Help a Single Father Fight Injustice

Recently I had the most awful experience of my entire life and I am in dire need of help and I'm absolutely desperate with not many people to turn to. The details below explain my story but after a terrible experience with a public defender consisting of false information and absolutely no communication from said defender in almost a month I have been forced to obtain superior legal representation to get me out of the situation that has been presented to me,and it is at a cost that is going to make it next to impossible for me to take care of and survive with my 6 year old son as I am a single father taking care of him by myself. I retained my lawyer at a cost of $3500 dollars with a total bill of $10,000 when it's all said and done. I'm terrified that I won't be able to pay him at the contracted time frames because of all the regular responsibilities I have to handle on top of it. my own father had to take an equity line out on his home just to pay for my retainer. My car was impounded making it impossible for me to do anything on my own and I have had to burden people like my mother and sister to take me to work,for groceries,laundry and all of the regular things I need to do to take care of both myself and my son. This little boy is my entire reason for being and I need to be able to carry on as normal and best I can for him though it's becoming increasingly difficult each day that goes by and I'm starting to lose faith that I can make it through this without defaulting on my attorney and still being liable to pay the entire bill he has issued.

I have to be honest and tell the whole truth about my situation. I'm from Long Island, NY.

On October 26th, 2024, I brought a friend of mine to my house to watch Game 2 of the World Series. It was like any other Saturday night. My friend and I engaged in what is a legally protected activity at my home. At 7 pm that night, we smoked a joint. After that, we fired up my grill, cooked dinner, and sat down to eat with my son. After dinner, we sat down for almost 5 hours watching the Yankees lose. Once the game was over, my friend and I took the time to clean up the mess post-dinner, and then I drove him home at about midnight.

As I made my way home after that, at 12:45 am, I was pulled over without proof for allegedly roll stopping through a stop sign. Without warning, I was forced to get out of my vehicle and engage in a non-consensual sobriety test that I was never asked or told to participate in. As they began to violate my civil rights, my little boy woke up frantic, terrified, and screaming when he saw his father was no longer in the car and being accosted by two police officers from the Suffolk County Police Department. I failed my sobriety test not because I was inebriated or under the influence in any way at that point; my attention immediately got fixated on my screaming child who was left alone in the backseat of my vehicle while all of this was transpiring. Once they finished the test, they told me to go stand behind my car. Still, at this point, my poor son is going berserk, so I turned around to look through the back window to try and comfort him and tell him everything's going to be alright. I was then blindsided by a third officer who was not initially on the scene. Without warning, he put handcuffs on me and did not tell me I was under arrest. I had to turn around and ask what I was being arrested for. The officer snarkily responded, DWI, and threw me in the back of the squad car. They left my son unattended in the back of my car, at which point he took it to a whole new level of going absolutely insane, screaming and crying at the top of his lungs because he wanted and needed his daddy. The officers then removed my son from the vehicle and tossed him into the back of the squad car with me while I was bound to the seat with my hands cuffed behind my back and the seat belt strapped across my whole body. My son just wouldn't calm down even though he was sitting next to me at that point, and the only thing I could do was lie to him and tell him everything was going to be all right, fully knowing that it wasn't. At this point, it had been over 7 hours since I had smoked that small joint before dinner, and I don't drink alcohol at all. The most I was able to do was get my son to scoot as close to me as he could just so I could try and comfort him and rest my head on top of his and continue lying to him that everything was going to be okay. The police filtered and lied about the things they issued in their report, and at my arraignment, the judge tried to make it her first action to remove my son from my home, to which the public defender assigned to me stepped in and told the judge she couldn't do that because I am the sole custodial parent with full custody of my child, and there is no one to take care of him beyond me. He got mad because her first instinct was to stick my child in the foster care system. The judge altered her ruling and put a temporary restraining order on me towards my son, not a stay-away order, but it just has simple guidelines that are basically common sense of what we're not supposed to do to our children. I'm being charged with DWI, endangering the life of a child, and potential to cause harm to somebody aged 17 or younger. These three charges have the potential to put me upstate in prison for the next 7 years, and I've never committed a crime or been arrested a day in my life prior to this.

CPS came to my house the next day, and they tried to take my child away from me if I don't comply with them. I am presently being treated as if I am guilty without having set foot into a courtroom. I'm being judged and looked at as if I'm a lifelong drug addict, and I'm being forced to report to probation. I'm being forced to pay out of pocket for outpatient drug treatment at a facility that I must attend once a week. I'm being completely extorted by these people because nobody is telling the truth on their end. CPS keeps saying different things all while my caseworker ignores and never returns my calls. The probation office I'm supposed to call once a week never answers the phone or returns my messages, and I feel like they're going to try and blindside me and say that I didn't hold up my end.

Anybody that knows me knows that my son is the most important thing in my entire world, and I would never do anything to put him at risk or hurt him whatsoever. I'm really scared right now, not just for myself, but I'm scared for my son because these police officers completely traumatized the poor boy. He's become so stuck to me and clingy and afraid. He won't sleep by himself anymore; he has to sleep inches away from me because he's scared that his daddy is going to be taken away from him at any time, even in the middle of the night. It breaks my heart knowing he feels that way. I'm also terrified of the adverse effect this might have on him because he is of special needs, and all the work that I've done for the last 7 years raising this boy and getting him the help that he needs is all going to be for naught, and he's beginning to regress in his behaviors. As I mentioned, I'm a single father. I stretch my paycheck as far as it can go to make sure we survive, and presently the police department and CPS are doing their damnedest to strip me of as much money as they possibly can, even without being judged in an actual court of law, in an effort to make it look like I am incapable of supporting and taking care of this child simply so they can falsify a reason to remove him from me. I'm just trying to get my life back to normalcy so I can continue being the good father to my son that I always have been.

I am absolutely desperate, scared, terrified, and alone right now in this, and I need help in the worst way, and I don't know where to turn to. I am completely adamant that I have done nothing wrong. I have broken no laws. There was nothing in the vehicle, no drugs, no weed, no paraphernalia of any sort, yet they were allowed to arrest me simply based on the assumption and accusation from just looking at me at 1:00 in the morning, at a tired father who just wanted to go home and put his son back to bed, and they said, "You look messed up," and arrested me based on that alone. Any help during this difficult time from anybody right now would be greatly appreciated because the last thing I can allow is for myself to just roll over for them on this because the last thing I'm going to do is have my entire world taken away from me. My boy needs his father, and I knew from the moment that I was placed in the back of that cop car that I was going to have a lot of trouble fighting this and being able to afford all of the costs that are coming my way for something that I never did wrong in the first place. How is it possible to be arrested for following a state-signed law? Again, any help would be absolutely appreciated, and I'd be so grateful. To anybody reading this, I just want to say thank you if you're able to help in any way.