NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — New York City’s latest housing plan for asylum seekers arriving in the city will involve the conversion of a semi-defunct Manhattan police academy building.
The Office of Emergency Management has already started filling the gymnasium at the building on East 20th Street near 2nd Avenue with cots, though no asylum seekers are sleeping there yet.
The NYPD no longer uses the building for training, though some officers still use the firing range there and the Force Investigation Division has an office in the Gramercy Park facility.
The head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the union that represents NYPD cops, denounced the decision.
“Yet another societal problem has landed in New York City police officers’ laps, and the ‘solution’ is terrible for everyone involved,” said PBA President Patrick Lynch. “It is a significant security risk to house civilians in an active, working police facility, which means a large contingent of police officers will need to be posted there for both the safety of the migrants and the security of the building. It’s a waste of resources and a frankly inhumane arrangement.”
The Detective's Endowment Association, the union for NYPD detectives, also decried the move.
Migrants, who have not been vetted, being housed in an official NYPD facility where there are guns, police equipment and crime victims endangers the detectives, officers and civilian workers assigned there," said DEA President Paul DiGiacomo.
The union is pressuring City Hall to nix the planned shelter, according to DiGiacomo.
Mayor Eric Adams has been relying on hotels and a series of refugee camps as temporary housing for asylum seekers. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been bussing the refugees from the southern border to New York as part of a political spat with Adams and other blue-state mayors.
More than 59,400 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City in the past year, the majority of whom were sent here by Abbott or other red-state governors following his lead.
Related
Related
Related
