Safety still an issue, but new way
A DISTRAUGHT woman who lived in the Liberty Avenue homeless shelter in Brooklyn ran into its management office one afternoon two years ago “crying profusely,” according to a city report.
The woman said her spouse had demanded she give him money for beer and “grabbed her and shook her violently” when she refused.
The May 2016 event was written up by the city Department of Homeless Services as a “critical incident” — a crucial record the city used to monitor and contain criminal and violent behavior inside shelters.
But homeless services staff also specifically noted that “no bruises or other signs of bodily injuries were visible.”
Today, that assault would not be reported — thanks to a significant policy shift in how the city monitors and records safety in its sprawling shelter system.
Under current DHS rules, assaults inside New York shelters are only recorded as a critical incident when visible injury occurs or a weapon is involved, the Daily News has learned.
Those changes, made by Mayor de Blasio’s administration in mid-2016, were never announced to the public.
The about-face only came to light recently when The News requested an updated list of critical incidents.
In response, DHS officials for the first time revealed that they had eliminated or redefined multiple categories of incidents once considered worth counting to track shelter violence .
“We have removed categories from critical that were inaccurately inflating the appearance of violence in shelter,” DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn wrote in response to The News’ questions.
The change was implemented by Department of Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks, who at the time oversaw DHS. De Blasio had tasked Banks in December 2015 with the mission of solving the city’s homelessness crisis.
McGinn said the previous method of detailing incidents was “defined too broadly” and was “over inclusive.” The new system, he said, revised categories “to reflect incidents requiring immediate intervention.”
With assaults, for instance, the city now used “visible injury as the metric for criticality,” McGinn explained.
That means an assault like one recorded in January 2016 — a security guard punched in Now, it’s only recorded if the face in a Bronx shelter — would there’s an “immediate removal” of not be reported today, because the the child or children — or an arrest. victim didn’t end up with an obvious Drug possession by residents is injury. no longer counted — only drug possession
Likewise, a “physical altercation” by staff. Neither are thefts. between a couple in a family Arrests are no longer counted as shelter that was also written up in “critical incidents,” a change DHS’ January 2016 now would not McGinn explained this way: “In count, since there were “not visible order to most effectively manage signs of bodily injury to either safety in shelters, critical incidents, party.” including violent critical incidents,
Since the overhaul of homeless should reflect the incident itself, services reporting rules in with severity based on any injury mid-2016, there have been dozens rather than the resulting action, of assaults inside shelters that the like arrest, which does not itself city once would have recorded, a pose any risk to other clients in the review by The News has found. facility.”
Other categories have been The agency continued to collect downsized or eliminated besides and analyze arrest data internally, assaults — including some related but it no longer reported it publicly to child abuse. because homeless services officials
Under the prior system, a report “do not regard it as the most precise of child abuse inside a shelter and accurate indicator of incidents would be counted as a “critical incident.” in shelter,” McGinn said.
“These revised categories provide a more effective window into health and safety of clients,” he added, “and ensure providers and staff prioritze rapid responses to the most urgent events at shelters.”
The decision to impose a more stringent definition of a “critical incident,” which McGinn said was made in consultation with the state Office of Temporary & Disability Assistance, came at a time when violence and criminal activity reports inside shelters were rising dramatically.
In 2015, there were no murders inside city shelters. Between January and July 2016, there were four.
One of those occurred at Boulevard Homeless Shelter in East Harlem. One resident slit the throat of his roommate, Deven Black, a 62, an ex-city schoolteacher and librarian with a troubled history.
Black, plagued by financial woes, arrived at the 101-bed center for homeless adults with mental illness just two days before his death.
His suspected killer stayed in bed after the gruesome attack — and only jumped up and ran out of the shelter when a security guard came into the room for a routine checkup.
Cops identified the alleged attacker as Anthony White, 21. His body was found two months later in the Hudson River, a likely suicide.
Assaults were also on the rise in the first six months of 2016, records show.
By July 1, the city had recorded 165 physical altercations inside shelters that resulted in arrests — more than the 153 assaults that took place over 12 months the year before.
Domestic violence arrests jumped to 115 — up from 97 during the same period in 2015.
By June 30, 2016, shelters reported a total of 866 “critical incidents” — up from the 839 recorded over the same time period in 2015. If the city hadn’t changed its reporting definitions halfway through 2016, the shelter system was on pace to record 1,732 “critical incidents” by year’s end.
By any standard, random violence had become more pervasive in many of the shelters, hotels and “cluster site” apartments where the city places homeless people.
Christopher Castle, 29, who for six months in 2016 stayed in the sprawling Atlantic Armory Shelter in Crown Heights, said it was a dangerous place where workers treated the residents poorly.
“It’s horrible in there,” he said. Between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2016, critical incident reports show a client in the Atlantic Armory assault-