How NYC’s lax child-protection standards failed Promise Cotton

“They didn’t do s–t.” That’s how Sabrina Coleson described the inaction of the Administration of Children’s Services in the case of Promise Cotton.

The 4-year-old Bronx girl was found Friday in her family’s Bronx apartment after living for two weeks with the remains of her deceased brother Nazir Millien, age 8, and her mother Lisa Cotton.

Coleson said ACS rang the doorbells of neighbors like her the day before the horror scene was discovered — but did nothing.

People in the building had been complaining for weeks about a foul odor that smelled like “death,” The Post reported.

Police officers, too, had visited the apartment in response to an anonymous 911 call. Neighbors told them of their concern, saying they hadn’t seen the mother for weeks — but cops would not break down the door.

Only when a relative let herself into the apartment did anyone discover Promise, who had survived by eating chocolate while sitting on the bed with her mother’s corpse.

More than 60 years have passed since 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed to death outside her Kew Gardens apartment complex.

The incident became infamous when The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 of her neighbors had heard her cries, but didn’t come to her aid — or even call the police.

Years later we learned the report was a gross exaggeration, and many people had done what they could to help Genovese.

Despite their callous reputation, the truth is New Yorkers are decent human beings who care about their neighbors — particularly about helpless children. When we see something, we do in fact say something.

But that won’t matter unless our public servants actually respond.

In this case, as seems to be increasingly common, they didn’t seem to feel a sense of urgency about kids in possible danger.

Lisa Cotton had a years-long history of child maltreatment. In 2021, she was reportedly arrested on child-abandonment charges after she was caught swinging Promise around in a stroller and lighting a wig on fire.

She had an open child-neglect case pending, and police were recently called to her building when she took Nazir, who was born prematurely and needed a feeding tube, up to the roof and threatened to kill herself and the child.

That history should have told both ACS and the NYPD that they should urgently investigate neighbors’ calls — because Cotton’s kids were at imminent risk of harm.

Certainly, Cotton’s prior arrest for child abandonment and the roof incident were known to NYPD, and should have been considered when cops decided how to proceed.

ACS policy seems to regard child neglect as a minor problem — certainly not as serious as child abuse — and that material resources, like housing vouchers or food stamps, are all that’s needed when neglect occurs.

But most child maltreatment fatalities in this country are the result of neglect, which is rarely just a matter of poverty: More often it is tied to mental illness, substance abuse or both.

Neighbors said Cotton had “episodes”; her father said she may have been bipolar.

As in the case of Erin Merdy, who drowned her three children off Coney Island in 2022, Lisa Cotton’s mental-health problems were known to authorities.

Young children cannot go to neighbors or pick up the phone to report that the heat has been turned off or their parents have forgotten to feed them — let alone communicate that parents are hearing voices telling them to do something violent.

It’s even worse for children with disabilities, like Nazir, who are disproportionately represented among child-maltreatment fatalities.

A parent with mental-health or substance-abuse issues may suddenly stop caring for a child who needs help with the most basic functions.

Just last year Brian Santiago, 10, and his mother Charlene were found dead after neighbors reported a foul odor in their Bronx apartment. Brian was confined to a wheelchair and needed a feeding tube to survive; he likely starved to death after his mother died.

Charlene had been investigated by ACS and Brian had even been removed from her custody at one point — but despite her history of drug abuse and mental illness, he was back in her care.

Yet ACS has continued to divert more and more cases into its CARES program, which “encourage[s] families to develop their own solutions to their challenges, and identify supportive resources” rather than launch official investigations when reports are made.

In 2015, the list of criteria necessitating ACS investigations included both “Caretaker Abuses Drugs or Alcohol and Child under 7” as well as “Caretaker Mentally III/Developmentally Disabled and Child under 7” — but as of 2019, both factors had been eliminated.

Most New Yorkers have enough common sense to realize these issues present substantial risks to children.

It’s time our government agencies followed suit.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.