East Village homeless individuals are decrying outreach workers for riding inside police vehicles as they travel from encampment sweep to encampment sweep, charging that it ruins “trust.”
Photo by Dean Moses
East Village homeless individuals are decrying outreach workers for riding inside police vehicles as they travel from encampment sweep to encampment sweep, charging that it ruins “trust.”
On Wednesday morning outreach workers, sanitation, and the NYPD returned to 9th Street and 1st Avenue to perform yet another encampment sweep. Dragging chairs and tables from underneath scaffolding, DSNY dumped belongings into the back of a garbage truck while a DSS-DHS worker offered those living on the street several services. However, despite having just the clothes on their back and several plastic bags to their names, they refused the offer.
DSS-DHS has repeatedly told amNewYork Metro that the agency sees denials as a work in progress, which, through repeated visits, will build trust between the outreach worker and the impacted individual. Those living with street homeless say they feel differently, changing that trust is lost when they see workers riding with law enforcement.
“It makes it seem like they are on the same team, you know, and it’s not a team to help us, it’s a team to fight us or just to get us out the way,” Remech Hall said, who has been undomiciled for about a year.
Hall, along with his peers, said that he would never accept placement inside of a shelter due to what he cites as hellish conditions. Yet, for the first time, Hall says he was offered a place in a hotel and wanted to accept it but said he couldn’t find the trust to do so.
“I never really heard that. All I heard was about either shelter or safe havens, I’ve never heard about hotels,” Hall said. “I just don’t have that trust.”
Several NYPD officers performing sweeps across the city who asked not to be identified have expressed desires to steer away from the…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply