Public Employee Press

POLITICAL ACTION 2012
The union is pushing for a law to stiffen the penalty for attacks on social service workers.

"I fell on the floor and she kept kicking me"

Associate Job Opportunity Specialist Rita Concepción works at the Dyckman Job Center in Manhattan.

She supervises a team of five workers who provide benefits to unemployed clients while trying to help them become self-sufficient through a job-training program. When Concepción accepted her position at the Human Resources Administration five years ago, she didn't know she would be putting her personal safety on the line to fulfill her calling to help the downtrodden.

"You don't come to work to get verbally and physically abused," said Concepción, who missed three months of work in 2010 after a female client assaulted her and a coworker, Job Opportunity Specialist Motolani Aiku.

After Aiku informed the client that her failure to follow the work-study program would cost her benefits, the woman became enraged and burst through a door with a "workers only" sign to attack Aiku.

Alarmed as she saw the client twist Aiku's hands and rip her clothing, Concepción came to her coworker's assistance.

"She hit me in my face, scratched me and we fell to the floor," said Concepción, who also suffered back and shoulder injuries. "That's when security came to help. She kept kicking on the floor until she was restrained. I never - never - experienced anything like that in my life before," she said.

Concepción and Aiku were taken to the emergency room. "My kids were crying when I contacted my family," Concepción said.

Aiku, who was out 11 months with severe back pain, was so traumatized by the assault that she experienced anxiety attacks in the middle of the night. The attacker had vowed to return to Dyckman to terrorize the workers.

After she was out on Workers’ Comp, Aiku declined to return to Dyckman and now works at a job center in Brooklyn.


"She hit me in the face with a shoe"

Child Protective Specialist Shana Heath remains traumatized after her assault last year.

"You come to work hoping you will make it through the day," said Heath, who works at an Administration for Children's Services office in Brooklyn.

"It's scary," Heath said. "You never know what you are walking into."

Heath was injured last October when she responded to a report of a possibly sexually abused child.

Her home visit was proceeding smoothly when she peered through an open bedroom door, where the child's mentally-disturbed maternal grandmother was on a tirade.

"She threw a shoe that hit me in the face," said Heath, who feared for her safety and left immediately to call her supervisor and the police. Heath then went to Queens Hospital for treatment and spent a week recuperating at home.

The police didn't arrest the grandmother because of her mental state, said Heath, who supports a proposed law that would stiffen the penalty for assaulting social service workers.

"I enjoy my job and helping people," Heath said. "But then you have to think: Am I willing to be hurt or die for someone else's child?"