Of counting makes facilities look safer
ed another with a lock in a sock in front of security. Another attacked a DHS officer, another choked a staff member, and another overdosed in bed. Drug seizures were extremely common, records show.
Now Castle lives in the streets around the armory. He says he was born at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital but has no relatives who will take him in. Going inside the Atlantic Armory, he says, is out of the question.
“I’d rather be out in the streets,” he said.
But after the city enacted its critical incident re-boot, everything seemed to get better.
By the end of 2016, the de Blasio administration was able to report that critical incident reports for the year had decreased to 1,391 from 1,687 in 2015 — a stunning 18% drop.
On Saturday, Banks said the city bolstered shelter security by bringing in the NYPD to work with the DHS police, adding more DHS cops and amping up training.
“With the implementation of the NYPD Management Team at DHS, shelters citywide are seeing increased monitoring, reporting, and enforcement—all a result of new accountability that had been missing from a system that built up in a haphazard way over decades,” Banks said. “Central to turning the tide on homelessness and transforming the shelter system are strong security and improved quality of life that ensure our clients can get back on their feet in safe, secure, Department of Homeless Services and dignified environments.”
Even though “critical” numbers had dropped off, they’ve begun to creep back up again at some shelters, even with the reduced number of categories – raising questions about where the numbers would be if the city hadn’t switched things up.
Banks said from July through December 2017, the rate of violent incidents for single adult families without children rose by 2.5% compared to the same period in 2016. Incidents at shelters with single adults rose only slightly, by .7%, and incidents at shelters with families with children dropped slightly, by .3%. Homeless services had only started keeping a more detailed accounting of “critical incidents” in 2015 — tracking them within a long list of categories that ranged from arson to homicide to theft.
At the time, Banks said he’d expanded the categories to provide a more detailed way to gauge violence in the system “so we can have a more complete picture of what's going on.”
But after July 2016, homeless services narrowed its focus.
From the expansion of the list in 2015 to its abrupt contraction in July 2016, the number of overall categories dropped from 36 to 32. The number of categories listed as “violent” was chopped to 10 from 16.
Homeless services also added some new categories, such as “hostage or abduction” situations.