Update On June 22 Early Morning Shooting At Roosevelt Island's Roosevelt Landings Building - Security Improvements Need To Be Made By Residents and Landlord Urban American

Image from Roosevelt Landings Residents Association

Updating post from yesterday on the shooting that occurred at Roosevelt Landings (formerly known as Eastwood), Joyce Mincheff of the Roosevelt Landings Residents Association comments:

I've just learned of a shooting in the hallway of 540 Main Street today. Enough is enough! The lax security for Roosevelt Landings has got to stop!

Doors are left wide open for hours at a time. Front door locks are frequently broken for weeks on end. It's not okay. It's an invitation for trouble. Anyone with half a brain can get access to any Roosevelt Landings corridor from any Roosevelt Landings entrance. One door can make the difference.

We are lucky that a child was not injured by a stray bullet. It's irrelevant what the cause. Access to the building by non-residents has got to stop. The safety of tenants is not an option!

When locks break, it's imperative that you station a private security guard at that entrance until it can be secured or place one of your staff to serve that function! If the Public Safety Dept. can spare the manpower, that would be wonderful, but frankly, security of the building is the responsibility of Urban American. No matter how you do so, you need to handle it.

Doors can not be left wide open by your staff, for any reason! Not back doors, not side doors.... none of them. And all intercom systems must be functional throughout the building, 24/7.

I'd like to meet with you and Director Guerra tomorrow AM to discuss this further. Please advise.

Roosevelt Island Public Safety Director Keith Guerra describes what happened:

...While walking through the 4th floor corridor, the victim was confronted by two males wearing hooded sweatshirts. He was shot twice in the arm and hip (not life threatening) with a small caliber round, and transported to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Thus far, there have been no arrests. It is unknown at this time if the incident is Gang related. NYPD is currently involved in an ongoing investigation. 

Joshua Eisenberg, General Counsel for Urban American (Landlord for Roosevelt Landings) states:

We are working closely with NYPD and PSD to determine how the assailant gained access and will identify and address any and all security improvements that we can make. At the time of the incident all doors and locks were functioning. It appears that the shooter may have been invited to the building or given access by another tenant, as no forced or unauthorized entry was apparent.

As Director Guerra reports it is unknown if this shooting is gang related, but there is a Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department Gang Awareness Summit For Adults taking place tonight at Good Shepherd Community Center (6:30 PM) which may provide more information on this incident as well as provide valuable assistance and knowledge on the issue of gangs.

UPDATE 2:05 PM -  Roosevelt Landings Residents Association President Joyce Mincheff adds:

Last night at 2:30 AM (actually morning), I toured the building with the Public Safety Dept. to determine whether doors were functioning, locking and locked. The Officers and I detected 6 doors that were either completely ajar and/or had broken locks and were not locking. I was told some of those doors had been reported to Management over a period of many weeks. For Josh Eisenberg to claim that all the doors were locked is just plain inconsistent with documentation that the Public Safety Department indicated they have on file.

Unlocked and open doors have long been an issue for residents in our building. It took management several months to fix the locks at 540 and 580 Main St. During this time, management, including Josh Eisenberg, failed to even give me the courtesy of responding to my emails when I requested that they post Security at the unlocked doors.

Today, I investigated the door status in the building again. Right on Main Street I detected 3 entrances where management's own staff had propped the doors open. They had cleaned the location and left the lobbies completely unguarded. No one was posted at the door. Anyone could walk right in.

I know of at least one law suit that is currently pending that accuses management of being lax in their security practices. In this case, a woman was badly beaten and paralyzed in her home in Roosevelt Landings. 

The state of lawlessness that exists in Roosevelt Landings is enhanced by Management's failure to practice what rational people would find perfectly normal security, and I don't see how Mr. Eisenberg could possibly be correct in his sense of the building's security at the time of the incident.

As a precautionary measure, the residents association in the building has hung up signs, (many in the very same places that managment currently has signs about far less important issues), that alerts our tenants to the problem and advises them to contact managment and 311 in the event the problem is not fixed. The maintenance staff promptly removed our signs.