By Lorenzo Franceschi Bicchierai
The round blue and yellow stickers dot the lobby of many of the Riis Houses buildings in the East Village. The “T” and “P” interlaced in the center are meant to tell the world that this is a tenant-patrolled building. Except that it isn’t. The last tenant patrols in the building actually took place a full 10 years ago, in 2001.
Now, the New York City Housing Authority is attempting to resuscitate the patrols. But at a Sept. 29 meeting organized by the authority to discuss the subject, only two residents showed up.
“Tenant patrols are a dangerous proposition,” said Gilbert Alicea, a Riis Houses resident, explaining why he opposes a Resident Watch in the building. He said most of the potential volunteers would be retired, elderly people — easy prey for criminals. “It might work in another neighborhood but not here,” he said. “They have guns and sell crack here. It’s very dangerous.”
Asked if he’d volunteer, he shook his head: “If I do it I’d be tagged as a snitch.” Besides, he said, “Nobody likes a civilian acting like a cop.”
Carlos González, a longtime Riis resident, said he thinks the agency should put security guards in every building instead of expecting tenants to form patrols.
“It’s like working for NYCHA without pay,” he said.
But the two residents who attended the meeting — Louise Velez, the unofficial captain of that particular building, and Gourdine-Barbosa, who lives in another Riis building — aren’t giving up.
Gourdine-Barbosa said that before coming to Riis eight years ago, she lived in the Bay View Houses, where she was the development’s tenant patrol supervisor — the liaison between management and the volunteers, the one who organizes patrols and recruits volunteers.
“It was beautiful,” she said, recalling those years at Bay View. “Tenants were happy to sit. We had a good time.” And crime, she said, dropped “considerably.”
Lenore Tucker, who was the NYCHA tenant patrol coordinator when Gourdine-Barbosa was the supervisor at Bay View, explained that the program “was very active.” It was widespread all over the city, she said.
“The program is volunteer driven, so there is no limit on the number of volunteers that can sit in a building,” NYCHA spokesperson Sheila Stainback said in an e-mail. To set up patrols, a minimum of two residents are needed; then NYCHA and the volunteers plan out a schedule. After three months of active patrols, the volunteers vote to elect a captain and a co-captain. Building captains are elected by the Resident Watch volunteers and have several duties, such as opening up the patrol on a nightly basis or preparing the lobby patrol’s schedule, according to Stainback.
At that point, NYCHA provides equipment: four chairs, a table, a fan, a heater and a telephone. Every volunteer also receives a hat, a T-shirt and a jacket and each building is entitled to a $20 monthly budget for light refreshments.
Manuel Pacheco, NYCHA’s field consultant for the Resident Watch program, said that he conducts random checks to make sure the patrols are up and running.
As part of the program, all development supervisors receive training in “observation skills, terrorism awareness, first aid and gang awareness,” Stainback said. According to NYCHA’s Web site, the purpose of the Resident Watch program at Housing Authority complexes is to “enhance the safety and security of their communities.”
Not everybody thinks this is a great idea, though.
Salma Figueroa was a tenant patrol volunteer during the ’70s, but she’s not interested in repeating the experience.
“I don’t think it will work,” she said, “I hope somebody will do something about our problems here but it’s very bad.”
Despite the apparent opposition to the program, Stainback said NYCHA is currently looking for a Resident Watch supervisor at Riis.
Even though she attends every lobby meeting, including the ones that are not for her building, Gourdine-Barbosa knows it’s not going to be easy to reach her goal.
“People won’t help fight with me,” she said. But she’s not going to surrender either. “I wanna fight for this building,” she said.
