PHOENIX — More than 10 years after leaving office, former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is speaking out, frustrated with the current state of the Department of Child Safety, the agency she created to protect vulnerable children.
"They're little and they end up being so brutally abused, killed, tormented day in and day out for years, and we hear about it and something doesn't happen?" Brewer said, her voice filled with emotion.
The former governor says she has been following ABC15's recent coverage of DCS failures, watching Arizona children like 16-year-old Zariah Dodd and 14-year-old Emily Pike be failed by the system.
She also cited the case of 10-year-old Rebekah Baptiste, whose teachers repeatedly called the state abuse hotline.
"To have somebody that vulnerable and that young in that kind of situation and not being able to do anything. You think, why? Why didn't somebody do something? Why did they let that little girl go and die like that?" Brewer said.
This isn't the first time Brewer has fought for Arizona's children. Toward the end of her time in office, she dismantled Child Protective Services after that agency closed thousands of child abuse and neglect investigations without proper investigation.
"Enough with uninvestigated reports of abuse and neglect," Brewer said at the time. "Enough with the lack of transparency."
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The former governor was incensed by CPS failures and couldn't tolerate the situation any longer. She left a governor's conference on Camelback Mountain and called an all-hands meeting at her ninth-floor offices. CPS was broken beyond repair, and she was ready to shut it down.
"I said - I'm not going to tolerate this anymore ... I can't stand the thought of what's taking place," Brewer said.
In CPS's place, she launched the Department of Child Safety. But years later, many of the same problems and failures have returned, haunting Brewer and other Arizonans who are disgusted and demanding better for Arizona's children.
"It can be better. They need to get that bar right up high and take care of them. We're not going to sit still. We can't," Brewer said.
Among her top calls for action, Brewer wants improvements to the DCS hotline to ensure all calls are followed up on and for the agency to move faster to protect Arizona kids.
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