New York Post

Foot-drag on felons living in NYC housing

- By SHAWN COHEN and NATALIE MUSUMECI nmusumeci@nypost.com

The NYPD does a good job alerting the city’s Housing Authority about dangerous criminal residents — but NYCHA routinely does little or nothing with the informatio­n, according to a Department of Investigat­ion report released Tuesday.

The report said that although the NYPD’s communicat­ion with NYCHA has “improved significan­tly,” the Housing Authority is still failing to enforce its policies by removing the criminals, who include violent felons, drug trafficker­s and gang members.

It is a follow-up to a 2015 investigat­ion that found that violent criminals living in public housing were getting a pass because the NYPD rarely alerted housing officials of their offenses — and when the department did, the Housing Authority seldom moved to evict.

“NYCHA has an obligation to protect the residents of its build- ings. Its failure to do so, even after DOI’s report in 2015, is inexcusabl­e,” DOI Commission­er Mark Peters said.

The 2015 report found that neither the cops nor the Housing Authority were living up to the terms of a 1996 agreement requiring them to act when a tenant was arrested in order to keep law-abiding residents of NYCHA’s 328 public-housing complexes safe.

According to NYPD stats for 2016, 14 percent of murders, 19 percent of shootings and 13 percent of rapes were committed on NYCHA premises.

The follow-up report found the NYPD has made improvemen­t in reporting most on-site arrests of public-housing tenants.

In 2016, the NYPD increased its

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