Allegations of Slurs Add to Turmoil

An employee of the district attorney’s Bureau of Family Support left racially insulting messages on the voicemail of a parent billed for child support, demonstrating deeper problems in the powerful agency, a claim against the county alleged Monday.

Saying that it is outraged and will not tolerate such behavior, the district attorney’s office has placed the employee on leave, and sources say that the worker received her termination letter Friday in a case that exposes the racial issues underlying the way child support is collected not only in Los Angeles County but nationwide.

“What bothers me,” said Leo Terrell, the attorney representing the parent who received the messages, “is for a county employee to be brave and bold enough to call twice, that tells me this is not an isolated situation.” Terrell is seeking $50 million for his client for harassment, fear, embarrassment and invasion of privacy.

One local civil rights leader called the voicemails “the Rodney King video” of child support. African American communities in Los Angeles and nationwide view the child support system with distrust.

And some experts on the topic agree.

The country’s child support system is really a welfare reimbursement system that pursues parents whose children receive government aid--parents more likely to be low-income and racial minorities.

“They apply very punitive tools to a very low-income population--punitive tools that I think were designed by lawmakers for a higher-income population,” said Elaine Sorensen of the Urban Institute in Washington.

The current case stems from an argument between LaTanya V. West, 33, of Paramount, who was trying to comply with a court order and send child support checks to the district attorney’s office. Several calls to the office’s toll-free child support number were fruitless, she alleged in her claim, a precursor to a lawsuit. The final call ended in an argument with the caseworker. Afterward, West received two messages on her voicemail.

“I’m calling from the district attorney’s office,” the caller says in a recording played by Terrell. “I just spoke to you and, from your language and your personality, I can see why you have this situation.

“I can see why you’re a noncustodial parent. I can see what they say about black people, that you’re ignorant. In fact, you probably can’t even read. Anyway, you’re the one in a situation, so have a good day ma’am.”

A second call followed, and on the recording the caller sings out a derogatory racial term, adding: “that’s what you are.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the office, said the employee was put on leave the next day when her alleged behavior was discovered. “We’ve got about 1,500 excellent employees over there, and this is one instance, and we took immediate action,” she said.

Still, the explosive tapes may increase the distrust of the child support unit that is felt in many areas of Los Angeles, community leaders say.

“If they’re on the phone calling people the N-word, making references to their color, that would tend to substantiate the suspicions among many people,” said Adrian Dove, president of the Congress of Racial Equality, comparing the tape to the video of Los Angeles police officers beating motorist Rodney G. King Jr.

CORE has been holding monthly protests at the civil courthouse where child support cases are adjudicated, urging the district attorney’s office to concentrate more on finding jobs for impoverished men and less on hounding them for child support. Dove said he will seek a meeting with Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, whom he calls a friend, in the wake of the tapes.

Much of the top management in Garcetti’s child support unit--the largest part of his entire office--are white, but 37% of the employees are African American, including many of the caseworkers who have day to day contact with the public. Overall, 80% of the office is nonwhite.

Antipathy between the public and the office is common, partly because child support is a highly emotional business, dealing with two of the most combustible elements in modern life--money and children. Caseworkers tell of hours on the phone being yelled at by parents who are angry with systemic problems beyond the staff’s control, such as the sluggishness of the court system or the unit’s error-riddled computer.

The office’s poor history contributes greatly to the distrust. Until this year callers sometimes had to wait hours to talk to a caseworker on the telephone, and the agency bills the wrong people for child support about 3,000 times annually.

Due to child support laws and office policies, men earning minimum wage can receive bills in the tens of thousands of dollars for children they fathered years ago, then find up to half their wages automatically confiscated.

The government automatically pursues all parents whose children are on welfare, then keeps the child support money to reimburse the bureaucracy. Because the nation’s child support enforcement is funded out of the welfare money it recoups from parents, it has an extra incentive to pursue the parents of children on aid, often fathers who are more likely to be poor.

Critics say that the government uses its massive legal powers to squeeze child support from more impoverished segments of society while more affluent parents slip through the cracks.

“The system in a lot of ways really screws over low-income men,” said Irv Garfinkel, a professor at Columbia University. “There’s plenty of ability to pay child support in general, but the group that we think we’re going to save all this money from is the least able to pay.”

Some scholars say that academic literature on child support focuses on white middle-class families and that laws assume all debtor parents have steady, high-paying jobs.

“Often the image of a noncustodial parent is a deadbeat dad who is a stockbroker,” said Sorensen of the Urban Institute. “The laws are designed with a higher-income fellow in mind, but then they’re applied to a lower-income man.”

Sorensen said that the staff in many child support offices are baffled when fathers of children on welfare show up and say they can’t find work to pay their bills.

“They see a man standing up and they figure why can’t he get a job,” Sorensen said. “They don’t understand that there is racism in the labor market.”

When the parents fail to find work and fall victims to the agency’s enforcement policies, Sorensen said, “it just feeds into their racial prejudices.”