Editorial: Better coordination needed

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

The grisly images of abused children are hard to examine, just as the circumstances that could lead to such crimes is hard to imagine.

But the images of bite marks, burns and other atrocities inflicted on defenseless children are only pieces of the overall puzzle of child abuse that, according to a story in Thursday's Las Vegas Sun, investigators have difficulty in assembling. Historically, there have been no national standards for investigating suspicious child deaths.

Coroners, police detectives and child welfare officials differ in their investigation techniques because their specialties are different. And police agencies differ from each other in such probes, as do coroner's offices and child welfare agencies. What one investigator calls a crib death someone in another agency might categorize as neglect, the Sun reports.

This not only inhibits the ability to accurately discern how certain children have died, but also skews child-death statistics, such as those recorded by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sun notes. Failure to delineate among the different causes of death makes it almost impossible to understand why they happen and how to prevent them.

Theresa Covington, a national child welfare expert, was hired by the state to investigate 79 suspicious child deaths that occurred in Clark County between 2001 and 2004. She determined that abuse or neglect charges should have been lodged in nearly half of the cases. Covington told the Sun that poor communication and coordination among officials at the coroner's office, police agencies, family services and the district attorney's office hobbled the investigations.

The CDC has released a new manual that sets national investigation protocols and standards, but its adoption is voluntary. We hope every agency in Nevada that deals with children's welfare seriously considers adopting this manual.

Agencies that work together on these deaths need to connect the dots more often and more accurately. Being right half the time isn't good enough.