Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado
punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns
drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall
accompany them to the
hospital, on the order of
Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.
The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and
the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father
told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred
to care for their son themselves.
Someone, apparently the unidentified paramedic, called police, the
sheriff's office and social services, eventually providing Leoniak with
a report that generated the magistrate's court order to the sheriff's
office for the SWAT team assault on the family's home in a mobile home
development outside of Glenwood Springs, the father, Tom Shiflett, told
WND.
WND calls and e-mails to
Garfield County Social Services were not returned, and
Leoniak, who earlier served as a water court clerk/referee, also was
not available.
Sheriff Lou Vallario, however, did call back, and told WND he
ordered his officers to do exactly what the magistrate demanded.
"I was given a court order by the magistrate to seize the child, and
arrange for medical evaluation, and that's what we did," he said.
According to friends of the family, Tom Shiflett, who has 10 children
including six still at home, and served with paramedics in Vietnam, was
monitoring his son's condition himself.
The paramedic and magistrate, however, ruled that that wasn't adequate,
and dispatched the officers to take the boy, John, to a hospital, where
a
doctor evaluated him and released
him immediately.
The accident happened during horseplay, Tom Shiflett told WND. John was
grabbing the door handle of a car as his sister was starting to drive
away slowly. He slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head, Shiflett
said.
He immediately carried his son into their home several doors away, and
John was able to recite Bible verses and correctly spell words as his
father and mother, Tina, requested. There were no
broken
bones, no dilated eyes, or any
other noticeable problems.
The family, whose members live by faith and homeschool, decided not to
call an
ambulance. But a neighbor did call
Westcare Ambulance, and paramedics responded to the home, asking to see
and evaluate the boy.
The paramedics were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant
impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation
anyway. Fearing the hospital's bills, the family refused to allow that.
"This apparently did not go over well with one of the paramedics and
they started getting aggravated at Tom for not letting them have their
way," a family acquaintance told WND.
"The paramedics were not at all respectful of Tom's decision, nor did
they act in a manner we would expect from professional paramedics," the
acquaintance said.
So the ambulance crew, who also could not be reached by WND, called
police, only to be told the decision was up to the Shiflett familiy.
The paramedics then called the sheriff's office, and officers responded
to the home, and were told everyone was being cared for.
Then the next day, Friday, social services workers appeared at the door
and demanded to talk with John "in private."
They were so persistent Tom ended up having to get John out of the
bathtub he was just soaking in, to bring him to the front porch where
the social workers could see him, the family reported.
Then, following an afternoon shopping trip to town, the family settled
in for the evening, only to be shocked with the SWAT team attack.
The sheriff said the decision to use SWAT team force was justified
because the father was a "self-proclaimed constitutionalist" and had
made threats and "comments" over the years.
However, the sheriff declined to provide a single instance of the
father's illegal behavior. "I can't tell you specifically," he said.
"He was refusing to provide
medical
care," the sheriff said.
However, the sheriff said if his own children were involved in an
at-home accident, he would want to be the one to make decisions on their
healthcare, as did Shiflett.
"I guess if that was one of my children, I would make that decision,"
the sheriff said.
But he said Shiflett was "rude and confrontational" when the paramedics
arrived and entered his home without his permission.
The sheriff also admitted that the
injury to the child had been at
least 24 hours earlier, because the fall apparently happened Thursday
afternoon, and the SWAT attack happened late Friday evening.
Officials with the
Home
School Legal Defense Association reported they were looking into the
case, because of requests from family friends who are members of the
organization.
"While people can debate whether or not the father should have brought
his son to the ER – it seems like this was not the kind of emergency
that warrants this kind of outrageous conduct by government officials,"
a spokesman said.
Tm Shiflett said when John was evaluated by the
physician, "they didn't find
anything wrong with him."
He said the paramedics never should have entered his home, but they
followed his wife in the front door when she came in.
"My attention was on my son," Shiflett said.
He said the SWAT team punched a hole in his door with a ramrod, and the
first officer in the home pointed a gun right in the face of Tom's
20-year-old daughter.
"I don't know where social services ever got started, or where they got
their authority," he said. "But I want to know why we have something in
this country that violates our rights, that takes a parental right
away."
He said he saw a multitude of injuries in Vietnam, and while he
recognized that his son needed to be watched, he wasn't willing to turn
his child over to the paramedics.
With 10 children, most of them older than John, it's not as if he hasn't
seen a bruise or two, either, he said.
"Now I'm hunting for lawyers that will take the case … I'm going to sue
everybody whose name was on that page right down to the judge," he said.
Mike Donnelly, a lawyer with the HSLDA, told WND the case had a set of
circumstances that could be problematic for authorities.
"In Doe V. Heck, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that parents have
a fundamental right to familial relations including a liberty interest
in the care, custody and control of their children," he said.
He also said man social services agencies apply "a one size
fits all approach" to cases,
regardless of circumstances.
