It's stayed with me all these years because perhaps my mother was schizophrenic, and if hadn't been for her family and her service connected VA benefits, I always imagined she could have been the woman who froze in that cardboard box in January 1982.
Perhaps I'm just showing off my memory and my ability to find the NYT stories that appeared in the paper, an opinion piece, and two by Robin Herman, a star reporter who has only recently passed away herself.
Much is currently being made of Mayor Eric Adams announcing that there will be a policy in place for the police and social services to remove the mentally ill from the streets and subways and get them in a hospital setting if they appear to be harmful to themselves and others. Well intentioned, but good luck with that.
The Mayor is of the opinion that subway crime is up, way up, because these people are committing acts of violence. He's right. Some are, most aren't. And by the time they get even one person, or a 100 committed to a mental health setting, crime will in no way decrease.
Despite living in the suburbs now for over 30 years I can never stop being a so-called New Yorker. I care who the Mayor is; I care about crime; I care. I was born and educated in the city's public schools, and worked in Manhattan for decades. I got out of the World Trade Center on 9/11. I survived a workplace execution in 2002 that saw two of my colleagues murdered.
Until I retired in 2011 I went into Manhattan, sometimes from Manhattan, and other times from Queens, or the suburban home I'm now in, for 46 years to work. I still make trips into the city for certain things.
The woman in the cardboard box, who they later identified as Rebecca Smith was 60 when she froze to death. As with homeless people, they are somehow resourceful in their own way. The instinct to survive. Her's was to live in this cardboard box in a Chelsea neighborhood near 10th Avenue. She was a fixture.
As the temperatures were dipping near zero in January 1982 there was concern about her chances of freezing to death. She is reported to have refused all outreach attempts to make her situation better.
If you are able to call up the Robin Herman piece links you will read of these attempts. I remember Mayor Koch going to where she was and trying to get her removed. The ACLU and others declared she couldn't be moved against her wishes. Wishes from a person who is not is not in their right mind, but that's not the point, right?
Social services from the Manhattan Mobile Geriatric Unit, a State Department of Mental Health outreach team couldn't convince her to move. The police claimed they had no authority to move her. There were those who brought her blankets and who thought she was warm enough. But there is a glaring gap there. These were weekday efforts. There was no weekend staff to check on her.
In one of Robin's pieces it is disclosed that someone from social services couldn't get back to the woman because they had no staff on weekends. The woman froze to death while they were waiting for a court order to remove her.
Rebecca Smith froze to death on a city sidewalk because no one worked on a weekend and a court order wasn't obtained soon enough. In 1985 there was a front page story in the November 14, 1985 edition of the NYT: Homeless in City Facing Koch Edit. People on Street to Be Ordered to Shelters on Cold nights.
In Mr. Kilgannon's piece we hear a retread of all the excuses that nothing could be done. Mayor Adams knows this, but hopes common sense will prevail.
Don't count on it.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment