Police Storm Phoenix-Area Home Over Toddler With High Fever

CHANDLER, AZ — Questions of due process have been raised after police with guns drawn broke down the door of a Chandler couple's home in the middle of the night and took their three young children into protective custody after they had refused to take their 2-year-old son to the hospital after he was diagnosed with a temperature of 105 degrees, according to media reports.

Chandler, Arizona, police took children into protective custody after their parents declined medical treatment for feverish toddler. Chandler is located about 25 miles southeast of Phoenix.

In mid-February, the Arizona Department of Child Safety asked police to conduct a welfare check on the child. The parents, Brook Bryce and Sarah Beck, had taken their son, who wasn’t vaccinated, to a clinic and the treating doctor had ordered them to immediately take him to the hospital.

The boy’s fever had subsided to 102 degrees by the time they got home, so they decided not to take him to a hospital, according to reports.

Beck told news station KPNX that he called the doctor and said, "Hey, I'm not sure how you got this 105 reading, my son's acting fine. This doesn't really seem like a medical emergency."

Unconvinced, the doctor contacted child protection officials, who in turn alerted the Chandler Police Department.

When police arrived, the parents refused to allow them into the home. A police report at the time said the forced entry was appropriate because there was a present danger to the child, who they said needed medical attention, KPNX reported. Police said some of the couple’s children had vomited several times in their bed, the home was cluttered and a shotgun that was neither locked nor secured was found in the parents’ bedroom.

Bryce was led from the house in handcuffs, and Beck said police “treated us like criminals, busting in our door,” traumatizing the children, according to the KPNX report.

Police handling of the report is raising questions by parent advocates and a state lawmaker who said a 2017 child-welfare warrant law she helped write isn’t working as intended, according to an Arizona Republic investigative report.

“It was not the intent (of the law) that the level of force after obtaining a warrant was to bring in a SWAT team,” Rep. Kelly Townsend, a Mesa Republican, told the Republic. “The imagery is horrifying. What has our country become that we can tear down the doorway of a family who has a child with a high fever that disagrees with their doctor?”

In a March 25 statement, Townsend called the police raid a “miscarriage of justice and shame to the state of Arizona.”

“This mother is nearly 9 months pregnant and her baby will be born soon. I have great concern that DCS will also take this infant over a misdiagnosis by the Dr., who thought the child might have meningitis, when actually he had RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus).

“I call on DCS to immediately return the children who are also being traumatized due to this misdiagnosis,” the statement said. “The parents were correct, the doctor was wrong.”

Read the full investigative report on the Arizona Republic.