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From the
Queens Chronicle:
Jamaica Hills resident Donna Thompson told Community Board 8 last Wednesday about a “gang of homeless men that have taken over my neighborhood.”
Thompson, who lives near the Grand Central Parkway service roads’ intersections with Parsons Boulevard, says that one of the men approaches her regularly.
“I shouldn’t have to get off the bus and be afraid to go into my home or walk two blocks around just to get to my home,” she said.
The Jamaica Hills resident said that the homeless men leave “bottles of feces” on her neighbor’s yard and “leave their carts on other people’s yards.” She added that the men panhandle and “leave trash all throughout the neighborhood.”
She added that she lives with her 82-year-old mother, who suffers from dementia.
At the same CB 8 meeting, NYPD Assistant Chief David Barrere, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Queens South, addressed the board. He spoke with Thompson privately at the meeting.
The Jamaica Hills resident told the Chronicle that a few days later last weekend, a sergeant working under Barrere called her about the situation. As a result, a police car went to the area last weekend, according to Thompson. She added that the NYPD has since told her that the department is “working on it.”
Thompson said in an interview that while she is glad the police have responded, a different kind of solution is necessary to solve the problem in the long term.
“If they want to panhandle, they should have to do it 500 feet away from someone’s house,” she said.
From
CBS 2:
A Queens community says it has grown impatient with some patients at a famed mental health facility near their neighborhood.
They say incident involving patients range from scary to downright gross.
Matt Kruger told CBS2’s Jessica Borg the scenes he captured in a cellphone video are the reason he’s moving out of Glen Oaks.
“No one wants to see someone’s pants down to their ankles, in broad daylight, then going to the bathroom in the middle of the street,” he said.
He showed Borg the video – too graphic for TV – that showed a man doing just that right around the corner from his home.
“It’s inappropriate,” he said. “There’s kids, there’s families.”
Aggressive panhandling is also a growing concern for neighbors of a shopping plaza on Union Turnpike.
From
NBC:
A woman panhandling with a newborn near Grand Central Station was arrested yesterday and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and aggressive panhandling, authorities said.
The arrest is the first after the I-Team aired a series of exclusive reports that found the woman and others may be involved in a coordinated scheme to exploit their children -- and state officials vowed to take action.
MTA police arrested the woman, Caselina Margel, after a city outreach worker pointed her out as she begged for money on the street while holding her two-month-old son.
From
NBC:
State officials are taking action on two fronts to stop a group of women from using babies to panhandle throughout Manhattan, following a series of I-Team reports that found they may be involved in a coordinated scheme to exploit their children.
To this point, the NYPD has insisted its hands are tied because panhandling with children on city streets is not illegal.
State Senate co-leader Jeffrey Klein, a Democrat, has drafted a bill that would dust off some archaic language in New York State Cultural Affairs Law banning begging with babies and move it into the NY State Penal Law so that the NYPD can take action in these cases.
From
WPIX:
Anthony Mitchell, a security guard at the 165th Street Bus Terminal in Jamaica, Queens, told PIX11 he’s been watching the people collapse there since at least January.
“One young man went into convulsions and shot some white stuff out of his mouth,” Mitchell recounted to PIX11 Investigates this week. “And then another young man went into convulsions and started shaking.”
The managers of the bus terminal—a major hub for travelers into Jamaica—have been getting complaints from store-owners and bus drivers at the site for months.
Young men are loitering outside shops and smoking synthetic drugs, commonly called K2 or Spice. They can buy a package—marketed as potpourri—for as little as $5.00 a clip.
The stuff looks a little like marijuana—but there’s nothing organic about it.
It’s sprayed with chemicals, often manufactured in China, that create a high.
From
Huffington Post:
As outrage simmered in the hours before the release of the Ferguson verdict, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton made a rare public appearance to defend his Broken Windows policing philosophy. But his remarks brought controversy from those affected by aggressive policing.
"No conversation on urban crime is complete without the communities that are affected by [Bratton's] policing theory," said activist and Huffington Post contributor Josmar Trujillo, dressed in a snapback and "Fire Bratton Now" t-shirt on the sidewalk outside the event.
During Bratton's remarks, Trujillo and at least a dozen other activists stood to protest the abuse they say Bratton's policing has brought to targeted communities in New York City.
The appearance was Bratton's attempt to shore up Broken Windows policing against a rising tide of discontent. But the best he could muster was a skin-deep redefinition of the theory, even as he failed to respond to loud concerns from his constituents.
Speaking in NYU's opulent Vanderbilt Hall, Bratton celebrated the crime reductions of his previous NYPD tenure. But he glossed over the reality that nearly every American city experienced a decline over the same period - even without locking away historic numbers of residents.
And he ignored the topic of police reform, highlighted by the recent shooting death of Akai Gurley, until questioned by NYU Professor Rachel Barkow. Asked what measures could reduce wrongful deaths, he was reticent to promise swift reform, citing high costs for proposed body cameras and logistical delay in pairing rookies with experienced officers.
But most troubling was his disingenuous attempt to redefine Broken Windows, which is conventionally understood as aggressive enforcement of quality-of-life laws like "panhandling [and] disorderly behavior."
Bratton claimed that the meteoric growth in low-level arrests is actually driven by policing of serious crimes - he cited drunk driving and domestic violence as examples - rather than by arrests for sidewalk grilling and moving between train cars.
But that claim does not mesh with the facts - arrests for quality-of-life offenses have surged faster than any other crime.
Turnstile-hopping, considered by many police reform advocates to epitomize Broken Windows policing, accounts for more jail convictions than any other charge (excluding all drug possession charges combined). From Bratton's speech, the audience would not have known that between 2008 and 2013, turnstile arrests grew by 69%.
From the
Daily News:
That panhandling mom with a child in her lap?
Oh, baby! It’s a scam, according to NBC New York. While panhandling is legal in New York, a month-long investigation followed nine women around the city and concluded that they were working and living together.
Social service workers said the women have repeatedly refused shelter and aid because they only want cash.
"This is a scam — a business," the non-profit The Doe Fund’s George McDonald told NBC New York.
McDonald said his organization has done its research on the women and witnessed them handing off the same children, exploiting them by “working in shifts.”
Homeless women are seen more and more bringing their children along to panhandle.
Research suggests that some of the women are 'working in shifts' and handing off the children to each other to use as props.
Children can’t be used to peddle, according to seldom-enforced state law. But it’s a statute that’s being flaunted as video shows these women collecting fast cash from sympathetic passersby.
But the investigation found the women were using Grand Central Terminal as a meeting point and living in the same East New York building.
From
NY1:
Newly released subway crime statistics show drops in more serious crimes but big increases in lesser offenses.
Transit police say subway robberies are down 32 percent from last year.
Three hundred and thirteen robberies have been reported in 2014, compared to 465 in 2013.
They also say major felonies in the transit system have gone down 15 percent.
Arrests for panhandling and illegally selling goods on trains have dramatically increased on the other hand. So far this year, over 400 more people have been arrested for panhandling compared to last year.
From the
Forum:
There are plenty of places to spend money along Cross Bay Boulevard, but one particular option has left residents weary with both public safety and quality of life concerns.
However it is referred to, whether it is begging or panhandling, soliciting money has become an ongoing issue for Howard Beach residents making their way up and down the commercial strip. Just last week, The Forum spotted a supposed brother-sister duo on both sides of Cross Bay Boulevard near Waldbaum’s holding up signs asking for help and flashing them at cars stopped at nearby red lights.
But Joann Ariola, president of the Howard Beach-Lindenwood Civic Association, said consistent money solicitation in her hometown was both an issue of public safety and quality of life. Not only is it disturbing and sometimes off-putting to be bombarded with requests for cash, Ariola said, but it is also dangerous for those asking for money to be navigating through traffic during the busiest hours along the boulevard.
“I think that it is a huge problem along Cross Bay Boulevard,” she said. “It’s multi-faceted. It’s upsetting and sometimes, you feel threatened.”
The 106th Precinct did not respond to requests for comment.
State Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) said panhandlers were at the crux of countless constituent complaints coming through his office and recognized that community members needed to know the consequences of asking for cash on Cross Bay. The senator pointed to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero initiative, which sought to reduce traffic-related fatalities, as a means of addressing the issue.
“I can see why residents get frustrated. Traffic is bad enough to begin with and now we have people, even kids, trying to collect money,” he said. “It’s a safety issue. I think the city needs to make a statement that it is not a condoned activity.”
And it is not only coming from the homeless or desperately cash-strapped, Ariola said. On any given day, particularly during the summer months, the civic president said she has seen young children asking for donations along Cross Bay with adult supervisors sitting nearby. Whether they are asking for money to help fund a sports team or another youth organization, Ariola said she and her civic members were unhappy with children being put in the middle of the street in the name of cash.
From the
NY Post:
The NYPD is cracking down on subway panhandlers — and sources said the initiative is taking precious manpower away from preventing iPhone thefts and shoving incidents, The Post has learned.
The department’s effort was launched shortly after a Post report that police were going easy on beggars.
Police arrested 71 panhandlers between Nov. 11 and 24, including a man who collected a paltry 43 cents from straphangers. Cops also gave out 37 panhandling summonses.
“It’s the season for giving, and apparently people are asking too frequently,” said one source.
Not everyone in the NYPD is happy about the crackdown. Some say that they want cops to focus on robbers and subway shovers over the holiday season.
“There are more important things we have to worry about, like people becoming the victim of a crime,” said a source.
From
NBC:
Mayor Bloomberg raised eyebrows with a remark Monday that "there aren't very many panhandlers left" in city subways.
Bloomberg, a billionaire who rides the subway accompanied by his security detail, made the remark during a news conference at City Hall about another matter.
A person asking about cell phone service in the subways mentioned panhandlers, and Bloomberg, appearing irritated, interrupted the question.
"There aren't very many panhandlers left, in all fairness to the MTA, come on," he said.
Bloomberg added that the MTA has "worked very hard to fix that."
Advocates for the homeless and hungry said panhandlers are common in the subways, and said Bloomberg is living in another world.
Joel Berg, head of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, called the remark "absurd" and said it "bears no relation to reality."
