Sunday, July 12, 2015

20 years of cleaning up NYC pissed away

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.
20 years of cleaning up NYC pissed away“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: