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

News Release:

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 the 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:

1. continued to fraudulently garnish the father's wages
2. tried to have a professional license held by the father revoked
3. fraudulently reported the father as being severely past due on child
support to the credit bureaus
4. illegally garnished money from the father's unemployment checks
after he was laid off in June
5. 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 Browing, Director -
Lori A. Cruz, Chief Attorney -
Dennis Coe, Attorney -

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

http://www.lacochildsupport.org/directory.html

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