Here’s an up-close look at a quality-of-life offense the City Council wants to decriminalize.
This urinating vagrant turned a busy stretch of Broadway into his own private bathroom yesterday – an offense that would result in a mere summons if Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and her pals get their way.
Wrapped in rags and a Mets blanket the hobo wandered into traffic at around 10:30 a.m. and relieved himself as cabs, cars and buses whizzed by between West 83rd and 84th streets on the Upper West Side.
He finished his business at a nearby garbage bin, then strolled back to the front of a Victoria’s Secret store at Broadway and 85th Street, where he camped out for the rest of the day.
Mark-Viverito in April announced plans to decriminalize public urination along with five other low-level offenses: biking on the sidewalk, public consumption of alcohol, being in a park after dark, failure to obey a park sign and jumping subway turnstiles.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — who in the early ’90s implemented a “broken windows” approach to policing to dramatically cut crime — is against the new plan, saying such offenses lead to more serious crimes.
Bill Caprese, 38, who lives on 82nd Street with his 6-year-old daughter, was appalled by the street urinator.
“It’s absolutely a failure of government. It’s a total abject failure,” he said. “The mayor could fix it. The governor could fix it. We need asylums.”
An employee at the Victoria’s Secret, where the homeless man often lounges, said he drives away business.
“Customers complain about him all the time.”
And the growing problem isn’t solely on city streets.
Transit hubs, including Penn Station, are plagued by surging numbers of homeless people who publicly masturbate, harass bystanders and demand free food as the city looks the other way, commuters complain.
“It reminds me of the pre-[Rudy] Giuliani era,” said Jim Hoover, 60, who has been commuting through Penn Station since 1986. “The police aren’t chasing them away anymore.”
Just outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a homeless man drunkenly knocked a woman to the floor while stumbling around the sidewalk.
The bum, who goes by “Monk,” was arrested by a cop at the scene and taken away by an FDNY ambulance.
“He’s going to get a hospital bed and a slap on the wrist,” said Timothy Arroyo, who was watching from a crowd that gathered.
“He’ll be back out here tomorrow.”
A PA source said there has been a “noticeable uptick” in vagrants at the terminal in recent months.
“It’s a trend,” the source said.
Additional reporting by Melkorka Licea, Philip Messing and Danika Fears