Rick Karlin reports:
Sixteen employees of the state Office of Children and Family Services have been suspended for allegedly snooping in confidential files relating to a co-worker.
The victim of the alleged snooping, Kristen Trapalis, was arrested in May and charged with possession of marijuana and endangering the welfare of a child, but those charges were later dropped.
Ironically, Trapalis works as a child protective specialist for OCFS, and helped run a phone center that receives tips about people who may be abusing or maltreating children.
It wasn’t known if Trapalis was put on this list of suspected abusers, known as the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, following her arrest. She remains on suspension from the agency.
New York state has a controversial history of cases in which parents caught with even small amounts of marijuana have faced dire consequences, from landing on the abuse register to potentially losing custody of their children to child welfare officials.
The 16 OCFS workers who allegedly accessed the information may have simply wanted to know if their fellow employee had landed on the register after her arrest.
Read more in the Times Union.
Dirt sells. Well, in this case, dirt may have muddied up alot of peoples’ personal careers since they thought it was appropriate to snoop, instead of asking the boss the outcome of the issue, and what level of access the person will have and how they may want to act around the person on their return.
People with privileges need to understand the phrase “need to know”. You may have the necessary level of trust and levels, but simply snooping around will also tend to create gossip and data leak.
I think part of this may be a knee-jerk reaction from some one with power taking it across the chin for the incident, and then some one off the cuff mentions something about the issue that was in the report and they all falled down.
Pick your poison when it comes to stimulants. Which would you rather have? Some one that can recover from a small amount of weed, or them coming in the next morning hungover from hitting a 40oz’er or a decanter of Mad Dog 20/20.
I can imagine that it’s a tuff job. You get vented upon by the victim, and then, the accused goes off on the case workers as well. For those that need a relaxant, its best to choose something like a hot bath vice something thats going to get you in Hot water.
Personnel that work in state agencies I am sure have to watch each others’ back, and provide a degree of……. actions that will ensure the agency sticks to its bottom line and its reputation is upheld in the publics’ eye as well as in the courts.
All this is going to do is back-log cases that are being worked on, and over work the individuals that are still working. What about the attitude of the people who were suspended? Peoples’ attitudes can change in a situation like this, and lets hope this story end in a pleasant one.
Some how I feel that this will not be the end of this particular story or group of people accused or behind this issue. For some reason it stinks of potential retaliation.
DO NOT sell dirt on people, like to those store checkout area Rag mags. Otherwise you may find yourself in the slammer.