March 27, 2006 -- Mayor Bloomberg wants to adapt the NYPD's successful computer-based anti-crime program so as to protect kids from killer parents. But history suggests that what's really in the works is half the program - which won't work.
"ChildStat," a database system to be used by the city's Administration for Children's Services, will be modeled on the police department's widely praised CompStat program, which tracks crime trends on a precinct-by-precinct basis.
But Mayor Mike is violently allergic to the one element that made CompStat the stunning success that it remains today: personal accountability.
Hizzoner may deny this; he and his aides may claim that new measures at ACS elevate the importance of holding folks responsible. But the record speaks for itself.
Look at ACS itself, where Commissioner John Mattingly was given a pass - despite a rash of deaths last fall and winter among children the agency should have been monitoring closely.
Children like 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown and 4-year-old Quachaun Browne.
Or look beyond that - to, say, Iris Weinshall, Mike's transportation commissioner. On her watch, 11 people died in an utterly avoidable crash of the Staten Island Ferry. But she kept her job.
Look at Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, the Rikers Island chaplain who maliciously preaches lies about Muslims being tortured in prison by the U.S. government - falsehoods that speak directly to his fitness to work in the jails.
But Mike insists it's no reason to relieve the imam from his job running clerical programs in city jails, where Muslim inmates may be enflamed by such falsehoods. Even as America fights a war against deceitful terrorists hungry for new recruits.
As former city Parks Commissioner Henry Stern wrote: "No commissioner has been publicly fired in the last four years, no matter how many innocent people are killed as a result of employee failures on his or her watch."
More: Last week, Bloomberg's education department said it was forgiving some 130 employees who live outside the city and admit to having sent their kids to city schools without paying tuition.
Most of them will get away without paying a penny back.
Accountability?
Mike never heard of it.
Oh, except when it comes to some poor shlub who's caught with a game of solitaire on his computer screen: He's out in a flash. (And with much p.r. fanfare.)
Now compare that sorry record with how CompStat works.
The NYPD program is not just about monitoring crime levels. It's about holding cops - and brass - responsible when it spikes.
At regular meetings, precinct commanders feel huge pressure if their numbers don't measure up.
They can - and have - lost their jobs.
So they, in turn, pressure supervisors and sergeants. Ultimately, street cops feel the heat - and crack down on the squeegee men, bums and fare beaters, rather than risk the wrath of their bosses.
But at ACS, staffers see Mattingly defended, even applauded, by the mayor - despite one dead child after another.
Looks like the only computer program ACS workers need fear is . . . solitaire."
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Liberal politicos detest the police with a purple passion, so of course they come down hard on them. Cops are viewed as a necessary evil, blue collar workers in need of constant survellance, while teachers and welfare workers are golden idols that get one free pass after another. The single reason crime in NYC remains at it's lowest point in decades is because of the lasting effect of Rudy, but not even he could take on the weepy-worker's unions although he DID try. Bloomberg is nothing more than a rich loon who caters to everything base and evil, and there's plenty of that to go around the the Apple.
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