To the Public- Don't Rat To ACS

DO NOT OPEN YOUR DOOR TO ACS- Don't talk to them!

The overwhelming majority of CPS cases nationwide and ACS cases in NYC are classified not as "abuse" cases but as "neglect" or what they now call "maltreatment."

These represent matters that are not and should not be the business of the government to begin with, NYPD or ACS!

If some one's life or well being is at imminent risk, then yes that's a police matter. Perhaps in a rare few of those cases there is no family or neighborhood informal solution as simple let's say as a kid goes to stay with a neighbor for a few days until a situation cools down or gets worked out between family and friends, and church, mosque or synagogue.

I know that ACS has a gigantic computerized data bank (called "Connections" and "CCRS") that tracks the hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic families, with details their lives, has lies and exaggerations spread throughout. ACS is not above printing these materials out and placing them unshredded on sidewalks either.

I know that foster care is almost never a good solution to whatever the problem may be, call it "maltreatment" or call it "abuse". These days after Mrs. H. Clinton got done with it foster care now more and more means never ever getting your child back. When ACS comes to your door it's serious! Don't let them in! The caseworkers are stressed out, tired out, many really couldn't care less about you and they report to and suck up to people like Ramon Vargas and Maradesa Adegbola. Not a good recipe for solving your problems, trust me on that!

The difference between how NYPD and ACS function in child abuse cases.

The NYPD is of course interested in finding crime and if they find it, commencing the process of justice. They also are interested in securing the safety of children and all others. I'm the last one to say that they do these things perfectly - I've seen them mess up on child protective situations, but I feel that they can do no worse and probably can do much better than can ACS in these acute situations. Frankly the investigating of child abuse should belong to them. Some of their errors are due to lack of training, while ACS staff is trained, trained and trained again, but ignores the training in practice.

In all of my cases that involved police I was alone, on the telephone to bosses trying to get their decisions as to what I should do, while there would be several cops, detectives, and when decision time came there would be a Sergeant, a Lt. or even a captain on the scene signing off.No ACS supervisor or manager ever came out to the ground level to see the situation first hand before issuing an order as to how to resolve a case. Cops just don't work like that.

When you read about the sex abuse case at Elmhurst Hospital you can imagine a phalanx of police, including a sergeant, as well as numerous medical staff and me, the sole ACS representative trying to get the undivided attention of an Adegbola over the telephone.

That just can't work well.

"I can't take another child fatality review board" (or words very much to that effect).

Yes, a supervisor at Emergency Children's Services was heard saying that and it actually got back to me!

Child fatality. He can't take another one!

A nice enough guy, but he's not an accident waiting to happen, he's an accident that has happened already, and more than once. If his accidents affected people who are counted as being important in this society he'd be gone- certainly from any job of responsibility.

This guy has real problems at home, it's no secret at ECS. He's stressed out and distracted. Any decent boss would take him aside, get him counseling, try to find help for his situation and by God, give the guy some job where he can function without hurting himself or others, like Ms. Bleefeld has.

What say you, Zeinab Chahine? (A hard copy of this post is on its way to her via snail mail.)

What's The Big Deal? (and thanks to the great ER staff at Elmhurst Hospital)

Q- Okay, so Vargas was the manager on duty and also the Instant Response Team coordinator when the Whitick case came in to ECS, so he didn't send a case worker to the kids, he did have someone make a phone call, didn't he?
A- Yes, well someone did, and Vargas was in charge under two different hats, that of manager on duty and of IRT coordinator. Question- were the kids beaten to a pulp before, during or after the brilliant telephone call?

Q- Okay, so Vargas sent a teenaged sex abuse victim out of the shelter system with her mom back to where the guy that the kid and mother had run to the precinct away from thirteen hours earlier. You hadn't done a home assessment, Weixel. (Ask Vargas, he said you needed to do a home assessment). Also Adegbola wrote into the case record that that you only provided second hand information on this case. Not to mention that veteran supervisor George Baird was the "night administrator" that night and he thought it was fine to send the kid back, right?

A- This is where it is hard to say that Adegbola is not an idiot, but truth is he is not an idiot. He has a Master's Degree. Even if his lie were true, and I had only got information from cops, detectives, social workers, nurses and doctors of Elmhurst Hospital (who were very helpful in this case by the way, - thanks) that night and not one word from the mom or kid (a bald faced lie by Adegbola and he can take me to court if he wants to) the information was clear that the kids and mom needed to get away from that step father. That's why next day Zeinab Chahine, number two at Administration for Children's Services, (skipped over twice, now that's not nice) and her buddies were at ECS trying to fix Vargas' blunder. Don't forget, this was not even a removal. The mother agreed to bring her children to the shelter system as domestic violence victims, which all of them were. I wonder who Vargas' rabbi is. Do you?

Q- What's this thing about the four month old? What did Adegbola and Vargas do in that one?

A- A young mom and her seventeen year old baby daddy had a fight at paternal grandmother's Bronx apartment, cops came and they decided that the mom had attacked the dad, and that the house looked fine and so they locked up the mother and left the baby at the grandma's apartment not calling ACS to see if there was any child abuse record and definitely not checking to see if grandma was a criminal herself.

As they often do (when they bother themselves to do it at all) the cops called CPS hours after they had taken their own action regarding a child's well being.

When mom got released from jail with charges dismissed, she called in a CPS report that I was assigned to. I found in the record that baby's daddy was a child himself who had been removed and ordered by a judge not to return to grandma's house because she had brought baby daddy and her other kids upstate to a prison and tried to smuggle some heroin to her man and got caught. So baby daddy was not allowed to be where he was, let alone the baby. A Bronx ACS worker had come there, looked around, liked the furniture and left. So I told Adegbola that I needed to go there and get that baby out of there, and if possible baby daddy too. I told him it would be good to go there with cops as there had been violence and grandma is a felon and I would be there to take her kid and grandkid. Adegbola blew his stack, got defensive of his turf as boss and well, I went to Vargas who backed Adegbola up. Only by writing my opinion into the case record and by emailing the honchos was this assinine decision reversed.

I have a question. Okay a lot of people know about the Whitick case but the two other ones. They just involved me alone. How many other caseworkers have stories they feel too afraid to tell anyone about idiotic decisions by Vargas and Adegbola? Probably quite a few.

The public needs to consider the caliber of people in charge at ACS before they make a mistake and put a family into their hands by making that phone call. Think about it. If it's an emergency call the cops, they won't do any worse at least than ACS does, and maybe they'll do better. If it's not an emergency leave the family alone. For God's sake we all have problems and not every problem has a neat clean solution. Foster care by God surely isn't one.

PS to the people at Elmhurst Hospital. This sex abuse/domestic violence case was an ACS case on the night of 2/10/05 into the morning of 2/11/05. You can see how I tried to get the attention of the higher ups at ACS to take action about the irresponsibility of Vargas and Adegbola and how I tried to get ACS to repair the damage they had done HERE.

CPM Ramon Vargas is Not An Idiot Goes Worldwide

Don't believe it? Click Here, Here, and Here,

It's becoming a world wide thing.

My blog is worth $5,080.86.
How much is your blog worth?

People everywhere are learning about how New York City, the greatest city in the world puts it's most vulnerable children into the hands of irresponsible people. Child Protective Manager CPM Ramon Vargas is more or less the prototype of what Giuliani cursed Child Welfare with. People all over the world are checking in.

You know what rolls down hill

Workers at Emergency Children's Services have been told, but there is no memo or regulation cited, that they are not to express any difference of opinion with a supervisory or mangerial decision in case records. Anyone with half a brain knows that this is to set the caseworker up to take blame if and when a muckety-mucks decision explodes. My advice- disregard this mumbled, non written, non legal "directive."

Child Protective Manager Ramon Vargas, Poster Boy of Giuliani's Child Welfare "Reform"(revised June 1, 2007)

I couldn't find a poster of CPM Vargas, so I will use one of Giuliani, doing what he does best. (Giuliani missed the Vietnam War unlike many of his generation, however he loves to wave a flag, or help someone else wave one.)






Joe Torre and Mayor Giuliani - ©Photofile

Photo

Buy at AllPosters.com



Vargas was an ordinary case worker who had been boosted out of the Brooklyn Field Office under arguable circumstances# and consigned to the nights and weekends at Emergency Children's Services when some how some way he got a double promotion to Supervisor II and got assigned to the notorious "Instant response Team" (Google "Instant Response Team", "Nixzmary Brown" ). Vargas had no experience as a unit Supervisor I, had not passed a supervisor's test (most of the new supervisors can't pass this exam, which, incidentally, I did pass) and had not gained a Masters Degree either. (It is interesting how many "Masters of Social Work" cannot pass the ACS supervisor Exam, but maybe a book needs to be written about that.) Anyhow after a brief stint as a Supervisor II Vargas got boosted yet again, still without a degree or a passing mark on the Supervisor's test, this time to the title "Child Protective Manager" (a non civil service, non unionized title whose holders serve at the pleasure of The Mayor.)

Giuliani and his Child Welfare Commissioner Scopetta had just announced new tougher standards for the making of supervisors in the agency when Vargas got his first lucky break at ECS.

Vargas may have no civil service protection and he may have no union but he clearly has a rabbi.

I had a case in which a four month old baby was given over to a criminal whose own children had been removed from her home by the courts in an informal NYPD "child placement", a disaster that was seconded by a Bronx ACS worker, by Sup II Adegbola and by Vargas, though not by their superiors once I insisted that the situation was dangerous. The higher ups were furious - not at Vargas, but at me, because I had blown their "Me? I see nothing. Me? I know nothing" cover. After the Whitick case, after this case, after the case of the teenage girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather and sent back to him by Vargas, Vargas still makes life and death decisions for the victims of child abuse and for the victims of ACS.


# To hear Vargas tell the tale, he was being stalked by a mom on one of his cases and she was threatening his life. I never had anything like that happen to me even with moms whose kids I took away.

Putting Your Personal Life Onto the Sidewalk, For The Daily News To See....

Putting Your Business Out On the Street For All The World To See

This happened at the office where Vargas is a honcho and his buddy Jean-Philippe is the honcho.When bozzos like them trample on the dignity of New York Citizens all they need to do is "frantically apologize", then resume doing whatever it is they do...

The ACS department where I worked for eight years, Emergency children's Services, has made the news for the first time since the Child Protective Manager Ramon Vargas bungled Whitick case on super Bowl Sunday, 2005. This time it was because the Daily News found out that ECS takes case records that have all kinds of private information as well as all kinds of unsubstantiated accusations and lies, about hundreds of New Yorkers, puts them in garbage bags and leaves them out on the sidewalk.i

Bloomberg says he's very upset - about the Daily News getting hold of one of these bags - and wants an investgation. If the investigation will be a typical ACS investigation, like the one about what went wrong on the Whitick case, no one needs to worry, unless of course some taxi driving ex-employee had given the bag to The Daily News.

From 11/20 NY Daily News:

Confidential ACS files found dumped on street

BY RICH SCHAPIRO and NICOLE BODE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

[Daily News reporter holds confidential files found in clear plastic
bag dumped outside Administration for Children's Services office on E.
29th St. and First Ave.] More than 200 case files filled with
confidential information about the city's most at-risk children were
dumped on a Manhattan streetcorner, the Daily News has found.

The unshredded Administration for Children's Services files - tossed
out in a ripped, clear plastic garbage bag - contained highly
sensitive personal data about families, social workers and police
involved in agency cases dating from 2000-2001.

"You found it on the street? You're kidding me!" gasped Melissa, a
41-year-old mother whose last name the Daily News is withholding.
"They just put it on the street and anybody could have come? Those
people need to be sued for doing what they're doing."

The files were tossed in a trash heap filled with office furniture and
cardboard boxes in front of the ACS offices on E. 29th St. and First
Ave. last Thursday. Agency officials issued a frantic apology to those
named in the files, adding that they were scrambling to learn how it
had happened...

http://www.nydailyn ews.com/front/ story/473188p- 398034c.html

The Whitick case, Bloombreg, Vargas and me.

ACS flacks told the world that it was not required by regulation that the children in the Whitick case be visited immediately. It was incumbent that either ACS or NYPD make contact as soon as possible, physical and visual contact, because there was a credible report that children were being seriously hurt and they were! 2 days later the cops got involved. Emergency Children's Services had a case worker call the family (!) and of course an adult answered and said that there was no problem, so the matter rested until Tuesday when cops found the kids beaten and battered and needing ambulances. No one has asked whether these kids got beaten before, during or after ACS's very brilliant telephone call.

Mayor Bloomberg told the world that he was outraged, outraged mind you, and that by golly he was going to get to the bottom of it all. Two years plus and no follow up to his outrage is apparent. The puppy dog journalists have no further questions...

I was brought up on charges for supposedly not making an immediate midnight, non emergency cruel, needless and heartless case visit. Cops, detectives in fact, had already been to the home, extensively. A doctor did not call in a report, because there was nothing reportable. Cops called in a report that was rejected. They tried a second time and an exageration or lie was added to the report to make it viable, as the NYS Office of Children's Services is known to do.

While I was brought up on charges the Supervisor One, Hani Malek, who was with me and agreed that there was no need to call police got promoted to Supervisor Two. Go figure!

So, yes I have this thing about the Whitick case, but everyone who cares about children or who pays taxes that go to NYC's ACS should, because here was a call from a person with a name and phone number, not an anonymous call, about kids getting the stuffing beaten out of them. In fact that was an IRT (Instant Response Team) case but since Ramon Vargas was both the manager on duty, and the IRT coordinator, and it was after all, Super Bowl Sunday, and he has this off to the side, curtained off office that no other Child Protective Manager has at ECS, well...

As I approach the first anniversary of my somewhat forced resignation I have renewed energy and will to see that this case, and the matter of Ramon Vargas, accident that has already happened, not get lost.
Who is the idiot who brought me up on charges for this? Well, he isn't an idiot, he's Maradesa Adegbola.

While Vargas is no moron he has put children at serious risk, not that that would bother anyone at ACS.

Oh, yes, the Whitick Case was called in to Child Protective Services on Superbowl Sunday, 2005. What with the television sets on bosses' desks, is it any wonder that no one went to see those kids that day???

Would You Believe It? No Reply! Why I do not trust the Inspector General's Office, or if you'd rather think so, it's just fiction.....

Whatever happened to the investigation of the Whitick case ?

Eugene Weixel, Child Protective Specialist
Administration for Children’s Services
Emergency Children’s Services
492 First Avenue Unit 579 Ground floor
New York, New York 10016-9103

BEN W. DEFIBAUGH
ACTING INSPECTOR GENERAL
180 Water Street, 2nd Floor,
New York, N.Y. 10038
Fax: 212-331-3308
Dear Mr. Defibaugh:
I am writing you first in regards to an ACS case that I believe your office is investigating, the (media case that faded away prior to the election Whitick case ) case. I communicated to the ACS Commissioner that there were memos sent by management to certain supervisors that set arbitrary limits on the number of cases that Emergency Children’s Services would classify as “visits” per shift. ----Whitick case ) case came to Emergency Chidlren’s Services and may account for why a telephone call was made to Ms. XXXXXXX rather than a visit to her home to assess her children’s situation. My communication with the Commissioner also regarded another case that you might want to look at I am including the relevant e mail communications between Mr. Mattingly, Ms. Chahine and me:
Subject: From Eugene Weixel re: IRT case of this morning
Date: 2/11/05 1:18:42 P.M. Eastern Time
From Eweixel (@AOL>COM)
To: John. Mattingly@dfa.state.ny.us
At the risk of receiving additional disciplinary charges I am bringing a case to your attention that demonstrates the extreme of irresponsible casework decisions by those who issue directives in ECS. Rather than name this case here in the Internet email I will simply say that I worked on an IRT case last night (this morning) and I carried out directives that left three children in a dangerous situation.
1. I have documented the case thoroughly, and I have sent a memo to Mr. Jean - Philippe as well as the supervisors and managers involved.
I must say also that I have followed the recent media case. I would hope that you are aware of the memos regarding limitations of case visits that were sent by management to the supervisors who were involved in that case, both before and after the media "blowup."
In my humble opinion these kinds of fiascos will continue as long as ECS supervisors and managers enjoy the impunity they are accustomed to. (End)
I received a reply from Ms. Chahine which I answered (both are included):
Subject: Email Sent Commissioner
Date: 2/12/2005 12:37:56 A. M. Eastern Standard Time
To: Eweixel@aol.comMr. Weixel,
It would be helpful if you could forward to me the memos that we mentioned in your e-mail to the Commissioner for follow up. Thanks
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

My reply was as follows:
Subject: Re: Email sent Commissioner
Date: 12/12/2005 9:37:27 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: Eweixel
To: Zeinab.Chahine@dfa.state.ny.us
In a message dated 2/12/2005 12:37:56 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Zeinab.Chahine@dfa.state.ny.us writes:
Mr. Weixel,
It would be helpful if you could forward to me the memos that we mentioned in your e-mail to the Commissioner for follow up. Thanks
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
These memos were sent to supervisors xxxx,xxxxxx Mr. xxxxxx and I believe also to Mr. xxxxxx. I doubt they'd actually give them to me because they'd fear getting into some sort of trouble. They were sent by CPM Mr. xxxxxxxxxx (Spelling?).
Thank you for responding as you did to this concern and also for the speedy action to place one of the children in my IRT case of Thursday night / Friday morning.
The case in which I was involved is summarized in a memo I sent to my supervisor, manager and director:
ADMINISTRATION
for CHILDREN’S
SERVICES
Memo
To: xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx
From: Eugene Weixel
CC: XXXXXX XXXXXX
Date: 02/11/05
Re: Redacted case SCR 214xxxxxx et al.
I must express my grave concerns regarding this case. This is a case in which a xxxxteen-year-old girl alleges that her stepfather sexually fondled her and “attacked” her. This child’s mother believes the child and moved the child into a rented room in someone else’s house to keep her away from the stepfather. This mother however was not willing to cooperate with police in identifying the stepfather in order that he be arrested. In an interview the mother stated her preference to have this xxxxxeen-year-old child taken from the home in order that the marriage to the alleged subject stepfather be preserved.This mother told the CPS that the father had threatened to kill her and had thrown objects around and “talked about killing people” in front of the two younger children.
The child disclosed to hospital staff as well as to her own mother that the father had fondled her vaginal area at least two times. This child, when asked by this CPS if she felt herself safe in the home where she was returned to the stepfather answered, “I don’t know.”
I objected to the decision to take the family out of the EAU gateway to the shelter system where the mother had agreed to take her children and I also objected to leaving the children in the home with this subject father.
The family was being accepted into the shelter system and was taken out of this system abruptly and placed into a high-risk situation.
A false entry was made in the case record: “worker has not obtained any information from child nor the mother to assess risk. All information are from various Sources including social worker and doctor.” This is contradicted by my case entries, it does not reflect anything I told you or any other supervisor or manager, and police and hospital staff can dispute it. While the child could not be interviewed at any depth because she had been asleep (after one in the morning, when her mother had brought her to the precinct at around 3:00 PM) and because of a language barrier, the child would not tell the CPS that is not afraid at her home. (She speaks and understands limited English). The mother had a lengthy interview with CPS that was facilitated by Elmhurst Hospital translation service and there was another discussion with medical staff, police and CPS with the mother that was facilitated by a (Native language) speaking nurse. I had no reason to misrepresent these facts, nor did I do so to you, to Mr. xxxxx, or to Mr. xxxxxxx.

To clarify the situation for you , Mr. Inspector General, I emphasize that I was in telephone communication with my supervisor and with supervisor George Baird, night administrator at ECS, throughout the case from the Elmhurst General Hosptal Pediatric Emergency Room, From the Emergency Assistance Unit, while in transit to the Emergency Assistance Unit and from the home of the subject family. I carried out their instructions to the letter while I made my objections clear.I hope I have helped in shedding light onto the BIG MEDIA CASE THAT WENT AWAY WHILE BLOOMBERG FOLLOWED IN THE POLLS Whitick case and a similar matter that you might wish to look into. (As you may know Ramon Vargas was the Child Protective Manager directly involved with both of these cases).
Thank You,
Eugene Weixel
917-680-5034
CC: John Mattingly
Zeinab Chahine


YES, THERE WAS THIS BIG MEDIA CASE AT THAT TIME, AND THE PRESS WROTE THAT AN INVESTIGATION WAS UNDERWAY AND NEVER REVISITED THE STORY (THE ELECTION WAS IN THE FUTURE AND AT THE TIME THE MAYOR'S STANDING WAS SHAKY) Whitick case



By the way, after Vargas ordered me to drag this teenage sex abuse victim and her terrorized mother back to the home of the terrorizer Zeinab Chahine had to get personally involved in partially rescuing the situation from Vargas' hasty abrupt and uninformed decision. Once again it was not Vargas who incurred wrath, but me, the one who warned via email the higher ups of the disaster Vargas had created. But me, for making the higher ups responsible for what their agency was doing.

Not revised. This is the heart of the problem with Ramon Vargas.

Jean-Philippe, Joycelyn (ACS),- Can't read for comprenesion too well. (Revised June 1, 2007)

This is a director who went around the office talking about how great it is to be a single New York man in Santo Domingo. He can't read too well, not for comprehension, anyhow.Please note that in internet style the first communication is at the bottom, the reply is above it.-

From: Jean-Philippe, Joycelyn (ACS)
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 4:10 PM
To: Weixel, Eugene (ACS); Mattingly, John (ACS)
Cc: Adegbola, Maradesa (ACS); Fore, Gregory (ACS); Vargas, Ramon ECS (ACS); Malek, Hani (ACS); Malia, Patrick (ACS); Brown, Olivia (ACS); McDougall, Sharon (ACS); Chahine, Zeinab (ACS)
Subject: RE:

Hello Eugene,



I have asked your CPM, Patrick Malia, to meet with you and your supervisor in order to clarify and address the contents of your e-mail. During this meeting, the CPM will review with you our mission versus the mission of the police, our role, our mandates, our case practice guide, and our responsibility to act effectively upon all calls requiring a child abuse/neglect investigation and/or immediate preventive services. The CPM will also discuss with you our Instant Response and High Risk protocol, which requires an immediate face-to-face response on all cases identified as high risk by the SCR. This includes all IRT cases (i.e. fatalities, sexual abuse, serious injuries, severe neglect/abuse reports, etc.) There is also a fatality protocol, which requires the immediate response on all reported fatality situations and the submission of a 24-hour fatality report to the State, which the CPM will review with you. In addition, I want to emphasize that Children’s Services is a fully operational 24-hour per day agency. We operate this way because we live in a diverse and multicultural city. Some of our citizens function during the day, while others (like ECS employees) function at night. We cannot in good faith and with good conscience fully protect our children if we decided that we should not conduct home visits during certain hours.



Lastly, I want you to know that your comments are always appreciated, but you must follow the Chain of Command, as required by the Agency’s “Employee Code of Conduct,” to address all work related issues. Conferencing with you about this matter and/or directing you to follow the code of conduct is not “retaliation.” Since it seems that you are lacking clarity in this matter, your CPM will review the code of conduct with you as well. Thank you.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Weixel, Eugene (ACS)
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 6:47 AM
To: Mattingly, John (ACS); Jean-Philippe, Joycelyn (ACS)
Cc: Adegbola, Maradesa (ACS); Fore, Gregory (ACS); Vargas, Ramon ECS (ACS); Malek, Hani (ACS); Malia, Patrick (ACS)
Subject:



Dear Mr. Commissioner:



I am writing this letter to you because I have confidence in the rightness of what I am going to tell you, even though the last time I communicated directly to you regarding case practice in ECS I had to undergo an attempt at retaliation that failed.



As you may know, a one month old infant died in New York City last night. I was assigned to investigate this matter prior to the acceptance by the SCR of any report against the parents.



I spoke with the detective on the case who told me that he did not suspect child abuse or neglect at this time. He told me that the infant had been carried by the now subject mother in an ordinary baby carrier. He told me that he could not make a determination regarding crime prior to the results of the Medical Examiner's investigation. He did tell me that the home is in deplorable condition. (This is not mentioned in the Oral Report that the SCR was generating at perhaps the very moment I was getting into a car to go to the parent's home.)



My visit to the parent's home, at 2:21 AM, is described in my case notes. Basically the now subject father wanted ACS to return to his home at a more conventional hour. He stated that he and his wife are bereaved. He said that the surviving one year old sibling is in the home of a neighbor. He said he did not want to wake up that neighbor's family and that the child would be returned to his apartment in the morning.



I decided not to push, bully or coerce this father into allowing us into his home at 2:30 in the morning nor to attempt to force the awakening of the neighbor's family.



I want to bring up another matter. The police officer whose report was taken has told ACS that the report does not accurately reflect his words. He did not say that the child was being carried in a "backpack." More than once I have spoken with reporters who tell me that the ORT being described to them does not reflect the information they reported, and I can say that this has happened even tome in reports I have called in carefully going over the facts with the SCR worker. At times the information gathered by us from reporters would point to a lack of any real allegations, yet we pursue these matters, prying into the lives of people who have not been truly and factually even accused of doing anything wrong, sometimes calling them and ringing their door bells sometimes at very unconventional hours as well.



I initially objected to the assignment to go to this family’s home in the stark hours of early morning. I feel this is a brutish and heartless act, needlessly heartless at that, and in fact I question being assigned to investigate the family or ring their doorbell without a report.



I can recall another instance in which a child died on Staten Island and a report was made only accusing this family of leaving the deceased child’s siblings unattended in a hospital parking lot. I was dispatched to the family’s home and learned that the children in question were not unattended. (Such an investigation on the day a parent’s child has died!) When I called back to the IRT coordinator he wanted me to return to the home and question the family about the death that had been investigated by police and found not to be homicide and after the hospital that pronounced the child dead had not reported any neglect or abuse connected to the death itself.



In still another instance another worker told a manager that the worker suspected that a reporter was mentally disturbed. I was assigned to assist on the matter, to ring the doorbell of the reporter at around three in the morning to assess his mental state!



In still another case I was ordered to “tell the parents” of a child who just had died on the day of this death that the “had to bring the other children to the hospital right now.” I’d hope not to see those days return.



I believe in the rule of law. When lawmakers, law enforcers and government officials habitually do not abide by law then the ideas that underpin our Declaration of Independence come into play. Beyond the law and rule of law (investigation without report, investigation of reporters) there is a matter of common decency in all of this. Our office is called “Emergency Children’s Services” I think for a reason. We are conceived as an arm of Child Protection that intervenes in emergencies. It is a matter of decency if not of law that people are not to be disturbed in their abodes by the government at unreasonable times or for reasons that lack reason.



One cold February morning around four years ago I removed four little children from their homes at around four in the morning without court order and for no reason a normal person would accept, other than the old cliché “I was only following orders.” I wrote a memo to my director who thanked me for bringing the matter to his attention. A few months after this the manager retired, some say under duress. This action was ordered and insisted upon after my co worker and I told the supervisor from the home itself that there was no safety emergency in this home – and I promised myself that I would never again be the instrument of such thoughtless brutality.



I’m almost 60 years old and it is too late for me to change much. I have these hang ups about decency, respect for others and lawfulness of government actions that help make me into a misfit where I work, but it is too late for me to find another job. Maybe it is not too late for the place where I work to change.



Thank you,





Eugene Weixel

Some Rhetorical Reasons Why Ramon Is Not An Idiot.

Do idiots end up screwing their subordinates who have cushy jobs ?
(Ask comb slimer Paul Wolfowitz).

Ramon Vargs is no Paul Wolfowitz, but neither one is an idiot.

Revised June 1, 2007.

Immigrants, Illegal Aliens, Cultural Norms, Child Protection and the "Emancipated Woman."

I am married to an immigrant from South America and am family with her and her two daughters. This along with ideological views I hold make me sympathetic to the plight of the new immigrants here, including those who don't have the documents the law requires. My wife came here legally but-over stayed her visa because really no one knew how to help her get asylum, or even that they could. Her husband, or I should say her children's father, had brutalized her and the two little girls often and terribly and my wife came to believe that he was going to kill her, and possibly the children too. With her visa for the US still good she came back to New York with the children and went from the streets to a domestic violence shelter to the projects.

Today in the United States there are millions of "illegal aliens" or "undocumented immigrants" who are uncounted, but estimated at up to twelve million. One indicator of how many there might be is the fact that the Internal Revenue Service says that in 2004 it got tax returns, mainly for wages and salaries, with nine million non-existent Social Security numbers. Now a phenomenon that big exists because those in power allow it to exist. Laws are on the books to penalize and even put out of business employers who hire people who do not have legal authorization to hold jobs here. These laws are very seldom enforced and do not phase the typical American boss. Here in New York City we have hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more such people working at jobs and unknown numbers who are paid in cash, and for whom the IRS has not a trace of information.

I read in The Village Voice that now we have "illegal aliens" replacing construction trades union workers on major projects in the heart of Manhattan, which means right under the eyes of the media, law enforcement and the powers that be. Safety laws and regulations are routinely ignored on these outlaw construction sites, which have the full participation of New York's respectable banks in their financing>

"Labor War in Chelsea
For the first time, non-union immigrants are building Manhattan's high-rise towers
by Tom Robbins May 9th, 2006 11:34 AM

Carpenters' union organizer Tommy Costello: "Our fight's not with the workers."photo: Giuletta Verdon-RoeThere's a nasty little chapter in the national immigration debate playing out along the side streets in the West Twenties in Manhattan these days. There, construction union members, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants themselves, are squared off against a contractor using just-off-the-boat employees willing to work long hours at substandard wages with no benefits.

The protests have already produced seven arrests and at least one badly bloodied head. But those wounds are minor compared to the issues at stake here, which include the increasing success of non-union builders in the city, fed by a seemingly boundless supply of immigrant workers—most of them undocumented—willing to work for much less than their union brethren."...

This is a crime. Use of illegal workers under illegal safety conditions is illegal, period. What is done about it? Nothing, except some protests and some skirmishing between union members and "illegal alien" scabs. Working conditions and wages take hit after hit in this country and life here for workers becomes more and more the life of the third world. - And who gets beat up? -People protesting the illegal conditions.

I remember as if it were yesterday a child maltreatment case I had once, a case that points to what I am trying to tell you. A thirteen year old girl from rural Mexico, for whom Spanish was her second language, and who is a mother of a healthy newborn American baby, lives in an apartment converted into a barracks for Mexican workers in a high rent district that shall go un named. She cooks for ten people. She does not go to school. The baby's father is an adult. There is at least one fifteen year old boy living in this commune who is here without his parents or other blood relative, who is holding a job on the night shift in a factory in New Jersey, and who of course does not go to school. I get the best information I am able under the circumstances, with a double language barrier and with everyone lying, naturally, and remove the thirteen year old from the home and she brings her baby who is not a foster child, but who is still under her custody.

I hear later that she is married (this was denied at the time of the intervention). The lawyers or whoever return her and the baby to their abode. I am told that as a married woman she is "emancipated" and does not have to go to school and can by definition not be a victim of statutory rape. She was married at age twelve with her parents' consent prior to coming here, or so I'm told.

Wow, an emancipated woman!

No effort is made to identify or rescue the fifteen year old child laborer.

My unanswered questions are several: What if this girl were ten years old and not thirteen? Twelve? Eleven? What if this family came from a country where polygamy is legal and she were not the only wife in the family. Would she still be an emancipated woman?

Do we want these supposed cultural norms to become legality or even "street legality" in our country, in our city? Bush does. Bloomberg does. I don't. I want laws and customs that presuppose that a child is a child, that there are protections for children from exploitation, that there are wage and hours laws, child labor laws, housing codes, the whole modern shebang. Are these poor people my foes? No, but I don't want them here living this way, pulling down the standards of modern life here. I want the landlord who takes their money locked up. I want the owners of the factory where the fifteen year old works locked up. I want the idiots who say the thriteen year old is "emancipated" fired. Too much to dream of?

There are swaths of the United States where there are not large numbers of new immigrants, and they have restaurants, hotels, construction sites, and small stores that function with American workers. We are told that American workers don't want the kind of jobs that these Americans still have in nearby places like Vermont, rural Pennsylvania and throughout western "heartland" areas as well. This stuff about Americans not willing to do these jobs is a self serving lie. What It does prove to me is that workers have no nationality, none that the bosses and landlords and governments are bound to respect.