Bodycam video reveals the appalling behavior of Florida family police

Street art on a bridge in Pensacola, Florida. (Image from Freekenlee.com)

I don’t know if the underlying decision to remove the child in this case was right, though there is strong cause to doubt it. I do know that everything else the Florida Department of Children and Families did was wrong – and probably far more common than the agency will ever admit. 

Kenlee Zuraff was five years old when she was taken from her mother, Joy, on March 6, 2024. She reportedly was returned in June of this year, after the Florida Department of Children and Families failed in an attempt to take the child from her mother forever. 

I saw the video embedded below when it first was posted publicly last January. I did not write about it at the time because, though the behavior of caseworkers for DCF was atrocious, I could find no objective source of information about the underlying facts of the case. I hoped that a mainstream news outlet would dig into the story. That didn’t happen. 

But in the months since, some state legislators have taken an interest – one of them, State Sen. Jason Pizzo, is even defending the mother in court, pro-bono. That has prompted some good ideas for legislation and some news coverage, though still not enough to get at the underlying facts of the case. 

As you’ll see on the website created by the family’s supporters, the case has gotten a lot of attention on various far-right sites. For someone like me, who comes from what I like to call the “Family Values Left,” that can be a problem. What does one do when the only national news story about the case comes from One America News? (In fact, in this case, their story met all normal journalistic standards.) But I’ll bet that’s made other reporters hesitant. Of course, this may only illustrate a point I’ve made often before: Nothing will get some of my fellow liberals to renounce everything they claim to believe in about due process and civil liberties more quickly than whispering the words “child abuse” in their ears. 

There is analogous hypocrisy among some on the right. This issue creates divisions within both Left and Right, but where some of us have common ground, we’ve come together in a group called Untied Family Advocates. And some of the legislative proposals on the FreeKenlee.com website are similar to some of NCCPR’s own recommendations. 

One thing I do know: After more than two years in foster care, Kenlee finally was returned to her mother. I believe that, had there been no video, that wouldn’t have happened. I believe that, had there been no video, the child’s right to live with her mother would have been taken away forever. 

What we know about the case 

Kenlee has Cystic Fibrosis. According to her mother, Joy, a doctor prescribed a medication that comes with a “black box warning” from the Food and Drug Administration. According to the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, “Black box warnings are added only when substantial clinical data shows the drug can cause severe harm, hospitalization, or death.” Kenlee had had a bad reaction to a similar drug. So Joy said she wanted a second opinion. That, she says, prompted the doctor, a mandated reporter, to call DCF. 

The most detailed account of these underlying events comes from a letter that an adult with Cystic Fibrosis wrote to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, seeking their involvement. (I don’t know if they ever replied.) The letter also describes how often the mere fact that a child has CF puts a family on the family police radar. So add such families to the long list of people who are inherently more vulnerable to having the family police in their lives because of a disability. 

There are elements in the video which I think support this account. On the other hand, Joy’s brother and mother in South Dakota reportedly have defended DCF’s decision. 

What we know for sure 

Kenlee was torn from her mother and sister and placed in a stranger-care home in Jacksonville – six hours away. The distance, of course, made visiting extremely difficult, compounding the trauma of removal. 

When Joy dared to speak out, a judge imposed a gag order. Although court hearings themselves are supposed to be public in Florida, termination of parental rights hearings are an exception. So no reporters could see what was going on, and Joy herself couldn’t tell anyone. That’s just the way family police agencies like it. 

But most damning of all is this video, showing what happened when DCF and Sheriff’s deputies came to take Kenlee. It runs nearly 45 minutes, and it’s hard to watch, so let me call attention to some key moments: 

● The behavior of the DCF workers starting just before five minutes in.

 

● The look on one DCF worker’s face at 11:54 in.

 

● Then watch as the DCF workers rely on the same mother who allegedly is mis-medicating her daughter to explain to them what medications the child is taking and how they should be administered.

 

● See also the DCF employees’ behavior toward Kenlee’s older sister toward the very end of the video.

 

Throughout, they refer to the mother only as “mama,” denying her even the dignity of being called by her own name.

 

As I said, this all took place on March 6, 2024.  Only after the video became public did DCF issue a statement justifying the removal, but adding that 

“the conduct displayed by the Department employees in the video was inappropriate. It failed to demonstrate the level of professionalism and compassion expected in such circumstances, and the Department is addressing this.”  

According to one news account, shortly after the video became public, one of the DCF workers was fired.

 

But while the video only became public in January 2026, surely DCF should have had it for nearly two years. So why did DCF wait until the video became public to address the “inappropriate” behavior? (Yeah, that’s a rhetorical question.) If a worker was fired, was it for the behavior or for forgetting she was on camera?

 

How common is such behavior when no one is recording it? I’m sure most DCF workers don’t behave this way. There are stories from all over the country, equally well-documented, of caseworkers going above and beyond to help keep families together. But this was no aberration either.

 

A grand jury in the same region where this case took place found 12 instances in which DCF workers or subcontractors doing case management were accused by law enforcement of falsifying records. And, of course, there’s no reason to believe DCF workers are better behaved than their private “lead agency” counterparts in Tampa, whose behavior was just exposed by the Tampa Bay Times.

 

Solutions

 

As I noted, the group supporting Kenlee has some good ideas. For starters: require DCF workers to wear body cameras (to which I would add the equivalent of an “exclusionary rule”: if they forget to turn the camera on, or the cameras malfunction, then no information obtained during the unrecorded interviews/inspections could be used in court or in DCF records.)

 

For decades, NCCPR has advocated requiring all interviews to be recorded – with a similar
exclusionary rule. The recommendation goes back so far that originally we spoke of how easy it would be to do this on microcassette tape recorders. Now that bodycams are available, should we take that leap? There are concerns this might intimidate families. But Kenlee’s case illustrates how sometimes recording interviews alone would not be enough. I don’t think DCF ever would have taken action concerning its caseworkers in this case, and chances are, Kenlee still would be in foster care, if not for that bodycam video.

 

They also recommend, as do we, explicitly giving families the right to make recordings of their own, and informing families that they have that right.

 

Kenlee’s supporters also put a lot of emphasis on providing high-quality legal representation for families, something we have long advocated and consider one of the most important ways to curb needless removal of children and other family police abuses.

 

One of the lawmakers supporting Kenlee and her mother, State Sen Don Gaetz, has another excellent idea. As the Tampa Bay Times reports: 

One of Gaetz’s proposed changes would be to have the department secretary, who is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate, review all cases where there is a proposed termination of parental rights. 

In other words, Ms. or Mr. Secretary of DCF: If your agency is going to impose child welfare’s equivalent of the death penalty, you must personally sign off on the execution request. 

Also from the story: 

[Gaetz] also said parents must have due process, and should be able to dispute inaccurate information from the agency without fear of being retaliated against. Gaetz also said the department should not unnecessarily move children hundreds of miles from home. 

Concerning the retaliation issue, the story mentions no specifics. 

But it’s good to see lawmakers begin to make efforts to curb family policing.