Police Inaction Increases Father’s Grief

In his darkest hour--on the day his daughter disappeared without a trace--Ken Miyasaki felt that the police were his brightest hope.

An officer from the Culver City Police Department took his report about how 13-year-old Ariane Miyasaki had ditched school with a friend and then unsuccessfully tried to withdraw $4,000 from a bank in Santa Monica.

Police dutifully entered Ariane’s description into state and national law enforcement databases and promised that a photo of the girl would be shown to Culver City patrol officers.

So when Miyasaki hurried from the police station to hunt for his daughter on his own, he felt confident that an all-out police search was about to get underway.

Fourteen months later he knows better.

State law gives police wide discretion in handling missing-persons cases. And in his town, Miyasaki discovered, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a wide search.

It’s not a crime for children to run away, he was stunned to learn. Moreover, Culver City police say they cannot take runaways into custody if they find them--or make them return home.

Miyasaki, 50, is a UCLA professor of dentistry who has lived in Culver City for 10 years. Since 1994--when a drunk driver smashed into his car, killing his wife and mother-in-law and severely injuring him--he has been a single parent.

Miyasaki says he now realizes that his conservative, unbending approach to child-rearing is to blame for his daughter’s decision to run away Jan. 5, 1999.

But he fears it is Culver City’s conservative and unbending approach to runaways that is partly to blame for her still being missing.

For their part, Culver City police say they sympathize with Miyasaki. But since this was a runaway case and not a kidnapping, they say, they have handled it properly and prudently, doing all they could without violating Ariane’s rights or exposing themselves to the possible threat of civil rights lawsuits from her and from witnesses.

Miyasaki, however, contends that overly cautious police failed to follow up on leads to his daughter’s whereabouts. He says they missed opportunities to question two witnesses who know what happened to her after she reportedly climbed into a van driven by a pair of ex-felons named “Stretch” and “Jester” the day she vanished.

Shortly after her disappearance, police mistakenly erased Ariane’s name from a nationwide police computer network used to identify missing children. Her entry was not restored until Miyasaki himself inadvertently discovered three months later that it had been deleted.

Still later, one of the men suspected of driving off with Ariane was arrested in Seattle and extradited to Los Angeles on a charge of violating probation. But Culver City police did not interview the 26-year-old before a judge released him and he once again disappeared.

Most galling to Miyasaki is the refusal of police to question the 14-year-old girl who disappeared with his daughter. The friend returned home alone six weeks later.

Police say they decided not to confront the girl because her mother asked them not to. The mother told investigators she was worried that their questions might anger the girl and prompt her to run away again.

In time, Miyasaki says, the Culver City investigator handling the case leveled with him. You can’t force a runaway to return home, Det. Ken Barrett said.

Last summer, a frustrated Miyasaki hired a private detective. But Ariane’s trail was cold when Pasadena-based investigator Ted Woolsey went to work. The second girl’s mother wouldn’t let her daughter talk to him either--and even called police to complain about Woolsey.

Although police in other cities say they would have handled the matter differently, authorities in 5-square-mile Culver City maintain that their investigation has been done by the book.

Det. Barrett blames a political and legal climate that he says ties the hands of police and puts them at risk of lawsuits if they make missteps in investigations. He said he feared he might be sued by the second girl or her mother if he questioned the girl against her will. Or he might be sued by Ariane herself if he tried to apprehend her and return her home.

“I’d love to twist this other girl’s arm. I can’t. I’m sure she could tell us exactly where the Miyasaki girl is. But I’m not going to break the law. Dr. Miyasaki would love for us to get over there and put on the thumbscrews. If I were a parent, I’d love to, too,” he added.

Parents Often ‘Don’t Think We Do Enough’

But if he spotted Ariane on the street and she refused his urgings to return home, then “I couldn’t do anything,” said Barrett, a 32-year police veteran. “I’ve given Dr. Miyasaki this exact same speech, time after time: ‘I’ll do what I can, but I’m not going to have your daughter sue me.’ ”

Barrett’s supervisor, Lt. Bill Burck, agreed that police have “made every attempt we can legally make” to question witnesses.

“If they don’t want to talk to you, there’s not much you can do,” he said. “A lot of time parents don’t think we do enough. We don’t want our police officers to do anything illegal.”

Although Miyasaki initially feared that his daughter might have been abducted, investigators determined from the start that she was a runaway. Two weeks after her disappearance, she reportedly telephoned an aunt in Massachusetts to say she was all right, police said.

Fifty-seven Culver City juveniles ran away in 1999, and nearly all eventually returned home, including a dozen whom police “bluffed back in” by talking to them, according to Barrett.

Burck said Culver City officers do not initially explain their procedure with runaways to parents because that would only make parents feel more helpless. When they do finally find out, “it’s a hard lesson,” he acknowledged.

Mayor Richard Marcus, who last year queried police about Miyasaki’s complaints, said he is convinced that the department’s actions were proper.

“I feel bad for the dad,” Marcus said. “But [police have] done everything they can legally do at this time.”

But other law enforcement officials suggest that Culver City’s caution with runaways is unusual. As is the Police Department’s candor.

“They actually said that?” asked an astonished police officer from a neighboring city when told the agency expressed fear of lawsuits and blamed the political climate for tying its hands.

Experts in juvenile law say police in California are empowered to take youngsters off the street, even if cities do not have local curfew or truancy laws on the books. State law authorizes officers to take minors into temporary custody if they appear sick or injured or if they seem to be “beyond the control” of their parents or guardians.

And some police agencies suggest that there are plenty of ways to legally cajole nervous witnesses into talking.

“We would definitely try to talk to the other girl,” said Det. Harold Castrillo, a 10-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Juvenile Division. He said Los Angeles has a truancy law and, depending on circumstances, minors can be placed in shelters or temporary homes.

Los Angeles police would probably take Ariane Miyasaki home if they found her, Castrillo said. “If she says no, we’d probably take her home anyway. We’d work with the family to find a solution. If we’re aware of a minor, we take action. We just don’t abandon our kids.”

Added Santa Monica Police Lt. P.J. Guido: “I guarantee you our officers don’t look the other way.”

Once in protective custody, a minor can be kept briefly at a police station while parents are summoned.

If parents cannot--or will not--respond quickly, a runaway can be taken to juvenile hall. Since runaways are considered “status offenders” and not criminals, authorities immediately place them in shelters or in contracted shelter homes, said Laurie Logan, supervisor of the Los Angeles County Probation Department’s Status Offender Detention Alternative-- called the SODA program.

Shelter operators say they have a good working relationship with most police departments.

“My experience is: The police pursue young people who are missing,” said Liz Gomez, executive director of the Los Angeles Youth Network.

Her 20-bed Hollywood shelter has assisted about 8,000 children over the last 14 years. But “I can’t think of a case from Culver City,” she said.

Experts agree that police have wide latitude with runaway cases.

“Children are not entitled to leave home without parental permission,” said professor Jan C. Costello, a juvenile law and children’s rights specialist at Loyola Law School.

“A police officer who finds a child away from home has the option of taking the child into custody. It’s not an arrest. It’s taking them into custody for their own protection.”

The sheer volume--731,000 children were reported missing nationwide last year--means, however, that many police agencies do little more than take the federally required reports and place the youngsters’ names in the nationwide database.

In California, the vast majority of runaways eventually return home, said Greg Truax, a spokesman for the California Missing Children Clearinghouse. The service, operated by the state attorney general’s office, circulates posters and bulletins about missing youngsters to police and other agencies.

Statistics for 1998, the last year available, show that 109,443 California children ran away from home. Of those, 80,663 returned home voluntarily, 20,906 were located by police and 1,956 were arrested. About 5,000 other runaway reports were canceled for various reasons.

“You can’t expect miracles from law enforcement agencies. Parents are frustrated all the time,” said Ben Ermini, a director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private, nonprofit Virginia organization.

But the refusal of Culver City police to interview Ariane Miyasaki’s friend seems puzzling, Ermini said.

“If there are circumstances where a child ran away with a companion and the companion returned, you’d expect law enforcement to act,” he said.

Woolsey, Miyasaki’s private investigator, suspects that Ariane may be in the San Diego area. He is also checking several East Coast areas--Georgia and Massachusetts in particular.

For his part, Miyasaki has kept a meticulous log, listing the police officers, coroner’s officials, street people and others he has talked to since Ariane disappeared.

Miyasaki is so disgusted about the search for his daughter that he would consider moving out of Culver City. But he can’t.

Someday, he hopes, his daughter will appear at the front door of their home. And Miyasaki is determined to be there when she does.