The community, which was composed of approximately 400 Mormon fundamentalists, had been tipped off about the planned raid and were found singing hymns in the schoolhouse while the children played outside.

[1] Arizona law enforcement took 164 dependent children into custody; a superior court ordered in March 1955 that they be released back to their families.

"[4] Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle initially called the raid "a momentous police action against insurrection"[5][6] and described the Mormon fundamentalists as participating in "the foulest conspiracy you could possibly imagine" that was designed to produce "white slaves.

However, the raid and its tactics attracted mostly negative media attention; one newspaper editorialized: By what stretch of the imagination could the actions of the Short Creek children be classified as insurrection?

[19] In 2006, FLDS Church leader Warren Jeffs was placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List; he was arrested in 2007 and in 2011 was convicted in Texas of two counts of child sexual abuse[20] and sentenced to life in prison.

[21] On 3 April 2008, following allegations of physical and sexual abuse by an unidentified caller who claimed to be a 16-year-old girl, law enforcement officers raided a FLDS compound Jeffs had founded in Texas called the YFZ Ranch.

[23] A former member of the FLDS Church, Carolyn Jessop, arrived on-site 6 April and stated her opinion that the action in Texas was unlike the Short Creek raid.