NEW YORK CITY ACS DEFENSE LAWYER

The young father was arrested after his 6-week-old son was found lifeless in his crib in the Bronx one morning last week. Investigators had found undated video on a baby monitor of him pressing down on a pillow over the tiny boy’s head and charged him with murder. But it was not the first time the authorities had heard about the father, Teshawn Watkins. Not only had the police arrested him twice on charges he had assaulted the baby’s mother, but the authorities investigated him four times over allegations of child abuse in the family, including once when another son had a broken leg, law enforcement officials told The New York Times. Now, nearly a week after Mr. Watkins, 27, was charged in his son Kaseem’s death, questions have begun to arise over how so many warning signs went unheeded and whether the city could have done more to protect Mr. Watkins’s three sons. The city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which handles child abuse allegations, and the New York Polic...

ACS workers will often call parents into what they call a child safety conference. This is a meeting between the parents and the ACS worker and supervisor. It is ACS policy not to allow attorneys in the conference. WHY? The answer is obvious. ACS uses a few tactics to attack parents at the conference and an attorney would not allow this to happen. The first tactic is to use the good/cop bad/cop approach. The ACS worker will bring in her supervisor and they will play off each other. Often they are both bad cops. This is akin to the car salesman bringing in his manager to close the deal. The vast majority of the time, ACS will file a court case against the parent regardless of the parent's behavior at the conference. To this end, these conferences are a great way for ACS to take more information from the parent. Keep in mind, the conferences are not recorded in any way. They only recording would be the notes taken by the ACS worker. This conference is on their turf and they control...

As we have discussed, anyone with a phone can call ACS on anyone else. ACS does not investigate who calls. they simply go and attack the parent. One of the most common calls to ACS is that a parent is using "drugs". The ACS worker will then go to the home and demand that the parent take a drug test. This is a trap. The way ACS uses drug tests is as follows. If they are positive, even for marijuana, they will demand that the parent enter into a drug program. If they are negative, they will hide the results and harass the parent until the parent enters a drug program. For ACS , the accusation is the proof of the case. The ACS workers are very poorly trained, badly educated, and extremely arrogant. It is very difficult for parents to deal with them because they are so unprofessional and the parents are not prepared for this. Many ACS workers we have spoke to will not even give us their business cards or full names. In fact, letters that parents receive from ACS only have the wor...