In Making Crowded Homeless Shelters Safer, Some View the Issue With a Sense of Security

On Monday, outside the Bedford-Atlantic shelter, Peter Engler, 23, said that current security personnel were overwhelmed. ''You can bring drugs in here, you can bring weapons in here, anything you want,'' Mr. Engler said. ''No one does anything. The N.Y.P.D., that's what I'd like to see in here.''

Dawn Witter, 45, who has stayed several times at Brooklyn Women's Shelter since 1989, said that while she has seen improvements over the years, she is still frightened. ''You got to have friends, you got to be careful,'' Ms. Witter said. ''You don't know where these people are coming from. Sometimes people come in from prison and they walk around bullying people. You have to watch your back.''

Steven Banks, the Legal Aid lawyer for the Coalition for the Homeless, said that emergency cots provided by the city during winter months leave the homeless especially vulnerable, without lockers to secure their possessions. Mr. Banks said he would meet with city officials today to discuss winter accommodations. He planned to request the statistics for tracking crime in shelters.


Courtesy of the NY Times
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NY: Bloomberg Touts Quality of Life Crackdown

The New York Post (1/9) reports, "Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly yesterday unveiled 'Op-eration Clean Sweep' -- the NYPD's quality-of-life crackdown that aims at wiping out public urination, prostitution and squeegee men." Bloomberg also "said his top cop had spent Monday night touring some city homeless shelters to assess their safety." And the mayor "said he had personally met with officials from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where homeless people are permitted by a court ruling last week to sleep on the steps." Bloomberg, who has said he's "trying to work out an arrangement with church officials to keep the homeless off the steps, credited Kelly with being the first top cop to target quality-of-life crimes."

Long Island Newsday (1/9) reports, "Hundreds of so-called quality of life offenders were arrested or ticketed over the weekend, and officials said Tuesday that more action is on the way." The "arrests and summonses, issued in 50 'tar-geted areas' that include Hell's Kitchen and Long Island City, are the focus of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's first major initiative: a crackdown on the kind of low-level offenses that became a hallmark of the Giuliani administration." But in "signs that this initiative may be kinder and gentler than in the past, police officials said some offenders were issued desk-appearance tickets, instead of being forced to go through the booking system, and Kelly said he made a surprise visit to the Bedford-Atlantic Men's Shelter in Brooklyn Monday night to check on safety conditions there."


Courtesy of the Bulletin's Frontrunner
January 9, 2002, Wednesday

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MAYOR EYES PUTTING COP IN EACH SHELTER

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday he'll put a cop in every city shelter, if necessary, to keep homeless New Yorkers safe.

Bloomberg's comment came as the city braced for its first winter storm of this season, and also followed his vow last week to improve shelters - even as he promised to aggressively move the homeless off the streets.

The new mayor tackled the homelessness issue during a busy day in which he attended the inaugurations of Man-hattan Borough President Virginia Fields and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro and a post-inauguration reception for Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion.
"I want to make sure that there are beds for anybody that needs them and that those beds are safe," Bloomberg said yesterday in a radio interview on WABC-AM. "The police commissioner is checking into that, and if we have to we'll post a police officer at each shelter."
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is conducting a safety study of city shelters. Sources said last week that he plans to institute a crime-tracking system for the shelters modeled on the NYPD's Compstat program, which helped drive down crime on city streets.
"Commissioner Kelly has ordered his borough commanders to embark on a survey of security at all city-run shel-ters to determine what can be done to make those shelters safer," said NYPD spokesman Michael O'Looney. "That may include better alarms, better locks, and it may include placing police officers in some shelters."
Many homeless people refuse to stay in city shelters, saying they are unsafe and dirty.
"This is like one of the worst neighborhoods with a roof on top," said a 25-year-old man named Maldi, who stays at the Bellevue Hospital shelter. "It's like being on the streets with a roof." More than one aspect Mary Brosnahan Sulli-van, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said Bloomberg has good intentions, but more needs to be done.
"Physical safety is one aspect of this problem," she said. "Posting a single officer at the doorway of the Bedford At-lantic armory [in Brooklyn] is welcome but not enough. It's filthy, dangerous and chaotic. What a single beat cop can do at the front door is limited."
The city's Department of Homeless Services said it has increased its security budget by 50% in the past three years. Private security officers and better-trained peace officers are used at shelters.
At the Sony Plaza Public Arcade on Madison Ave., homeless people seeking shelter from the winter weather yes-terday had mixed reactions to the possibility of police at shelters.
George Mellos, 60, said he has been homeless since 1989 and swore off shelters after being robbed at the Fort Washington shelter eight years ago.
"I don't know if the cops will do anything, I don't know if they won't do anything," he said. "But that's the reason we don't go to the shelters. They have security guards but they don't do anything."


Courtesy of the NY Daily News
January 7, 2002

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