Editorial: Give a Damn

Anthony Wells, the president of Local 371 of District Council 37, was doing his institutional duty when he asserted last week that his members who oversaw the case of 4-year-old Myles Dobson, who died Jan. 8 after enduring horrendous abuse by the girlfriend of his father, should not be blamed for lapses in supervision of the case.

It’s true that the workers are less culpable than the father, Okee Wade, who contrary to Mr. Wells’s remark that he “did not do harm to his child” did exactly that by entrusting him to the accused killer, Kryzie King, shortly before he was arrested for the 13th time. Her conduct brings to mind Mayor Ed Koch’s remark, following another awful child-abuse death, that the man accused and ultimately convicted, Joel Steinberg, deserved to be “boiled in oil.”