Initiative provides backpacks for children uprooted by legal system
Published 6:45 am Friday, April 7, 2017
- Employees of Alabama Court Reporting donated “Guardian Angel” backpacks for Limestone County sheriff's deputies to give children being relocated from abusive homes. Shown with the backpacks, front row from left, are Lt. Rhett McNatt; Patrol Capt. Guy Simmons; Chief Deputy Fred Sloss; Sheriff Mike Blakely; Lori Sizemore-Warren, owner of Alabama Court Reporting Inc.; Dispatch/ Communication Supervisor Tammy Waddell; and Limestone County Commission Chairman Mark Yarbrough and his wife, Gina Yarbrough; back row, Deputy Stephen Young and Investigator Steve Croley.
Children removed from their homes by members of law enforcement or the legal system rarely know what’s happening or why, and they usually don’t have time to plan for it.
Most times they have nothing in which to pack their things and are left using a garbage bag or the like to collect their clothes and toys.
Mix that with the high tensions between police officers and civilians in the situation, and children can sometimes be left with an unpleasant memory of law enforcement.
A year and a half ago, an Alabama court reporter decided she wanted to do something to bridge the gap between civilians, children in particular, and police.
Lori Sizemore-Warren, president of Alabama Court Reporting Inc., began the My Guardian Angel Project in the fall of 2015.
She gives backpacks to police officers to keep in their cruisers in the event they need to take a child from their home, or remove them from an accident scene.
The backpacks are equipped with a toothbrush and toothpaste. Beyond that the children can pack anything they need from home or for school without having to resort to a trash bag.
Once the officer gives a child the backpack, it’s theirs to keep.
“It has nothing on it other than a guardian angel,” Sizemore-Warren said. “The idea is that when (children) look at that backpack, the police officer was their guardian angel and helped them.”
Sizemore-Warren said she first saw the idea at work with foster children in California.
“They had duffle bags to put their stuff in because they were going from place to place,” she said. “At the same time I was reading about some of the issues with different police departments that were going on and the police were in the news in a negative way, and it prompted me to think about how when I was a kid police were the good guys. There’s a whole gen of people coming up today who are being taught the opposite and I thought abut how sad that is.”
Sizemore-Warren said she combined the story she read with the controversy surrounding law enforcement in an effort to give children a reason to have a different mentality and ideology associated with seeing the police.
The backpacks also come in handy in other situations.
Police who work traffic accidents now have something for families to put their things in after a crash, something officers told Sizemore-Warren would be invaluable.
“It’s hard enough to take a bad situation and make it good. The backpack is not going to change the fact that a child’s parent made bad decisions and they’re removed from the home or children are coming from a horrific car accident and their parents are going to the hospital,” she said. “It’s a small need, kind of forgotten about, that I thought we could do … that bridges the relationship between the officer and child. We’re not giving to the end person, we’re giving to someone to give to someone else.”
Usually Sizemore-Warren leaves 40 to 50 backpacks with a police department, with the exception of Birmingham Police Department, which received 100.
So far she has given 500 backpacks to area agencies including Madison Police Department, Madison County Sheriff’s Office, Limestone County Sheriff’s Office, Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office and Steele Police Department.
“I told them when we dropped them off this is not a one and done thing and for them to call me if they need more,” she said. “We’re a private organization and that’s one way in our profession we can give back, but it has to be a decision from the top that we’re going to invest back into the community. When you see a need you fill it, especially when it comes to children.”