‘HOUSE’ ARREST
Publicity-wary cops grab, return vagrant’s bin
Cops seized a fake garbage bin off a Soho street over the weekend after learning it was being used as a home by a vagrant, but they returned it Sunday without a summons after apparently considering the bad press Mayor de Blasio might face, the box’s owners said. “They just said, ‘Here’s your stuff. Have a great weekend,’ ” recalled Shane Duffy, a documentary filmmaker who helped create the home for Damien Cummings. As The Post revealed Sunday, Duffy built the wooden box and offered it to Cummings as he films a piece on homelessness. The box was made to look like a garbage bin but is outfitted with a bed, insulation and solar panels. Cummings had left it at Mercer and Broome streets from June to October, then moved it to Wooster and Spring streets, where it had been for the past six months.
The Post called the NYPD for comment at around 4 p.m. Saturday, and 15 minutes later, a couple of cops photographed the box and left.
Two hours later, when Cummings was away, cops rolled it a few blocks to the First Precinct station house.
Duffy, who was at the corner at the time, said cops told him he could pick it up the next day — along with a summons for erecting an illegal shelter.
But when Duffy, business partner Phil Sullivan and Cummings showed up Sunday morning with their film crew, cops gave them a pass.
Police even helped them load it into a rental truck, Duffy said.
“They told us that there wasn’t going to be a summons,” Duffy said.
“I think they were feeling pressure from on high. They didn’t want the bad press — you know, cops being shown taking a homeless person’s home away and then giving him a ticket.”
De Blasio ignored requests for comment at an unrelated news conference Sunday. Police said the cops had deemed no enforcement was necessary.
Duffy, Sullivan and Cummings returned the box to the corner of Wooster and Spring streets Sunday afternoon. But they later decided to play it safe and loaded the it back in the truck and drove off.
Cummings, who has been living on city streets for nearly a decade, said the police were surprisingly nice.
“It was refreshing to see such good treatment from the police,” he said. “But that’s only for a day. I will run into the same cops, and I’m not sure they’ll be acting the same way.
“If there were no cameras here, maybe they would have me waiting around for a lot longer.”
Duffy and Sullivan put Cummings up at two area hotels over the weekend.