Adding to the horror of a serial-killer sicko mercilessly gunning down vulnerable homeless New Yorkers is the news that cops did a “wellness check” on one victim an hour before he was killed.
When it’s below freezing, as on Saturday night, the Department of Homeless Services declares a Code Blue emergency, guaranteeing shelter citywide to all comers (including those brought to a shelter by outreach teams). But those teams can only encourage people living outdoors to take the offer.
Unless the person is clearly intoxicated or emotionally disturbed, police can’t take them into custody. And self-proclaimed advocates for the homeless have engineered a legal regime where cops can’t even force someone sleeping in public to move along, even as the city’s erected a $2.1 billion, 400-facility shelter system to serve the “right” to shelter.
With a serial killer loose, Mayor Eric Adams has the city mobilizing outreach workers to try to entice more homeless people into shelters. But the new NYPD patrol guidance doesn’t change the “you can’t make them move” rules.
It’s always been a matter of compassion not to let someone sleep on the street. Now it’s a matter of life or death. In a city and state that seized all manner of emergency powers during COVID, this isn’t good enough. With a killer on the loose, isn’t refusing to seek shelter itself a strong suggestion of mental illness that could allow at least a short-term commitment?
Even without this menace, it is inhumane to keep allowing city streets to be concrete beds and the subway system to be a rolling way-station for vagrants. The mayor has plenty on his own hands now, but city lawyers can and should work to upend the panoply of homeless “rights” created over recent decades.
This crisis only highlights the institutionalized insanity of New York’s approach to homelessness. No one should be able to “decide” to sleep on the streets.