Mayor Adrian Fenty vowed Friday to hold accountable city workers who failed to do their jobs after contact with the family of Banita Jacks in the two years before prosecutors said she murdered her four children.
Jacks and her four daughters were touched by at least six city agencies over the course of two years, including child and family services, and the police, human services and health departments.
Fenty and acting Attorney General Peter Nickles said the combined efforts of those agencies amounted to mismanagement that rendered the children vulnerable.
“We’re going to hold those people responsible for the events leading to the deaths of the kids,” Nickles said during a news conference.
Discipline against officials found derelict in their duties, which may include terminations, is expected Monday, officials said.
Jacks is charged in the murder of her children: Brittany Jacks, 17, Tatianna Jacks, 11, N’Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5. It is believed the sisters may have lain dead for months in the home on the 4200 block of Sixth Street Southeast.
At a press conference Friday, Fenty conceded that a series of “seminal incidents” that “might not have been handled as properly as they could” may have contributed to the tragedy.
While praised for a swift promise of accountability, Fenty was also challenged by at least one member of the City Council who said the mayor has been slow to execute plans to protect at-risk youth.
Councilman Phil Mendelson said Fenty had failed to integrate city agencies charged with protecting children, as the mayor had vowed to do.
Child welfare agencies were especially targeted by Fenty on Friday.
The first of those critical incidents occurred July 12, 2006. A Child Family Services Agency case worker received a hot line call on the family but declined to start a file because the caller could not provide a fixed address. Jacks and her children were living in a van at the time.
A file was eventually opened on April 27, 2007, in response to warnings of “educational neglect” from the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School, where Brittany Jacks was enrolled. The file was closed on May 16 as “incomplete,” as it was believed Banita Jacks had moved her clan to Maryland.
“This case … from everything we’ve looked at to date, should not have been closed under these circumstances,” Fenty said.
Of the 4,600 cases accepted by child welfare in 2007, 309 filed were closed as incomplete. Fenty announced an immediate audit into all of those files.
D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, chair of the human services committee, has called for a hearing Tuesday into the government’s handling of Banita Jacks’ case.
