Amid a sharp rise in shootings and other violence across the city, lefty gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams has been one of the most outspoken advocates of defunding the NYPD — all while living on a Brooklyn Army base that is one of the safest sections of the Big Apple.
And The Post’s exclusive reveal of his living arrangements sparked some sharp criticism Monday.
“There’s no crime over there,” a veteran cop told The Post about the Fort Hamilton US Army Garrison in Brooklyn where Williams, the city’s public advocate, lives in coveted civilian rental housing.
“Jumaane has the best of both worlds. He gets to live on federal property where nobody can go and then when he comes off there he’s escorted around by police all day,” the NYPD source said.
Security fencing encircles the historic base near the eastern entrance to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Access is controlled by armed members of the military at fortified entry points and any visitors must submit to a background check.
When Williams leaves the base he’s escorted by an NYPD police detail, a taxpayer-funded perk of his $183,000-a-year public advocate position.
“Wouldn’t NYC citizens love that? You get escorted around all day. You don’t have to use the dirty subway and when you go home you don’t hear gunshots or ambulances,” the cop quipped.
“Then he’s screaming, ‘Defund the police.’ If he wants to be serious about defunding police, let’s start with him. Get rid of your security. Let those cops go back to policing the streets,” the cop said.
NYPD officials referred questions about crime on the base to the Army. A military spokeswoman said, “Fort Hamilton crime statistics are reported to Army higher headquarters and shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as appropriate. In order to maintain operational security as well as good order and discipline, the Department of the Army does not publicly release crime statistics for its installations.”
But a search of news clips about crime on the base over the past decade turned up just one story about a Queens man accused of having sex with three underage girls at the Bay Ridge garrison between September 2009 and September 2010.
“Crime is non-existent on the base, likely due to the soldiers with M16s,” a local official told The Post.
Last June when Williams threatened to block Mayor de Blasio from collecting property taxes if he didn’t freeze NYPD hiring and remove cops from public schools, shootings had doubled compared to the same period in 2019.
Williams, who’s running for governor in part based on his police reform bona fides, defended his decision to live on the garrison where there’s a waitlist for a small sliver of affordable civilian apartments and townhomes.
“To be quite honest the fact it’s on a base it’s not the reason one would live there,” Williams told a Post reporter after a Manhattan news conference about parking tickets.
“Matter of fact, we thought about that not being a thing. From a price point what we were looking for everything else besides that,” said Williams, who lives in a corner, $4,000-a-month water-view townhouse with his wife and stepdaughter. The couple is expecting their first child.
“We have a family, we looked for a price point that made sense. Definitely want to stay in Brooklyn and we looked all over Brooklyn. My bachelor pad wasn’t cutting it and that’s it,” said Williams who wed lobbyist India Sneed in July.
They moved to the base in 2019.
