‘I tossed him on blankets’
ACS slay felon talks
The ACS counselor hired despite being a convicted murder — and who is now accused of violently hurling a 6-year-old boy into a filing cabinet — walked out of jail Wednesday and admitted to tossing the tyke.
Jacques Edwards, 55, charged with assault, tried to downplay the incident and insisted the child landed in a pile of blankets.
“My boss didn’t want to know my side of the story. They refused to take my side of the story,” Edwards (below, Wednesday) told The Post after his was bailed out of a Manhattan lockup.
“I threw him into blankets. He was on blankets. That’s why my boss don’t want me to tell my side of the story. He was on blankets.”
Edwards’ wife posted the bond that secured his freedom.
Before he could comment further, she told him to pipe down and directed him into her black minivan before they drove away.
The 6-foot-3, 255-pound Edwards — an ACS juvenile counselor — was arrested Monday for allegedly roughing up the little boy at an agency youth shelter in Manhattan last Friday.
Edwards iss accused of “shov-shoving him head-ad-first into the cabinet,” a criminal com-complaint states.
The incidentdent further embarrassedd the trou-troubled city social-cial-services agency whenhen it was learned that Edwards was hired despiteite having served threee de-decades behindd bars for murder. He was paroled in 2010 and brought on board the ACS in March 2014, records show.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday slammed this “totally unacceptable” hiring.
“It is indefensible that someone who was convicted of murder at one point was interacting with a 6-year-old child,” said Johnson, who wants the ACS to review its ranks to weed out other violent criminals who may be watching over the city’s most vulnerable kids.
“We need to go back and ensure there is no one else working at ACS with any violent criminal history, or history that could endanger a child.”
Despite the accusations of violence, a relative of Edwards’ insisted he’s good with children.
“He said the boy was biting and scratching him and he just had to get him off,” one relative told The Post.
“He’s good with kids,” the relative maintained of Edwards, who has a 4-year-old son of his own.
Edwards was convicted in 1982 of a murder in Brooklyn. Details about the crime were scant.
The Department of Citywide Administrative Services handles background checks and ran one on Edwards, but the ACS never submsubmitted his name for a mandatorymand criminalbackgroubackground check with the state Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs.