For the first time, uniformed cops will be posted in a city homeless shelter to reduce crime.
Beginning this week, two officers will be posted from 4 p.m. to midnight at the Bedford-Atlantic armory shelter, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Daily News yesterday.
The 350-bed men's shelter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was chosen, Kelly said, because "based on anecdotal information, that place has a reputation as a bad spot."
Within days of taking office, Mayor Bloomberg said he wanted to make the shelters safer for the homeless, some of whom would rather stay on the streets, even in frigid weather, than risk assault or robbery in a city-run dwelling.
About 29,000 people are being housed in shelters throughout the city.
Kelly directed his borough commanders to survey all the city shelters last month. "This is the one they recom-mended putting someone in," Kelly said.
Kelly visited Bedford-Atlantic last month. "There were people who had just come out of jail. I saw someone there with a Rikers uniform on," he said. "If people feel unsafe in the shelters, it exacerbates the homeless problem on the street."
He said that statistics show crime is down in the shelters, but "the issue with shelters is underreporting of crime. You can look at the statistics and see they're down, but still feel unsafe."
Kelly, speaking by telephone en route to the Waldorf-Astoria, site of the World Economic Forum, did not have shelter crime statistics at hand.
"We will try these things. They are not absolutely etched in stone. We will see what the impact is," Kelly said, add-ing that it is possible cops could be assigned to other shelters in the future.
He also said that police will increase training for the peace officers and security guards who regularly work in the shelters. There is no plan for the NYPD to formally take over the security personnel, as it has with school safety offi-cers.
The Bedford-Atlantic armory has been one of the most notorious shelters since the mid-1980s, when it housed 1,000 men during the homeless crisis.
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
February 3, 2002, Sunday
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