IPNTA Newsletters

Sept/Oct 2003

Security at IPN: A Challenge for Gluck

At our last tenant meeting on June 25th, at which 800 people from Mitchell-Lama developments all over the city attended, the IPNTA board announced its intention to try to get New York City off-duty police officers to patrol IPN.

Why was that necessary? Several years ago, management hired Mike Grasso as IPN’s chief of security. Mr. Grasso is a former NYC police officer who beat up a 64 year old woman and put her in the hospital, and who had so many other complaints of brutality filed against him that he was dismissed from the force. Management then fired all our regular security guards, people who had worked here for 20 years and more, and replaced them with hourly security guards. Then they cut down on the number of patrolling guards.

The IPNTA board succeeded in getting back some--maybe even all—of the patrol. The union won an arbitration decision that found the dismissal illegal, and ordered the regular guards restored to their positions. But guards told us of harassment and intimidation by Mr. Grasso, and some decided not to return.

Now we find that hoodlums who live at IPN, and many who don’t, congregate between 40 Harrison and 310 Greenwich. They harass and intimidate people. Pit bull fights, drinking, drugs, townhouse residents having their doorbells rung in the middle of the night--and much else that makes things tough for IPN tenants--are just ignored, or at best not dealt with effectively.

Management simply says, “There isn’t anything we can do about it.”

Members of our board went to the First Precinct and met with several high ranking officers. We were told that to hire our own off-duty police to patrol, it would take at least 6 weeks from the filing of the application to getting approvals from the Police Department. That’s in addition to the time it would take to raise the money from IPN tenants and from the surrounding community.

Meanwhile, at our request, the police did make their presence felt with police cars parked right on Greenwich St. We were and are grateful for that help. During that period there was a noticeable improvement in the environment. But the police can’t do the IPN security job. Besides, we would need to raise the money to secure a multimillion dollar insurance policy.

Frankly, we are spending tenant money on fighting for our homes. We just can’t ask tenants to pay for the security that we should be getting as our right. Mr. Gluck says he is going to make improvements. He spins out images of swimming pools, of lush gardens, of upgraded lobbies--and all the rest. Mr. Gluck you can start delivering on one simple thing right now! Security, not for the hoodlums, but for tenants!

back to Newsletters Main Page