined to file petty police complaints against one another, judges, attorneys and child psychologists say.

The best solutions are low-cost programs where parents can make the swaps without seeing each other, said David Kuroda, who heads the mediation service for the Los Angeles County Superior Court. “It’s really one of the greatest needs of children of divorce--to have these centers where transfers can occur in as natural an environment as possible,” he said.

Parents can resort to private supervised visitation services, which run $25 to $50 an hour, or hire a monitor to conduct exchanges, court officials said. But the cost is prohibitive for many families.

This year, the Los Angeles court launched a program to provide free monitors to supervise visits or exchanges for parents who can’t afford private services, Kuroda said. So far, 16 monitors have signed up to help.

Programs have sprouted around the country to offer court-ordered supervised visits. Many services also conduct low-cost custody swaps as a sideline, where parents can exchange kids without ever laying eyes on one another. One New Mexico service even exchanges cats, dogs and furniture for warring couples.

“It’s almost a brand-new social service,” said Joanne Karolzak of Tucson-based Supervised Visitation Network, a membership group that includes more than 100 programs across the United States and Canada. “The need is so great.”

In Southern California, there are few low-cost referees available, despite rising demand.

A recent survey of Orange County’s family law court showed a monthly average of 950 new cases involving disputes over custody exchanges, visitation and child support, compared to 700 cases seven months ago, Judge Cannon said.

Not all of the exchanges come to blows or even insults. For some couples, the police station provides a bit of comfort while they figure out their custody arrangement in the early stages of separation.

“This is the way to go,” said Richard, 34, an unemployed heavy-equipment operator from Yucca Valley. He waited outside the Westminster station on a recent Saturday for his 3-year-old son, who ran into his father’s arms decked out in striped shorts ready for a trip to the beach.

“If there’s ever a problem, the police are right here. And you ain’t going to come here drunk or tweaked on s---.”

His ex-wife, Cheryl, 34, who lives in Westminster, said she fears her ex-husband but that she and Richard try hard not to fight in front of their son. Westminster officers point to the couple as one of the most considerate who conduct exchanges at the station.

Many parents lose sight of their children altogether, police say, turning them into ammunition in their bitter war of revenge.

In one exchange that led to an assault report but no criminal filing, Rosalva brought her 6-year-old daughter back to the Westminster lobby after her weekend visit. When the girl’s stepmother marched her toward the station bathroom to check for bruises, Rosalva pushed the woman, pulled her hair and yanked on her shirt as her daughter huddled next to them, according to the police report.

When asked by officers about the fight, the girl answered: “They were trying to get me.”

In another lobby exchange, this one in Placentia, the transfer went smoothly until the mother walked outside and pitched a glass of water onto the father’s new girlfriend.

“These people wouldn’t be able to behave civilly if they traded the children in the middle of the United Nations,” said Placentia Police Detective Corrine Loomis.

‘Mommy and Daddy Are Like Two Pit Bulls’

Some parents have dropped off children at the Buena Park police station and left, without waiting for the other parent to arrive, a situation that leaves officers in the untenable role of baby-sitter.

Even two-minute tardiness by one parent can prompt the other to insist a police report be taken, and to demand indignantly that the court-order violation--a misdemeanor--be prosecuted.

“I suggest to them: ‘What’s the matter with Target, or the middle of FAO Schwartz? What’s the matter with the library? What’s the matter with a third party that everybody still likes?’ ” Loomis said.

But others say that many couples have exhausted most every alternative by the time their family feud lands in the police lobby.

“It’s a last-ditch effort on the part of the court to diminish animosity during the exchanges,” said Boo Giuffre, an Orange attorney who represents children who need their own lawyers. “I know it’s a tremendous pain in the butt for law-enforcement agencies. They are not there to be baby-sitters, but unfortunately we don’t have very many options.”

Kevin and Susie, who have been divorced for more than a year, tried swapping Michael at their homes. But Kevin said the sight of ashtrays in Susie’s rented Westminster room sent him into rages. She complained that his family sometimes came along and berated her.

So they tried the front steps of the courthouse, then a Taco Bell Express. But Susie said she never felt quite safe.

In January, after Susie got a restraining order against Kevin, they ended up at the Westminster police station, each Wednesday evening and every other weekend. Kevin, who is between jobs, said he tries to march quietly to the police lobby “without saying anything to her shadow.”

“Mommy and Daddy are like two pit bulls so we stay away from each other,” Kevin said. “We got to keep going to the station and keep this thing going for the boy. Otherwise I’d lose my visits.”

Judges say they see few alternatives--and no end in sight to the police lobby dramas.

“If I have 500 absolutely necessary cases, I’m going to send all 500 of them to police stations,” Judge Cannon said. “The police are just going to have to deal with it. That’s part of the cost of society.”

“All we can hope is that the children can live long enough to get past this and get on with their lives.”

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Custody Battles

Just about every Orange County police department is now the site of child custody exchanges for parents who cannot amicably do so. A survey among 20 departments yielded these findings:

* Nineteen had received custody orders requiring children exchanges be made at or within their station.

* Five reported receiving more than 10 exchange orders per month; 15, less than five.

* Eight have a sworn officer assigned to front desk duty.

* Three have a sworn officer available as desk officer 24 hours per day.

* Nine normally receive copy of order before time of scheduled exchange.

* Sixteen had experienced violence or other behavioral problems during court-ordered exchanges.

* Eight have records documenting incidents of violence and problems.

* Five reported 12 or more violent or other behavioral problem incidents during the previous 12 months.

Source: Orange County Marshal’s Office

Researched by LEE ROMNEY / Los Angeles Times