Chaptzem Blog!      

A Hasidic mother of nine recounted on Wednesday the terrifying episode of city sheriffs banging on the door of her Brooklyn home to cite her for failing to vaccinate her baby boy amid the national measles outbreak.

The Williamsburg mom, identified only as Jane Doe, told an administrative hearing officer that she was stunned when her daughter answered a knock on the door around 10 p.m. to find the uniformed law enforcement agents serving a $1,000 city Department of Health summons.

“The police are at the door,” the little girl exclaimed to the mom during the April 30 raid on the family’s Williamsburg apartment.

“She was really scared,” the mother said.

The episode is the first glimpse into how the city has enforced the city health commissioner’s emergency order requiring all residents in Williamsburg zip codes to prove immunization against the virus.

“My kids were all terrified, you’d think that I’d have committed the worst crime,” she told the Daily News during a break in a city hearing over her citations. “It’s ridiculous that you have sheriffs knocking on your door in the middle of the night.”

Didi Scaff, the hearing officer, suggested she would dismiss the citation after seeing health records showing the boy has since been vaccinated.

Asked about the late-night raid, a spokesman for the Health Department said it was up to the sheriff’s department to determine how and when to serve summonses on parents.

The case was among the first hearings for 209 parents cited so far for failing to abide by an April 17 emergency order for all children in several zip codes to be immunized. At least 90 of those have already been dismissed after parents provided evidence of vaccination, said Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for the Department of Health.

More than 1,000 cases of measles have been recorded nationwide in the worst outbreak of the childhood disease in decades. The outbreak has been centered in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn and upstate in Rockland County.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-measles-hasidic-brooklyn-vaccine-20190626-v2y5tl5f2jg5jfvu5rbvqbdpr4-story.html