20 years of cleaning up NYC pissed away | New York Post:
"Here’s an up-close look at a quality-of-life offense the City Council wants to decriminalize.
This urinating vagrant turned a busy stretch of Broadway into his own private bathroom yesterday – an offense that would result in a mere summons if Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and her pals get their way.
Wrapped in rags and a Mets blanket the hobo wandered into traffic at around 10:30 a.m. and relieved himself as cabs, cars and buses whizzed by between West 83rd and 84th streets on the Upper West Side.
He finished his business at a nearby garbage bin, then strolled back to the front of a Victoria’s Secret store at Broadway and 85th Street, where he camped out for the rest of the day.
Mark-Viverito in April announced plans to decriminalize public urination along with five other low-level offenses: biking on the sidewalk, public consumption of alcohol, being in a park after dark, failure to obey a park sign and jumping subway turnstiles.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — who in the early ’90s implemented a “broken windows” approach to policing to dramatically cut crime — is against the new plan, saying such offenses lead to more serious crimes.
...“It reminds me of the pre-[Rudy] Giuliani era,” said Jim Hoover, 60, who has been commuting through Penn Station since 1986.
“The police aren’t chasing them away anymore.”
Just outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a homeless man drunkenly knocked a woman to the floor while stumbling around the sidewalk.
The bum, who goes by “Monk,” was arrested by a cop at the scene and taken away by an FDNY ambulance.
“He’s going to get a hospital bed and a slap on the wrist,” said Timothy Arroyo, who was watching from a crowd that gathered.
“He’ll be back out here tomorrow.”
A PA source said there has been a “noticeable uptick” in vagrants at the terminal in recent months.
“It’s a trend,” the source said."
No comments:
Post a Comment