April 8, 2013 By Christian Murray
A new security camera system is being installed inside a Woodside housing project.
The Woodside Houses, where many high-profile crimes have occurred in the past decade, will be receiving 137 closed-circuit cameras, which will be installed in lobbies, entrances and basements. The development, located at 50-51 Broadway, has 20 six-story buildings and 3,442 residents.
The $1.1 million project, funded by the New York City Council, will provide residents with an additional layer of security, according to a statement issued by Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. Furthermore, its installation is already underway and will continue until all cameras are installed. The project is scheduled be completed this July.
Many residents have been calling on the city to install the cameras for years.
In 2008, prosecutors charged 41 people, including several members of the Crips street gang, with selling crack and other crimes out of the housing project.
Furthermore, there have been several murders at or near the complex in the past decade. In 2005, there was a double homicide, when two men in their twenties were shot inside the complex. In 2008, a man was shot dead just outside.
Last August, a baby was found abandoned outside the Woodside Houses wrapped in a bloody bed sheet.
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13 Comments
well it seems like there is a lot of crime in those houses or else why would they need to spend the money on cameras?
we have lots of TSA scanners just sitting idle in warehouses….might as well stop the waste and use them
Rikki, you are a pretentious elitist. You assume all poor people have drugs or guns. You are a pathetic silver spooned hipster who bitches that they work sooooo hard and this somehow entitles you to elevate yourself above others.
None has the GUTS to install TSA body scanners at public housing projects….its our tax money that paid for your housing….
Ya dont want to be scanned for drugs or guns…MOVE and pay your own dammn rent!
Any idea when the park will be completed? Looks like some progress being made on what looks like the dog run? Can’t wait for this to be open. Should be great for us dog owners as well as neighborhood kids.
Sorry, San Francisco never got their poop recycling started but Cambridge Mass, with the help of some MIT engineers, has succeeded. Check it out at inhabitat.com. Looks cool and would go into 43rd St park easily, it seems.
Maybe one of obama’s surveillance drones can fly over the projects a few times a day.
nice O’Shea!
dog lover needs to get a grip. Dog runs are just as much about the people that use them, as they are about the dogs themselves. Great for the community and long overdue in Sunnyside.
I’m all for raising the fee for licenses and not picking up. In order to truly enforce rules on licenses/poop you would need to hire a hell of a lot more officers from whatever nyc depts handles them, in this case, the the Dept of Mental Health and Hygiene & Dept of Sanitation. Not sure if that kind of $ would pay for 1/2 a year, factoring in pay, healthcare, pensions, etc etc.
Like the idea of recycling the poo. Now, maybe a few of those cameras, you so desperately want, can be used to nail the visigoths and ne’erdowells that dump their trash everywhere, dump things like furniture on the sidewalk along the park on 43rd and Skillman, the animale that get wasted and urinate all over our parks, e-bike riders speeding on sidewalks (maybe a radar gun so we can get them for speeding AND being on the sidewalk), pigeon feeders, poor parallel parkers….how Orwellian you wanna go here?
Nothing will stop those animals from robbing, f***ing or killing the innocent.
Apologies to all animals…
1.1 million is nothing if it helps catch even one murderer
I thought this project was in the 114th, not the 108th. Could somebody please confirm? There have been several murders there.
Don’t you think it’d discretionary money better spent than the million our councilman allocated to dog runs? Are the cameras discretionary money, in fact, or did the funds come from the city directly? Now, if Mr. Van Bramer could only sue the MTA over the pigeons on the 7 train, instead of giving the MTA a quarter million for a questionable prevention system, and then seek enforcement of all the health laws about dog licensing, dogs in playgrounds, parks and stores where they are prohibited, and dogs defecating on the streets, it would seem he was moving in the right direction and raising revenue from the fines. He should also think about raising the license fee to reflect the true cost of recycling plastic bags of feces. San Francisco has built a methane recycling system in Golden Gate Park that effectively disposes of animal waste.
I agree with you ^^ but if cops can’t do the job then put in the cameras. There are so many cops parked inside their cars instead of being where the crime occurs. They say they don’t know where it is, but that’s just lies.
$1.1 million project for a CHANCE to catch a criminal. I dunno, wouldn’t that money be better spent trying to improve the community rather than trying to police it? especially since we all know those cameras have the film quality of a potato