Miami Police Chief: Greater Child Care Access Benefits Communities

Family has always had a large focus in my life. Even as a young police officer and new father, I was very clear to those that I worked with that I took my parental responsibility very seriously. Though I have a time-intensive job, I worked hard to challenge the narrative that children’s well-being is a mother’s job, and worked to build that culture of being a parent first to the culture of my teams wherever I worked in law enforcement.

Visiting homes and seeing the conditions of some and the effect on the children who live in them really drove home the importance of children receiving both the emotional and academic attention needed for their development, something I made a priority for my children. The high-quality child care my children received first with a family member, and later at a center helped them to develop cognitive learning skills, social skills, proper emotional expression, and countless other skills necessary to succeed in today’s world.

However, I understand that some parents don’t have the work flexibility to care for their children themselves or the means to access high-quality child care for them, which can lead to their children struggling and falling behind at a young age. This is something that concerns me as a law enforcement leader, because when children struggle at a young age, they become much less likely to develop the crucial skills and are more likely to end up in the justice system. This is why I support child care access. If some of the money spent on jail and other programs could be invested early for child care and other critical programs, parents, children, and communities would benefit. It is much easier to support children in the early stages of their development than to deal the effects on our communities later.