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Eric Adams to use cops on vertical patrols to boot vagrants from NYCHA halls

By
Tina Moore and
Georgia Worrell
Published June 3, 2023
Updated June 3, 2023, 10:46 a.m. ET

The city’s homeless crisis has gotten so bad, vagrants are living in public-housing hallways — and the NYPD is bringing back its controversial vertical patrols to give them the boot.

Mayor Adams was at the Abraham Lincoln Houses on East 135th Street and Madison Avenue in Harlem on May 24 talking to lifelong resident Greer Smith, 72, who complained about the vagrants sleeping in her building’s hallways and stairwells. 

“When the mayor came, there was a man here sitting right out front of my door with a knife in his hand,” Smith, 72, told The Post. “It makes me feel threatened. You fear for your own life. . . . I mean, what’s that all about?” 

Resident Greer Smith.
Resident Greer Smith (left) said she sometimes “fears for her life” living in the Abraham Lincoln Houses at 60 East 135th Street. J.C. Rice

Smith said the cops took away the knife-wielding stranger the night Adams was there — but they let him sit on the stoop outside of the building.

Now, she peers out her peephole before she goes out at night.

“They use a crowbar to break the door down,” she said of her building’s exterior front door, adding that every time it’s fixed, someone breaks it down again. “The whole building is dangerous because of what’s happening around here.”

Police officer outside Abraham Lincoln Houses.
A police officer outside the Abraham Lincoln Houses where the homeless seek shelter in stairwells and hallways. J.C. Rice

Mayor Adams announced the new crackdown in a video filmed during his visit with Smith.

The footage shows one vagrant sitting in a chair with one shoe off in a hallway and another sitting at the top of a darkened stairwell.

In the video, posted on TikTok last week, Adams announced cops would do interior patrols throughout the city’s public housing. 

Resident at the development.
Resident Diane Franklin lives at the Abraham Lincoln Houses. J.C. Rice

“So we’re going to do an initiative like we did in the subway system where we’re going to do verticals and inspections in the hallways,” Adams said. “People are not supposed to live like this.”

The NYPD’s “vertical patrols” were a tactic of floor-by-floor sweeps of the city’s most violent NYCHA buildings, often by rookie officers combing poorly-lit stairwells.

The patrols were scaled back after the police killing of unarmed Akai Gurley during a patrol in East New York’s Pink Houses in 2014.

Officers still go into stairwells when responding to 911 calls inside public housing, but the vertical patrols are no longer part of routine policing, sources said.

Resident in the development.
Resident Shanille Mosley of the Abraham Lincoln Houses said vagrants are in the building “around the clock.” J.C. Rice

“We’re going to put a real plan in place because I’m learning that it’s not only here but in many of our NYCHA facilities,” Adams said in the video. “This is where people live and they need to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Shanille Mosley, 40, said vagrants are in her Abraham Lincoln Houses building “every day, around the clock 24/7” and she worries about her daughters who are 11, 19, and 20.

“I’m afraid for my daughters,” the lifelong resident said, noting that the two eldest are home from college. “I’m always waiting in the hallway waiting for them to get off the elevator.”

Unidentified homeless man.
A man sleeps in the Bronx’s St. Mary’s Houses.

She said she’s seen vertical patrols in the building before — but they don’t last.

“We’ve had vertical [patrols] in the past, when the spotlight is on,” she said. “But when the spotlight is gone, we’re back to square one. So hopefully this is a long-lasting thing, and not just for the moment.”

Her neighbor Diane Franklin, 71, said “It’s just a lot” dealing with homeless in the hallways every day.

“You’ll be scared to go in the building,” she said. “Sometimes I am.”

Greer Smith
Greer Smith was visited by Mayor Adams earlier this month after talking about the problem at a public meeting. J.C. Rice

In the Bronx’s St. Mary’s Houses, Kecia Rampersand, 54, said she’s in favor of the mayor’s plan.

“That’s a great idea,” she said. “They need to do that regardless because the things that go on in these NYCHA buildings at night. We’re not secure. We’re not safe.”

Still, she worries about what will happen to the homeless, she said, noting that a man who sleeps in a hallway in her building lived there with a girlfriend until she died.

The Abraham Lincoln Houses.
The homeless sometimes take shelter in hallways and stairwells in public housing such as the Abraham Lincoln Houses. J.C. Rice

“He minds his business,” she said. “He doesn’t bother anyone.”

Homeless advocates were also concerned about where the homeless would go if they were removed from public housing. 

“If there are people without homes sleeping in hallways and stairwells, then the city should be connecting them to the housing and services they need, not simply deploying more police to continue the ridiculous game of chasing unsheltered New Yorkers from one place to another,” said Dave Giffen, head of Coalition for the Homeless. 

“Criminalizing people for having no place to go is not only inhumane, it solves nothing,” he said. “Police are not outreach workers, and homelessness is not a crime.” 

The NYPD referred questions to the mayor’s office, which didn’t immediately comment.