CPS

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

No one expects to be falsely accused of child abuse or neglect; yet bogus cases are reported daily to Child Protective Services. My own daughter falsely reported my husband for physical abuse after he refused to let her call her boyfriend one evening. The next day, CPS and the police were on our doorstep.

Child Protective Services case summaries released Wednesday discussing the agency's involvement with three slain Tucson children raise new questions, in at least one case, about its actions to keep the children safe. In March 2006, the mother of Ariana and Tyler Payne sought help from police in getting her children back from their father, Christopher Matthew Payne. Police and CPS refused to enforce her court custody order after CPS said the mother, Jamie Hallam, was being investigated for neglect. When the allegation was proved unsubstantiated in April 2006, CPS did not retrieve the children, and Hallam's family members say they were never notified.