Last Thursday, the small town of Bell in Gilchrist County experienced an unimaginable tragedy. Don Charles Spirit, a 51-year-old man with a history of drug abuse and violence, murdered his daughter and six grandchildren and then turned his gun on himself.
According to the Miami Herald, the incident may be “the largest loss of life in a single family with a child welfare history ever in Florida.”
Perhaps the worst part of this horrific incident is that it very well could have been avoided. The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) was first alerted to the Spirit family’s volatile history of physical violence and drug abuse on Sept. 1.
The department’s investigation into the family’s situation was still ongoing when the tragic shooting occurred about two weeks later.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only recent case of tragic, but preventable family violence in Florida.
In just the first half of 2013, at least 40 Florida children were killed in outbursts of family violence, according to a evaluation done by Casey Family Program. This epidemic of violence against Florida children has taken place in the wake of massive cuts to the DCF enacted by Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature.
Every year since Scott took office in 2011, DCF has faced harsh and devastating budget cuts. During the last legislative session, Scott and Florida lawmakers slashed $88 million from the department’s budget. In 2011, Scott argued that such budgets cuts were necessary to create more jobs in Florida.
“We’ve got to figure out how to do more with less,” he said. “If we don’t, we’re never going to grow jobs in this state.”
There’s no indication that more Florida jobs have been created during Scott’s time as governor than would have been with a stronger, more effective DCF. What we do know is that, in the past few years, dozens of Florida children have died as a result of horrific but avoidable violence.
There’s certainly no guarantee that a stronger DCF system would have prevented the Bell shooting, and simply throwing more money at the problem is not a solution by itself.
Even within the most well-funded, comprehensive social-safety nets, individual cases slip through the cracks and lead to unfortunate and distressing incidents.
However, the devastating cuts to the Florida DCF enacted by the Scott administration have increased the likelihood that more of these preventable deaths will occur in the future.
The DCF does not deserve to be vilified or condemned for its failure to prevent the Bell shooting. The counselors, investigators and other professionals in the department work extremely hard and receive very little recognition for what they do.
However, the Bell shooting and other recent cases of family violence demonstrate that the DCF still has significant room for improvement. Unfortunately, if the Florida government continues to slash funding for these vital social programs, the tragedies are bound to continue unabated.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 9/24/2014]
