Before Sending Cops To Midtown, Talk To Neighbors, BP Tells NYPD

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The city's plans to send dozens of cops into Midtown to address quality-of-life concerns must include the input of neighbors, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told the NYPD this week.

The city's plan, revealed in recent days, reportedly calls for at least 80 officers to flood the area below 59th Street in the coming weeks as part of an effort to help Midtown's office workers feel safe as they return to work for the first time in months.

It comes on the heels of months of complaints by neighborhood residents about rising crime and drug use, related in part to the temporary shelters that the city opened in several hotels in Midtown and Hell's Kitchen.

Brewer wrote to Police Commissioner Dermot Shea on Monday, calling on the city to tread carefully as it implements the so-called "Business District Recovery Initiative."

For the initiative to succeed, the NYPD must meet with neighborhood community boards and business improvement districts and coordinate efforts with city agencies that handle homelessness and substance abuse, Brewer wrote in the letter, which was shared with Patch. (The city has not yet responded, a spokesperson for Brewer said.)

Between 2019 and 2020 in the Midtown South precinct, calls to 311 about homelessness increased by 92 percent, while 911 calls about narcotics rose by 17 percent, police told a Hell's Kitchen neighborhood group earlier this month.

Overall crime in the precinct has risen by 8 percent so far this year, with robberies, assaults and burglaries all seeing significant increases, according to NYPD statistics. Crime reports have been concentrated along the Eighth Avenue corridor between West 34th and 44th streets — an area that includes Port Authority Bus Terminal, police told the group.

High-profile cases include last month's brutal beating of a 65-year-old Asian woman on West 43rd Street — a crime for which police later arrested a man who had been living at a nearby hotel shelter.

Lowell Kern, who chairs Hell's Kitchen's Community Board 4, said neighbors have pressed police for months to respond to safety concerns, but want to guard against the possibility that the new patrols could lead to over-policing.

"When they’re doing their jobs, they're great," he said of police. "When they overstep their boundaries, that undermines the entire social fabric because people have to rely on the police to do their job."

Meeting with NYPD about the new patrols, Kern said, would help them figure out "what would be too little and what would be too much."

A spokesperson for the mayor's office said social services agencies like the Department of Homeless Services will take the lead in the new Midtown outreach, while a "specially trained police unit" will be there to help city workers as needed.

"The pandemic led to unprecedented displacement and economic insecurity and it takes a full team effort to help us all recover here," spokesperson Avery Cohen said.

Related coverage:

• Hell's Kitchen Board Drops Public Safety Letter After Pushback
• Another Shelter Battle Brews In Hell's Kitchen As New Group Forms
  
• City To Move Hell's Kitchen Shelter After Neighborhood Pushback
• Hell's Kitchen Board Implores City To Reduce Hotel Shelters