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!
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