Despite no evidence a mother mistreated her child, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services continues to enter her home without a warrant. She has filed a lawsuit, citing ProPublica’s reporting, arguing her rights are being violated.

The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).

In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.

Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.

And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    127·
    1 year ago

    Similar story in New York. A friend of mine worked for the 911 calling center. Someone would call and claim that there was a murder at the local Planned Parenthood office. By law, police/fire/EMS had to respond every time. The operators would tell the caller that they were diverting resources from actual emergencies, but they kept it up. iirc the DA’s office eventually got involved and they tracked the caller down.

    • TechyDad@lemmy.world
      53·
      1 year ago

      I’m in New York also and a friend had to deal with a fake CPS call. There was another person (let’s call her B) who had an actual issue reported to CPS involving abuse and drug/alcohol abuse around young kids. CPS started to take the kids away from B.

      Then my friend had a report filed against her. We’re pretty sure that the report was filed by B as revenge because B thought that my friend was the one who filed the report.

      My friend complied with the search of her residence and showed that she wasn’t mistreating her kids in any way. Still, it was frightening because there was still a chance that CPS could walk out saying that they were taking her kids.