So … Bed-Stuy just got a little sketchier for us at the MYNT.
Yesterday, I was just chillin’ eating some apple jacks and assembling my thoughts and some furniture when I heard something at my door.
I went to check it out through the peep hole and some seemingly smashed out drunken dude was just walking from door to door trying the handle on each one. I opened the door (with the chain/slider thing in place) and said, “Did you need something?” to which he replied “Sorry, wrong apartment.”
My initial reaction to what he was doing was that he was casing the place, checking out each door to find one that was unlocked. I saw that he was drunk and so I didn’t think much more about it. Someone new was moving in yesterday so I thought this might be a drunken friend trying to get back to that apartment.
Unfortunately this was not the case.
Later I went out with some friends and noticed a comb on the floor of the lobby. I had a ‘WTF?’ moment, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was only when I came back that I realized that the two events were related. Allegedly the alleged intruder’s comb and seventy cents.
This intruder, rapist, crazy or whatever you want to call him had come into the building, and apparently given the same treatment to every floor. He even got into one apartment, which is when the police were finally called. Luckily they would be here within fifteen minutes.
I’m sorry, but one hour twenty minutes, when the police actually arrived, is not exactly in the same ballpark as fifteen minutes, I don’t care what neighborhood you live in.
Our normal night-man had come on duty and was the first MYNT employee to be alerted of this situation. He brought (forcibly) the man back down to the lobby and kept him there until the police arrived.
At some point between the time I saw the guy and he ended up in the lobby, his pants had ended up near his ankles. There they remained until the police arrived.
Did I mention that it took New York’s finest one hour twenty minutes to respond? In case I didn’t, after an emergency 911 call, NYPD took one hour twenty minutes to respond to a call at Myrtle and Nostrand near the Myrtle-Willoughby G train stop. I can make it from the MYNT to the NYPD station in Times Square in well under one hour twenty minutes, even on weekends. Simply hop on a Queens bound G train at the Myrtle-Willoughby, transfer to the L at Metropolitan/Lorimer, get on the Q at Union Square and you’re there. Alternatively, you can take a Smith-9 St bound G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (which houses yet another location of the NYPD) and hop on a Manhattan A train and ride that baby for all she’s worth straight to 42nd Street Times Square.
I hope that last paragraph was clear enough, particularly for the search engines out there, you know, the ones that disseminate this information to the general public. Of course anyone reading this is free to write some content associating the terms NYPD and one hour twenty minutes and see how long it takes before the right people start to notice. Maybe my tone will be inflammatory enough to end up on the Neighborhood Watch of nymag.com. Indeed, it may even be some sort of cosmic dramatic irony, with God as both director and audience, that this is precisely the kind of event a ‘neighborhood watch‘ is supposed to prevent.
I would also like to note that the blame for this can not possibly be laid upon those officers who actually responded. They came, they saw, they took that guy away. Awesome. But who decides where stations are? Why isn’t there a response time calculator on the NYPD’s website? Is the city too big to respond promptly to each 911 call?
In any case, this is my announcement of suspicious behavior. The guy was casing the place. It’s as simple as that. I don’t know how long he will be incarcerated or if he will be at all, but he has one phone call, and that’s all an accomplice would need.
It is in this unfortunate circumstance that I must encourage those living inside the MYNT to lock their doors, in the daytime, when they’re home, when they shouldn’t have to.
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