Blas’ ‘Fake’ Defense

Mayor de Blasio is denouncing The Post and city Comptroller Scott Stringer for conspiring to create “fake news” — namely last week’s exposés of gross mismanagement at the Administration for Children’s Services.

Make that deadly mismanagement. As Rich Calder reported in Thursday’s Post, Stringer’s review of “high priority” ACS cases in the 12 weeks before the death of Zymere Perkins flagged, among other things, 10 other children who died despite each being the subject of at least four abuse or maltreatment complaints to ACS.

On WNYC the next day, the mayor made the “fake news” charge as he condemned Stringer and The Post for “denigrating the work of all the people at ACS who protect children.”

No, we’re exposing the non-work of people — especially ACS management, which has bloated under de Blasio — who didn’t protect these now-dead kids. And there’s nothing fake about the deaths of children living in unsafe situations and known to the city.

The mayor’s also claiming that four of these deaths occurred years earlier — yet ACS confirms the figure of 10 deaths in that period, and in any case Stringer was working from the records that ACS provided.

De Blasio also insisted that the six other deaths were unrelated to abuse or neglect — although the records on that are conveniently not open to the public. And, again, Stringer was simply reviewing the files on “high priority” cases of at-risk kids that ACS provided.

Note, too, that de Blasio isn’t challenging the comptroller’s findings from his review of 3,692 cases about the failure to follow established ACS procedures and reforms, including:

Almost 75 percent of the cases that were closed lacked proper review by managers.

A full 32 percent were closed without the proper review by supervisors.

In 22 percent of cases, ACS agents didn’t meet face-to-face with affected kids within 24 hours of ACS receiving the allegations.

Some 26 percent were closed without caseworkers making the required number of face-to-face contacts with affected kids.

In 65 percent of cases, risk-assessment profile reports didn’t get done on time.

The failure of ACS management to enforce its own basic protocols speaks volumes about an agency adrift. Is it really any wonder that Commissioner Gladys Carrion has quit — or that the state is forcing the city to accept an outside monitor over ACS?

Then there’s this: The mayor also bragged on WNYC that “the number of cases that have been substantiated as potential child abuse has gone down steadily” in recent years. That’s great — it’s actually a drop in abuse, or in false findings.

It’s if ACS is simply failing to flag abuse that’s real — as it apparently did multiple times in Zymere’s case.

And, tragically, that explanation better fits the facts we have about the de Blasio Administration for Children’s Services.