CITY KILLS CHILD

Four hours of song, dance, music and the spoken word commemorated the introduction of Laurie Cumbo into elected society. Hundreds of people crowded into Ingersoll Community Center on Sunday for the debut. The new City Councilwoman was sworn in before hundreds of constituents and the brightest political stars in the New York firmament.

Of the many speakers, a few mourned the death of little Myls Dobson four days before. They didn't say government killed him. I say it.

How the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) ever released this child into his criminal father's “care” after removing him from his abusing mother is an outrage all by itself. The father's rap sheet includes rape.

How could another child end up dead in plain bureaucratic sight? How could ACS take him from his unfit mother and give him to his even more unfit father? How come no one at ACS could see the danger ACS was putting this child in? How could the hundreds of caseworkers at ACS let this child slip through thickets of regulations to his death at age four?

How did the Public Advocate, who roams the City looking to shine a light on corners of government darkness, not save this child from ACS? Eight years ago ACS's regulations trapped seven year old Nixmary Brown to death. When Bill de Blasio was elected Public Advocate three years later, he vowed never again! Why did Public Advocate de Blasio see nothing when little Myls, under ACS watch for a year with his mother, was handed over to his father in September 2012? Why didn't Public Advocate de Blasio see anything when the father, still with custody, was headed back to prison?

As it turns out, once ACS has deemed a parent worthy of custody, the rules don't allow them to step in again without a complaint, and the police don't have to notify ACS when a custodial parent is arrested. That's how the father, on the eve of reincarceration, was free to hand his little boy over to an unknown named Kyyzie. The father was going back to jail for new lawbreaking, but his handover of the child to someone no one ever heard of was fine by the law. How could this happen? Isn't the Public Advocate supposed to step in right here, when the rules are stuck on stupid? The Public Advocate oversees the City Council Committee on General Welfare, which oversees ACS. That's a lot of redundancy to end up with another child dead.

Rhetorical questions because the higher you climb the ladder, the more you look up not down. In September of 2012, when ACS handed Myls back to his father, Public Advocate de Blasio was setting up to run for mayor, and by December 18, 2013, when Myls's father was going back to jail, Mayor elect de Blasio was seriously horse trading to get his pick for Speaker.

The new year brought a killer cold. The temperature dropped into single digits. By this time Myls had lost 20 pounds, been beaten, bound and burned by the father's unknown “girlfriend.” By this time little Myls himself was unknown. No one knew where he was. His mother didn't know, his grandparents, aunts and uncles didn't know, the City Council Committee on General Welfare didn't know, NYPD didn't know, ACS didn't know, the Public Advocate didn't know. Only Kryzie knew. She knew he was freezing in a t-shirt and shorts on the balcony of her apartment the night before she would kill him.

The next day, January 8, was the vote for Speaker. The three weeks of campaigning that had taken the attention of everyone at City Hall paid off: The Mayor got his Speaker. Some blocks uptown little Myls Dobson became known again. He was dead.