An Open Letter to The Commissioner-Mattingly, Are You OK?

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Mayor Bloomberg appeared to shake his head in disbelief when his child welfare commissioner, John Mattingly, announced his cell phone number to a crowd of 230 rookie caseworkers at a graduation ceremony Tuesday morning.
Commissioner Mattingly, I also shook my head in disbelief when I read this on WNBC's website yesterday.
http://www.wnbc.com/politics/11127085/detail.html
I could understand why you gave your cell phone number to the new caseworkers- for a moment you put yourself in their shoes. They've just gone through a pretty intensive training and they're about to find out something that you could have told them but you didn't - that most of this training is going to be useless, because in your agency it is not the written word of procedure that rules, it is the spoken word of your line supervision and management. And frankly many of your line supervisors and managers don't even understand the concept of working under rules and regulations - ah, but you already know that, you read www.ACSmustbestopped.com, and you might have glanced at its companion website www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot.com.

Yes, these caseworkers are in for a shock. Some of them will be revulsed by things that people like Sunday Adegbola and Ramon Vargas want them to do- they'll want to let you know about it. But you already know about it.

But your odd behavior at the graduation tells of something else- your own meltdown. You came to ACS with ideas of reforming it and making it less destructive to the community- because you knew and still know that it is a destructive force, but one that seemingly is never going to go away. Your first real test was the Nixzmary Brown imbroglio. Any idiot knew that a doctor at Woodhull Hospital had given the child a clean bill of health, and any idiot could see through the NYPD nonsense that their elite secial victims squad had gone to Nixzmary's sibling's school to give security to caseworkers. Any idiot knows that special victims detectives are not caseworker bodyguards. Caseworkers have no body guards. But Mattingly, you folded. You gave your people up while the doctor, the nurse, the detectives skated. Then you folded again, a worse collapse- you gave up the children!

You allowed ignorant insensitive media owners and politicians to set your agenda.You knowingly allowed children who were not in any danger at all to be taken out of their homes in order to feed the monster of the media and the politicans' need to be "tough" on child abuse. You knew that this was a very dangerous game - that a removal panic leads to more child fatalities- not less child fatalities.

Now the numbers of child fatalities in ACS cases has soared on your watch, and your agency cannot even keep an accurate count of the children it is taking away from their parents. Also to the shame of this city the scandal of the illegal and unethical drug experiments that were done under mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani are being swept under the rug with your active participation. I kind of think that you really feel a lot of shame, embarassment, and a dread of what may come next.

God is just, Mattingly. God has to be angry at what is being done at ACS. You know better than what you are doing, that is why you are acting strange.

What is the honorable thing to do? Call a press conference, tell the truth and resign.

By the way I plan on letting as many caseworkers as possible know that it is not a good idea to avail themselves of your open cell phone policy- because you will ultimately turn them over to their immediate bosses - the people they hope you'll correct. They only have to read www.acsmustbestopped and www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot to know that.

Sincerely,

Eugene Weixel
veteran caseworker