A Queens councilman who used tape measures to prove sex offenders were living too close to a school in his district said the men are still flocking to the shelter they call home — despite a pledge from city officials last month that they would remove the convicted criminals.
Councilman Ruben Wills used $250 of his own money in July to investigate Skyway Men’s Shelter in South Ozone Park after he suspected that the facility was unlawfully housing the sex offenders too close to PS/MS 124.
He hired some workers and, using a tape measure, calculated the distance between the shelter and the school at 900 feet, a violation of state penal law mandating that sex offenders live at least 1,000 feet from schools.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services assured Wills and the public that it would remove the 52 registered sex offenders living at Skyway within 30 days.
But state records show that the men are still freely coming and going.
“We are a little more than a month away from the start of the school year and the bulk of these offenders remain in place,” said Wills’ legislative director, Brandon Clark.
“After the DHS assured us they would bring the shelter into compliance, we have found that sex offenders continue to be rotated. The sex offenders that have been rotated out are being replaced at a rate that leaves the number of sex offenders at the shelter virtually unchanged. The sex offenders that are rotating into the shelter are new to Skyway. They have not been housed there before.”
Clark said that by analyzing New York’s Sex Offender Registry, Wills and his office found that numerous offenders had been swapped in and out of Skyway over the last 30 days.
“It’s an insult,” Clark said. “During the last press conference, the councilman stated that he expected that DHS would expedite the removal of these criminals. He thought it would be a priority, and it has not been. The community is furious . . . and the councilman is furious.”
Wills plans to hold a press conference Tuesday to address the recent influx of sex offenders at Skyway, which, until 2011, had been a family shelter, Clark said.
In response to the allegations, a DHS spokesman said the department was working to remove all sex offenders from Skyway by the end of the month. But the agency has yet to give an explanation to Wills or his office.
“We had conversations with DHS prior to our recent discovery of newly placed sex offenders at Skyway, but since we made them aware, based on the info provided through the state registry, we have not received a reply from the department,” Clark said.
“All we want is for DHS to follow through on its pledge and relocate the sex offenders at the shelter.”