POLITICS: Hochul agrees to allow more child abuse in New York City

Caving to progressive activists, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill late last month that will all but guarantee more child abuse goes unreported — in the name of fixing “racial disparities” in the child-welfare system.

The new law bars callers to the city Administration for Children’s Services from leaving tips anonymously — on the supposed grounds that false tips help drive “inexcusable racial disparities that disproportionately impact Black and Brown families by leading to unnecessary interactions with child welfare services.”

What this really means is that more kids will be abused — and some killed — with minority children suffering the most.

Advocates insist that anonymity lets abusive exes and vindictive or racist landlords, neighbors and so on use ACS to harass innocent parents with “disruptive” probes.

One such activist, Shalonda Curtis-Hackett, vows: “We won’t stop until every family in this state can sleep more peacefully, knowing that one part of this harmful system is no longer allowed to operate unchecked.”

The “harmful system” that . . . rescues abused kids?

Forcing tippers to hand over their names and phone numbers, even with promises that their identities won’t be revealed publicly, won’t just discourage bogus tips; it will also stop genuine reports from concerned grandparents, neighbors or friends who fear being found out.

That will mean more kids left in dangerous or neglectful situations — especially minority kids.

As Naomi Schaefer Riley has pointed out in these pages, black children are more than three times as likely to die by abuse and neglect than their white peers; whatever the reasons for this, it means that preventing abuse will necessarily “disproportionately impact” black families.

Among the horrifying cases in New York City these last few years: Jahmeik Modlin, age 4, who was slowly starved to death in an apartment stocked with food; Jalayah Eason Branch, age 6, was hung by her wrists and beaten to death by her mother.

And those were kids that ACS knew about; they needed more action from ACS, not less. Yet fewer tips will mean more vulnerable kids living through hell never get on ACS’ radar in the first place.

If the tip is false, ACS case workers are perfectly able to determine that with a simple visit; that slight inconvenience to innocent parents is an incredibly small price to pay for keeping kids safe.

The advocates are OK with more children suffering abuse simply to make the statistics less “disproportionate” — and now they’ve gotten the Legislature and the gov to agree.

It’s a wonder how these people sleep at night.