Update On Senior Citizen Complaint That Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department Refused To Provide Needed Assistance As She Struggled Walking Home - RIOC Public Safety Chief Tells RIRA PSC Committee Chair That Incident Was Mishandled, Will Schedule Community Police Training For All Officers

Many Roosevelt Island residents have expressed outrage and disappointment at the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Public Safety Department (PSD) 

for their failure to help a senior citizen, identified as ML, requesting assistance as she struggled to walk home last Friday.

Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Public Safety Committee Co-Chair Erin Feely-Nahem reported today a conversation with RIOC PSD Chief Kevin Brown. According to Ms Feely-Nahem:

I spoke to Chief Brown. He said he did not like what he had heard about how ML was treated, and he is scheduling a Community Policing training for all his officers.

 As reported by ML last Tuesday:

... On Friday afternoon, you might have seen a patrol car and two ambulances trailing a senior as she struggled to walk home. That was me. Instead of giving me water or a ride, they watched me as I shuffled home in agony over the course of an hour, apparently waiting for me to collapse from exhaustion before they would do anything to help.

The way they treated me was wrong. I call on the chief of Public Safety to resign: he or a subordinate apparently told the officer on the scene not to help me. And I call for Officer DeJesus—the officer on the scene—to be held accountable for not helping a resident in distress.

Here’s how events unfolded.

I was out on a walk to the lighthouse Friday afternoon when I started to feel physically unable to walk all the way back home to Island House, where I have lived for thirty years. I told Officer DeJesus, who was in a patrol car near Octagon that I was a senior person in physical distress, needed to get home fast to rest, and didn’t think I could make it on my own.  

He said he was not authorized to give people a ride.  

I explained that I was not asking for a joy ride, that driving me home would spare me further exhaustion. He asked for my building name and apartment number. He called his base. He could not do it....

ML's full description of incident is here. 

Upon learning of the incident last week, I asked RIOC President Shelton Haynes and PSD Chief Kevin Brown for a response to ML's report. RIOC Public Information Officer Amy Smith replied as follows:

Our Public Safety Department (PSD) adheres to COVID-19 protocols in order to keep the community safe. As a part of these protocols, it is not advisable for individuals – particularly the elderly – to be in close quarters with essential front-line workers such as PSD officers. 

Also according to the protocols, our officer called an ambulance, which is equipped to safely aid all individuals. The purpose of our officer following the individual was to ensure their safety until EMS arrived. However, this individual refused the aid that was offered to them.

RIRA Public Safety Committee Co-Chairs Ms Nahem and Shirley Coley respond to the ML incident and RIOC's handling of the matter: 

The recent incident involving ML, from Island House, first of all calls into question how COVID-19 protocols are seen and implemented in a concrete situation. Are they working? Do they meet the needs of the community? If this incident is an indicator, we think not.

After a major community struggle back in 2012-14, led by the Roosevelt Island Residents Association Public Safety Committee (RIRA PSC), the Community decided that the rigid, unconstitutional, and abusive policies of the RIOC Public Safety Department under Chief Keith Guerra wasn’t working in resident’s interests and had to be dismantled at the top. Guerra’s style was harsh in general as well as particularly racist in its selection of who to arrest and brutalize. This left our young adults and teenagers with records for minor infractions that ruined their future chances at employment and improvements in their standard of living. 

Under Charlene Indelicato’s leadership as RIOC President, major changes to the department were initiated, beginning with the employment of Chief Jack McManus. Consulting closely with the RIRA PSC, the RIOC President and Chief McManus implemented positive policy changes within the department and later brought aboard as Deputy Director Kevin Brown. These changes led to significantly improved Community-PSD interactions that respected the needs and rights of residents and treated residents and visitors to our beautiful Island with care and respect. And, of course, the respect gained was interchangeable and went both ways as community policing on Roosevelt Island developed and bore peaceful fruit. The PSC can report that for years, under Chief McManus and now under Chief Brown complaints against PSD officers are radically down, accompanying the low crime rates that continue. 

ML’s situation should never have happened, and was unacceptable, even with COVID protocols. It was a break with the idea of putting the needs of the constituents first.  It is unclear from RIOC’s statement how the request for service was handled within the PSD, but the PSC recognizes that Chief Kevin Brown continues the Community Policing project on Roosevelt Island, initiated under the late Chief McManus, and that has not changed.

Before COVID, in response to community members feeling unsafe walking home, following several cases of indecent exposure, Jack McManus and Kevin Brown made it clear that escorts by Public Safety Officers would be available to anyone, they just needed to call. This is still the policy, so what went wrong?   

For sure the initial statement issued by the RIOC Communication and Community Affairs department, under Amy Smith’s name is wrong. It is a boilerplate, corporate response, which says nothing. It refuses to acknowledge any failure, or ML’s distress, and fails to offer the community and ML an apology for the way it was handled.  As seniors we can understand ML’s “refusal” to accept the ride from an ambulance. Ambulances are not supposed to be utilized as a car service and should be reserved for emergencies. Besides those facts, the cost of an ambulance ride is expensive. Under Erin’s insurance plan it cost $550.00. This is something that any senior who is on a fixed income, or limited budget would want to avoid. Ms. Smith’s statement ignores these factors and seems oblivious to what “Community Policing” on Roosevelt Island would look like. But her superiors in RIOC should know better, and changes should have been made to her statement, making it less caustic before it was issued.

Had ML collapsed, as she struggled home, she might be laying in a hospital bed today, with broken bones, or worse. Litigation would have been inevitable. RIOC got lucky, but ML did not, and she suffered. Is this how RIOC President Shelton Haynes wants his administration to sound? The tone is all wrong! Claiming that the PSD’s refusal to take ML home in the PSD vehicle was “for her safety” is a hard sell. Especially when you know the facts, and the PSD policies. ML was never assessed for her “safety” to be transported. She wasn’t asked if she had been vaccinated, as 1,200 Seniors had recently been. There was also nothing contrary to “COVID protocols” in their encounter, or in the request for a ride. ML would have been seated in the back of the patrol car “masked “ as she was transported back home. Nor was COVID Protocol an issue with any number of solutions that could have been found, to ease her suffering, such as offering her a helping arm to lean on during the walk or providing a bottle of water to stop dehydration. 

The facts are that the PS Officer’s response was poorly thought out, as was his superior’s directive. I am confident it will not be repeated, and that those involved in this poorly executed incident will be spoken to. Too often COVID protocols can be misused, and instead of keeping us safe, they create situations where we could be harmed, as this case demonstrates. If ML was being arrested for alleged criminal activity,  we would wager she would have been detained in the vehicle. The RIRA PSC expects this situation to be rectified forthwith.

UPDATE 8 PM - According to RIOC President Shelton Haynes:

I would like to offer my sincerest apologies for the incident that occurred last Friday involving a senior resident and our Public Safety Department. The manner in which we engaged with the resident was not the standard we want to uphold. 

I have asked our Public Safety Chief, Kevin Brown, to use this unfortunate incident as a teachable moment by reimaging our community policing strategies. He is personally reaching out to the resident to apologize and acknowledge this mishandling of the matter. 

Our efforts, as a whole, are to be more mindful of the needs of our community, especially for our most vulnerable neighbors. Our initial response to the Roosevelt Islander blog did not convey my feelings on the subject nor acknowledge any accountability in the matter. As we look to foster improved relationships with the community, we must first begin with learning from mistakes and improving with our actions. 

Going forward, we realize that the enforcement of policies and protocols that have been put in place need to be enforced with empathy and compassion. In the interim, we will be taking a long, hard look at our current emergency response procedures, accessing the needs that go beyond protocol and to develop solutions to challenges that arise in our diverse community.