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.
