The Drop-A-Dime Network Continues to Grow

DID THE TWO-YEAR-OLD in the next apartment just learn how to shriek? Does she have a six-year-old brother who keeps bouncing his basketball off the thin wall that separates you from them? Do the parents make no effort whatsoever to curtail the increasingly out-of-control behavior of their little angels?

Don't fret; help may be at hand, and from a most unlikely source-Mayor Bloomberg!

During a press conference last Tuesday, the mayor responded to the spate of high-profile child-abuse and child-murder cases in the city by urging the public to immediately report any known cases of child neglect.

"If you see a child, and you think the child is being abused," he was quoted as saying on NY1, "pick up the phone and call 311, or call 911? We'll do an investigation; you don't have to get involved."

He admitted that the city's Administration for Children's Services is seriously overwhelmed with nearly 55,000 cases a year to try and investigate, and so things move at a sometimes agonizingly slow pace.

And there's the key. Next time little Brendan or Molly starts raising an unholy racket or begins singing one of those endless, repetitive, tuneless songs kids make up, pick up the phone and let ACS know that you're hearing some "terrible noises" next door, and that you're "worried about the kids."

Believe us, those kids will be quiet for a good long time after that-the next few months at least-as the parents wait for the next social worker to make another surprise inspection.