Getty De Blasio accuses Stringer of working with New York Post to create 'fake news'

Mayor Bill de Blasio leveled a serious charge Friday morning at City Comptroller Scott Stringer, accusing him of having “teamed up with the New York Post to create fake news” in a news report published Thursday accusing the city’s child welfare agency of failing to follow its own protocols in high-priority abuse cases.

The New York Post, which de Blasio has frequently criticized as biased and unfair, published an exclusive story Thursday on data it said came from a forthcoming report from Stringer’s office showing that 10 children died this summer in households where there had been at least four other substantiated cases of abuse, cases Stringer’s office suggested in a letter to outgoing Administration for Children's Services Commissioner Gladys Carrion could arguably have been prevented had ACS followed its own rules.


The report, which the Post said would be published Thursday, has not been released by Stringer's office. A spokesman for Stringer's office said the report would not be forthcoming, and the Post's story was in fact just preliminary findings.

On Friday, de Blasio said the New York Post’s report was cooked up by Stringer, and said the data it used was inaccurate.

“Here’s what’s wrong with Scott Stringer’s letter. It is blatantly inaccurate,” de Blasio told Brian Lehrer during his weekly WNYC radio interview, during which he said he was actually physically holding a copy of the report from the New York Post.

“Here’s the problem with the decision by Scott Stringer to work with the New York Post, which was a very conscious decision, to create what is a false understanding of what happened here: he’s literally denigrating the work of all the people at ACS who protect children,” de Blasio said Friday, sounding incensed.

City Hall officials disputed multiple aspects of Stringer’s letter, a copy of which was provided to POLITICO New York, including the total number of deaths that occurred last summer in open ACS cases and the circumstances surrounding the ten deaths mentioned in the letter and in the New York Post’s report.

While Stringer’s office cited 38 fatalities in ACS cases closed in the summer of 2016, ACS said that number was wrong — and said data the agency provided to the comptroller’s office showed 33 fatalities.

Of those deaths, City Hall said four happened prior to de Blasio taking office in 2014. According to ACS officials, one happened in 2008, two in 2011 and another in 2013.

In the remaining 29 deaths, 15 occurred in families where ACS had no prior history of involvement with the family, City Hall said.

City Hall said that in the other 14 deaths, six were related to unsafe sleeping conditions, three were related to illnesses, one was an accident, one was caused by fire and another is a death that City Hall officials said may not have even occurred but was reported by a hospital social worker. In two separate cases, the cause of death is still pending.

And ACS officials said that of the ten deaths Stringer’s office highlighted in its letter which the office said occurred over the summer prior to the high-profile death of six-year-old Zymere Perkins, and which both the Post and other outlets ultimately reported on, four were actually reports called in to ACS on deaths that occurred in prior years (One in 2008; two in 2011; one in 2013) and were only flagged as multiple prior reports because of the earlier fatality reports.

Of the remaining six deaths, ACS said two occurred earlier in the year in a fire; two were deaths of infants that resulted from unsafe sleep situations; one was a possible homicide by a person who hadn’t been involved with ACS since 1996; and another was a duplicate of another fatality in the list.

Neither City Hall nor Stringer’s office could immediately provide the raw data being disputed to POLITICO New York to verify the claims being made by either Stringer’s office or City Hall.

City Hall spokeswoman Aja Worthy-Davis said in a statement to POLITICO New York that Stringer had “cherry-picked” ACS data “to support a simplified and largely inaccurate conclusion,” that evinced a “base misunderstanding of child protective review protocols and legal rules regarding risk-assessment.”

Asked to respond to de Blasio’s accusation that Stringer’s data was inaccurate, Stringer spokesman Tyrone Stevens said, "From homelessness to foster care, this mayor is not addressing the management crisis in agencies serving children. There are fundamental failures — and children's lives are at stake. We need leadership and action at City Hall."

De Blasio has come under criticism in recent months for his handling of ACS after the death of Perkins. Two separate reports, one internal and one published by the state Office for Children and Family Services, argued caseworkers had failed to handle Perkins’ case appropriately. City Hall has disciplined or fired many of the ACS employees involved in the Perkins case, and ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrion announced earlier this month she would retire from her position as head of the agency. De Blasio has insisted that Perkins’ death had nothing to do with Carrion's decision to retire.

In response to the Perkins’ death, the City has agreed with a state order to install an independent monitor to oversee the work of ACS.