NEWSLETTER
Summer, 2011
Mr. John Johnson & NYC Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Joann Otero, Chief of Staff, NYC Council Member Arroyo, Anthony Rullan, Moore Houses Resident Association, and others at historic ceremony honoring residents who have helped to improve security at NYCHA developments
Live monitor Image from Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation
DDP – TECHNOLOGY
& THE COMMUNITY
Residents Sacrifice to Improve Safety!!
The DDP was a proud participant in the Community/Safety Memorial Event on May 5th held at Moore House.
Following three tragic deaths within NYCHA properties, Mr. John Johnson, President of the Bronx South District Council of Presidents, and Lou Torres, President of Moore Houses, reached out to the DDP to extend tenant-controlled technology and security participation to their developments. This was done expeditiously within an emergency-response time-frame. We continue the work of furthering the DDP goal of spreading Internet /computer accessibility to all neighborhoods in a manner residents can afford and immediately benefit from.
Katie Malone, President St. Mary’s Resident Association Demonstrating the Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation
The DDP is pleased to announce that 2,500 new apartments have joined the NYCHA community security and safety efforts through May 15th, 2011. “Thank You” to all those who supplied their organization’s expertise and resources to make this process of addition continue to happen.
Our members are dedicated to working to train resident patrols and other groups that the tenants designate to participate in expanded safety and security initiatives. DDP will be monitoring the sites closely with the tenants to determine the effectiveness and possible expansion of the initiative. Let us hear from your building about its needs!
Live monitor image from Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation
John Lemon, Tenant Association President Emeritus, St.Mary’s Houses, at the Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation
Louis Torres, President Moore Houses Tenant Association, at the Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation installed there
because of the tragic events
Robert Jackson, Treasurer, Lisa Smith, Advisory Board Member and Lou Torres, Moore Houses TA President
“We requested DDP’s assistance to improve safety.”
John Lemon at the Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation completing his appointed monitoring hours
Video Images streamed live from Virtual Tenant Patrol monitor
John Malone, at the St. Mary’s Virtual Tenant Patrol monitor
Ms. Malone at a Tenants’ Virtual Tenant Patrol Workstation
The DDP is working to, among other initiatives outlined in previous newsletters, include school districts and park Wi-Fi “Cloud Corridors” to its expanding presence in the South Bronx and northern Manhattan. As the first entity to Wi-Fi a New York State Park (Riverbank), we have reached previously unanticipated audiences and community groups. This fall, the DDP will again participate in the Senior Technology Fair at Riverbank and provide real hands-on experience with the latest broadband technology and health-care applications to senior NYCHA residents. Let the DDP know about your plans for the next quarter. Text or email your plans to our headquarters, attention: Stuart Reid 347.4DDPUSA, [email protected]).
Yes, there’s beauty in our efforts too! (Live monitor Image of resident courtyard)
FYI to DDP Members – NYCHA Housing Article –
December 2-8, 2010
Photo by Aline Reynolds
Carmen Ortra, Seward Park Extension T.A. president, right, with T.A. Vice President Deborah Givens, has been fighting for years to get surveillance cameras installed.
Housing Authority tenants want cameras, more security
By Aline ReynoldsThe New York City Housing Authority has neither the funds nor the personnel to implement all the security measures its residents want, such as monitored cameras and an enhanced Resident Watch program. Yet crime has risen by 2.8 percent in Lower Manhattan‟s public housing developments over the past year.
NYCHA‟s Safety and Security Task Force, created last year, is reviewing security and police issues to improve its services. The task force will soon release a report documenting NYCHA‟s security problems and solutions. But under the current system, many public housing residents are afraid.
At 2:53 a.m. on Sept. 1, armed men confronted Smith Houses resident Anthony Evans, 28, in the playground facing the complex‟s 46 Madison St. residence. Evans was shot in the head, torso and right arm. He was taken to Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Surveillance cameras recorded the crime but were unable to produce a clear image of the perpetrator.
Residents of the housing development argue the cameras are unreliable guards against crime. “Nobody‟s monitoring those cameras, so it doesn‟t make me feel any better one way or the other if the cameras are here,” said Mary Daez, a Smith Houses resident.
“If they had somebody looking at those cameras, and there was a fight escalating, then maybe they could have said, „Listen, there‟s a fight beginning at such and such a place, send a patrol car,‟ and that could have been stopped,” said Mariainez Quinonez, another resident.
Cameras indeed prove more effective when they are manned, according to Deputy Inspector Thomas Hogan, who as the commander of Police Service Area 4 is responsible for the security of 25 Housing Authority developments. A recent analysis conducted by the Police Department revealed a dramatic drop in crime after cameras were installed.
December 2-8, 2010
But camera protection doesn‟t come cheap. The technology is expensive, Hogan said, and
“paying police officers to just sit there and watch would be cost-prohibitive.”
This explains why out of NYCHA‟s 334
developments, only 15 — including Lillian Wald Houses in the East Village — have cameras that are monitored 24 hours a day by the police. “Deciding which developments got them was based on crime and cost of installation,” said Hogan of the manned cameras.
Other local developments, such as Seward Park Extension on the Lower East Side, don‟t have any cameras at all. Carmen Ortra, tenants association president at Seward Park
Association, who has been fighting for cameras for the past year, was told in the spring that NYCHA doesn‟t have the money to install them….
The Tenant Patrol program, founded in 1968, was renamed Resident Watch this year.
NYCHA spokesperson Eric Deutsch explained, “While residents have volunteered for more than 40 years to enhance the safety and security of their communities, Resident Watch is a response to residents‟ requests to improve collaboration among them, NYCHA and the N.Y.P.D., and to figure out how best to reduce crime in public housing”….
She (NYCHA Commissioner Margarita Lopez) emphasized the importance of residents
participating in the program…...The more that residents monitor their own developments, the less likely crimes are to occur, she said…. But Michael Steele, president of the tenants association at Rutgers Houses, pointed out that guarding buildings is potentially dangerous, and that even additional stipends are unlikely to attract many newcomers.
“Nobody wants to put their life on the line, and that‟s basically what you‟re doing,” Steele said. And some tenants said they don‟t feel any safer with residents on patrol.
“They‟re little old ladies,” Johnson said. “If you‟re at gunpoint, what‟re you going to do? Sit there and try to call the cops?”….
Vertical patrols
In 1995, NYCHA entered into a mutual agreement with the city to allocate an annual sum, currently $73 million, to provide above-baseline police services for its tenants.
“This means that NYCHA is entitled to receive an enriched level of police services compared to other landlords in the city,” explained Sheila Steinback, a NYCHA spokesperson.
Beginning at the ground floor, officers work their way up the stairwells of the projects,
interrogating any loiterers they encounter along the way. Since only 72 officers are available to patrol the roughly 170 buildings in Lower Manhattan, the police focus their efforts on housing developments where crimes have recently transpired.
