The trial run Queens Borough Tower Jail

 

Impunity City 

 This scene takes place in Fresh Meadows at this hotel steps away from the Horace Harding Expressway and also a strip mall and public school. This hotel, which has clearly failed to generate any business, was subjected to numerous scoops and solidarity condemnation from the community and elected officials representing the district for it’s use as a homeless shelter for men who were recently released from Rikers Island and was used during the pandemic as housing for a hundred inmates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on the island’s facilities. Which was irresponsibly made possible following former Mayor de Blasio and the City Council cronies collaborative effort to shut down Rikers to build four tower jails in the boroughs except for Staten Island. But from the optics of this building, it seems that  this hotel in Fresh Meadows is being used as a trial run tower jail while the official tower jail in Kew Gardens gets developed and which has already started it’s construction.

 It’s utterly amazing that the city approved this hotel on a quaint residential block like this. Who in their right mind thought that tourists would dwell here while vacationing in the city and it’s much to big and out of the way to be utilized for prostitution and sex trafficking.

 Upon close inspection, the optics in the front entrance belie the element that’s being housed here as cars line up on the sidewalk obstructing most of the entrance of the hotel, despite the ample parking in the lot behind it and the garage inside the building, conveying a palpable sense of security for their neighbors across the street and the passerby young and old.

 

de Blasio let security contract balloon at hotel shelter for inmates during the pandemic

THE CITY

In the early months of the COVID pandemic, as the virus spread like wildfire through New York City, the de Blasio administration began placing inmates released from Rikers and state prisons into hotels.

The point was to keep them safe — and to curb the spread of the virus. But did City Hall implement adequate safeguards to protect the released inmates from non-COVID dangers?

One former inmate THE CITY spoke to alleges she was sexually assaulted in August 2020, while staying at a hotel involved in the program, the Wyndham Hotel in Fresh Meadows. She is suing Exodus Transitional Community, the nonprofit group hired by the city to administer hotel placements.

When asked by THE CITY, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), which oversaw the project, could not definitively identify the firm that provided security at the Wyndham as a subcontractor to Exodus. At times, MOCJ and Exodus pointed to two different firms as the security provider in 2020.

But when reached by THE CITY, executives at these two firms denied that their companies were subcontracted to provide security at the Wyndham. Under law, firms that provide security at city shelters, including hotel placements for inmates, must be properly licensed.

When THE CITY requested documentation that the firm providing security at the hotels had a proper state security guard license, MOCJ provided a license that belongs to one of the firms that denies having anything to do with the ex-inmate placement program.

Records show the no-bid contract signed by the mayor’s office with Exodus to place inmates in hotels grew from $835,000 to $55 million in just 16 months. Under the arrangement with MOCJ, Exodus was not required to report to the city crisis incidents that occurred there, including violent ones like sexual assault.

The Adams administration recently awarded Exodus another $40 million contract for “emergency reentry hotel services” that runs through June under a no-bid process. Adams’ team did not respond to THE CITY’s question about the nature of the ongoing emergency.

Upon her release from Rikers Island in June 2020, Latoya Walker, 32, was placed into a Wyndham Hotel in Fresh Meadows, one of six hotels managed by Exodus as part of the inmate release program.

There, Walker alleges, she was sexually assaulted in her room by an Exodus employee who’d been assigned to her as a caseworker. The man was ultimately arrested on sex abuse and other charges. Although the Queens district attorney later dropped the case due to delays in bringing it to trial, Walker has since filed a civil suit against Exodus that is pending.

Walker claims that from the moment she brought in the police, Exodus resisted cooperating, delaying turning over a surveillance camera tape that she says helps corroborate her accusation.

After a detective in the special victims squad was assigned to investigate, Walker said, “Exodus wouldn’t give her the tape. They wouldn’t give her information on (the caseworker)’s employment,” she told THE CITY. “I felt like Exodus was just sticking together. Every time I brought it up as something that was bothering me, they started giving me the brush off.”

The Department of Homeless Services managed a similar effort to place shelter residents in hotels to stifle the spread of COVID-19. But DHS required all providers to report every “critical incident,” such as assaults, at the hotels where the homeless were placed. The inmate hotel program had no such requirement.

Exodus’ founder, Medina, refused to answer any of THE CITY’s questions, including whether he reported Walker’s allegations to MOCJ. The mayor’s office also declined to say whether they were aware of the incident, other than to say the hotel ex-inmate program had no incident reporting requirements.