Los Angeles County Child Support Services Department Helping Prisoners but Abusing Good Fathers

News Release:

August 25, 2006

On Sunday, August 20, 2006 two representatives from the Los Angeles County Services Department (LACCSSD), attorney Lisa Garrett and Al Reyes Division Chief of Communications and Marketing, appeared on a Los Angeles television show (KTLA, Pacesetters) touting “Child Support Awareness Month” and the wonders of their abusive government agency. Not surprisingly, Garrett merely reiterated the propaganda that LACCSSD wants the public to believe and Reyes practically beamed with joy when he stated, “We have a new approach in our department where we try to reach out and start a dialog,” and “We’re doing outreach in jail.”

What Garrett and Reyes didn’t discuss was the blatant disregard for the rights of innocent fathers who serve as prey for LACCSSD’s ceaseless illegal and unethical actions whereby they literally steal money from good men who have never missed a single child support payment. In fact, Garrett had the audacity to state, “We are helping all the parents in the case, not just the custodial parents.” Of course, one father knows that this statement is a blatant lie as he has been subjected to severe ongoing abuse at the hands of LACCSSD since January of this year when their chief attorney, Lori A. Cruz illegally garnished his wages without a court order and by intentionally lying when she fraudulently told his employer that he owed arrears. The fact of the matter is that the father had always made every court ordered child support payment, on his own, for six years and had actually overpaid.

His exhaustive efforts to stop LACCSSD’s abuse were only met with scorn and belligerence. Things became so out of control that he filed a suit against LACCSSD and appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on April 17, 2006. During that hearing LACCSSD and their attorney, Dennis Coe, were ordered to halt their aggressive and completely unfounded collection activities. This only serves to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Garrett’s statement on Pacesetters that “Any of the enforcement remedies that we do use, due process is still available to everyone. We can’t throw that out the door.” The father had had his wages garnished based upon Cruz’s entirely fraudulent claims that he was in arrears and had been denied all due process. The court then set a second hearing date for July 7, 2006. Not surprisingly, Dennis Coe intentionally ignored that court order and LACCSSD continued to harass the father. Since then, LACCSSD has:

• continued to fraudulently garnish the father’s wages
• tried to have a professional license held by the father revoked
• fraudulently reported the father as being severely past due on child support to the credit bureaus
• illegally garnished money from the father’s unemployment checks after he was laid off in June
• stole the father’s tax refunds in July

At the second court hearing, Dennis Coe even signed the court document that stated that the father had actually overpaid his child support. That, of course, hasn’t halted LACCSSD’s and Coe’s abuse. In fact, the father’s attorney wrote three (3) letters to Coe after the July court hearing demanding that the abuse stop but Coe, not surprisingly, refused to respond to a single one of them. It wasn’t until after the father sent out his first news release, on July 27, 2006, as well as wrote to every member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, that another LACCSSD attorney, Deborah Echeverria, finally wrote back to the father’s attorney. Not surprisingly, Echeverria glossed over the facts and completely ignored the ongoing abuse. Two weeks ago, Coe finally called the father’s attorney and again lied by promising to correct the fraudulent information on the father’s credit reports that were now stating that he was more than 90 days past due. As of today, Coe has refused to correct any of the problems. In fact, the father learned that LACCSSD just stole more money from his latest unemployment check.

Garrett made numerous other patently false statements on Pacesetters, as evidenced by the above, including:

“We are now working with the non-custodial parents to ensure that they receive the same services that the custodial parent receives.”

“We are helping all the parents in the case, not just the custodial parents.”

“We try to look at both sides of the story.”

“If someone doesn’t owe any arrears then we send out a notice saying there is no arrears owed and just forget it.”

As Los Angeles County Child Support Services has no problem appearing on television shows bragging about their prison outreach programs while, at the same time, ignoring court orders, committing fraud, lying, etc., an e-mail writing campaign is now underway to inform LACCSSD that the rights of innocent fathers will no longer be tolerated. We are urging all members of the public to write to:

Philip Browning, Director - pbrowning@childsupport.co.la.ca.us
Lori A. Cruz, Chief Attorney - loricruz@childsupport.co.la.ca.us
Dennis Coe, Attorney - Dennis_Coe@childsupport.co.la.ca.us

Other e-mail addresses have been posted on the Los Angeles County Child Support Services Department Sucks site at:

Los Angeles County Child Support Sucks

Be sure to ask LACCSSD why they are so happy to serve prisoners while abusing innocent men.