On a recent spring day, Prospect Lefferts Gardens shook with such force that some neighbors believed there was an earthquake, they said. The bricks of a co-op building in the Brooklyn neighborhood broke off and crashed into the courtyard, and new cracks wormed their way into some residents’ homes. 

“It’s as if a train were running through the house,” said Dean Foster, 75, who lives on Rutland Road and Bedford Avenue. 

It was not an earthquake but vibrations from a pile driver digging steel beams into the soil at 1935 Bedford Ave. without proper safety monitors in place to protect the surrounding homes, according to city records and a Department of Buildings spokesperson.

Pile driving involves using a heavy-duty machine to force beams into the earth to create a stable foundation for a future structure, causing intense vibrations to travel from the source of the driving. 

“If we opened the cabinet door in the kitchen, the glassware would have fallen out,” Foster said in his home, located two blocks from the construction site.

Nestled between historic houses and two 90-year-old co-op buildings, the lot has become the site of a bitter battle between its newest owners and neighbors, whose homes have been damaged and lives disrupted during heavy construction, according to photos and videos reviewed by THE CITY.

Bobby McCullough, 42, began contacting 311 with complaints of cracks in their apartment building when construction ramped up in the first week of May, service requests show. 

“That was the first time I was fearful for my immediate safety,” McCullough said. “The building was shaking at a level that I was concerned about something falling, not off the shelf, but like a part of the ceiling.” 

Suzanne Cooke, who has lived in the co-op building for 13 years, said her daughter works late nights and has been disturbed by the construction while she sleeps during the day. 

“It’s startled her and woke her out of her sleep,” Cooke said. “There’s items in our space that fell off shelves.” 

McCullough said they were standing in the courtyard of the co-op as bricks from the adjacent building broke off and crashed to the ground. They were on the phone with a city building employee when it happened, who instructed them to call 911 immediately. 

Firefighters responded to the scene for bricks falling from the co-op building, according to a fire department spokesperson. Firefighters told the contractors to stop pile driving, but they did not listen, McCullough and other residents said.

“Ten minutes after they left, work continued,” McCullough told THE CITY. 

History of Violations

The entity Bedford 1935 Daf LLC, owned by Yonit Tzadok, purchased the lot on Feb. 28, 2025, according to property records, becoming the site’s third owner in nine years. A partner to the owner, Izchak Naftalin, filed permits to build a 10-story building on the lot in July 2025, according to records and media reports. Neither Tzadok nor Naftalin responded to inquiries from THE CITY. 

The current owners have paid $16,000 to the city in fines since January for various infractions, including failure to maintain a safe job site, failing to obtain proper permits and violating a stop work order, according to building department records. 

On May 5 the city issued Lead It Builders LLC, another contractor on site, a violation with a $5,000 fine for pile driving without safety monitoring devices, which is pending. 

Past development attempts on the lot have failed in recent years, and it has a history of unauthorized demolition work from a prior developer, as previously reported by THE CITY. In 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection issued $68,000 in fines for multiple violations of asbestos-removal safety rules.

In the last two years through early January, another owner of the lot, — 1935 Bedford Ave LLC, which sold the lot to the current LLC owner — ran up $27,321 in fines for a variety of code violations, including unsafe job site and inadequate site fencing. As of this week, they’d paid off $19,196 with $8,125 unresolved, records show. 

Residents told THE CITY they have struggled to keep up with whether stop work orders are in effect, as they go back and forth with lodging complaints against the contractors, who eventually get the stop work orders rescinded, or violate the orders and write a check to the city for the fines.

“The stop work orders come and go very quick,” McCullough said. 

Between February and May 2026, the city issued and rescinded two stop work orders for driving piles without monitoring protocols in place. Another stop work order issued on April 30 with no explanation was rescinded the next day. 

On Wednesday the city ordered all work to stop again, after an inspector responding to yet another complaint and found no designated superintendent while construction was ongoing, which creates a “hazard,” according to the order.

Gary Vinbaytel, who is named as an associate of the project’s owner according to city records, denied the city’s and neighbor’s claims that he is pile driving without the proper monitors.

“They fabricate everything,” he said in an email to THE CITY, referring to the lot’s neighbors. “All our construction is in accordance with all DOB regulations, monitoring and regiments. We follow each step very carefully and have sophisticated monitoring in place.”

He added, “These neighbors have prevented any construction from proceeding for a decade with multiple prior owners.”

Shaking and Cracking

Residents began complaining to the building agency of their homes shaking and cracking in February 2026. 

Anya Glowa-Kollisch, 42, board president of the Hawthorne Street co-op adjacent to the lot, said they have tried for nearly a year to get the project owners to sign an agreement for providing proper safety equipment, calling the work “exhausting.” 

“We have no idea how much damage has already been done to our building,” Glowa-Kollisch said. “It’s not that we don’t want development. This isn’t a NIMBY situation. We understand that things change and that there’s a need for housing.”

“What we want is for it to be done safely,” they added.

An engineering report Vinbaytel had prepared and submitted to the city as a requirement for the project recommended contractors micropile — drilling small-diameter columns into the ground that creates low vibrations but typically takes longer to install — instead of pile driving, stating it could cause vibrations that would affect adjacent buildings.

Cal Hadley’s family has owned his home on Fenimore Street since 1974. The house, built in 1935, is about 20 feet away from the construction. 

He said the pile driving “would work if we were on a deserted island someplace, and no other building was around for miles.” 

“But this is Brooklyn,” Hadley said. “Everything is in such close proximity to each other.” 

“No one’s saying that, ‘Well, we don’t want any buildings,’ but when you do this — and that’s what we’re focused on — why are you causing damage to other homes?”

‘Incredibly Stressful’

The residents THE CITY spoke to described their neighborhood as tight-knit and multicultural with historic homes. Now known as Little Caribbean, the area has been rapidly gentrifying, desired for its good transit options, historically designated homes and proximity to Prospect Park. 

Nicole DeCicco, 42, has used the nearby park as a refuge from her shaking building. 

“I typically partially work from home, and I haven’t been able to sit here and do work,” she said. “We’re getting woken up. They’re doing drilling at like 7 o’clock in the morning.” 

McCullough has lived in the co-op beside the lot for a little over a decade, which they said they cherish for its “building elders,” who have lived there for over 40 years. 

“It’s incredibly stressful to feel like the well-being of the building as a structure hinges on our awareness as just ordinary residents,” McCullough said. 

They are unsure what they will do about the cracks in their walls. 

“I can’t even get there,” they said. “I’m simply, I am trying to stop more from happening.”

Additional reporting by Greg B. Smith.

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Three days before a fatal fire May 4th at 207 Dyckman St. in Inwood, housing inspectors appeared at the six-story walkup and issued a dozen code violations.

One of those was for a non-functioning self-closing apartment entry door that was deemed “immediately hazardous.”

After the blaze was put out, firefighters discovered severe fire damage in eight apartments where entry doors had been left open. Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore made a point of noting that units where the doors were closed “had very little impact, no fire.”

The city’s housing code requires property owners to fix “immediately hazardous” violations — such as the self-closing door at Dyckman Street — within 24 hours.

But, according to city records and sworn statements, the building’s owners have a track record of letting dangerous conditions linger. 

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued more than a thousand violations over the last few years to the landlords of the Dyckman Street building at properties they own across New York, an investigation by THE CITY has found.

The problems are so bad that HPD has been forced to file suit 16 times since 2020 alleging a persistent failure to address serious health and safety issues at 10 properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens controlled by co-owners of the Dyckman St. property, Jack Bick, Chaim Schweid and their affiliated real estate companies, records show.

Bick ranks 80th on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ list of the city’s 100 worst landlords.

“I have heard complaints that they don’t respond,” said a 22-year-old tenant of one of Janjan’s Manhattan buildings. “Like, they take years to, like, fix a problem.” 

As of last week those 10 buildings had racked up a total of 1,343 open housing code violations, including 406 listed as “immediately hazardous.”

On April 27, HPD sued Bick, Schweid and their firms Janjan Realty and SB Dyckman LLC over serious code violations at 209 Dyckman St. — the building next door to the fire site. That included citations for two fire safety issues: a blocked egress and a missing smoke detector.

As of last week both Dyckman Street buildings had a combined total of 336 open violations, 100 of them “immediately hazardous.”

A ‘Top Priority’ for Mamdani

At the time of the fire, 207 Dyckman St. had been placed in HPD’s “alternate enforcement program,” which targets landlords who accumulate an alarming number of serious violations within a year. Property owners in the AEP program are then subject to random inspections to clean up past outstanding violations. At 207 Dyckman, HPD and Janjan had resolved 85 past citations as of Thursday.

HPD told THE CITY it “will use every tool in its toolbox to ensure tenants are safe and landlords meet their obligations.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani “has been clear that enforcing housing quality is a top priority for this administration, and we will continue to take action against unsafe conditions and bad landlords whenever and wherever they exist,” the agency said in a statement.  

The lawsuits HPD has filed against Bick, Schweid and their firms highlight a persistent failure to address serious code violations at specific buildings. Over the last year, HPD had to sue Bick three times over violations at one of his buildings on Bessemund Avenue in Far Rockaway, then another three times over a building he controls a few blocks away on Hartman Lane.

Both locations included violations for non-working self-closing doors.

‘Unsafe Conditions’

At another Bick-owned Far Rockaway building on Bay 30th Street, HPD last month filed suit accusing the landlord of deliberately “neglecting those unsafe conditions as part of an intentional and aggressive campaign to harass and displace rent stabilized tenants.” They allege at one point a tenant without a lawyer was offered $100 to vacate their apartment.

Schweid controls four properties sued by HPD over the last few years, including a 49-unit rental building on Ocean Parkway in Kensington, Brooklyn.

In the last two years housing inspectors have fielded dozens of complaints about unsafe conditions there, and HPD has at times been forced to bill Schweid for repairs city-hired vendors had to perform when the landlord failed to do so. 

As of this week the Ocean Parkway building had 91 open violations, 30 of them “immediately hazardous.” Since December the building has been cited five times for non-functioning self-closing doors.

A lawyer for Bick did not return THE CITY’s calls seeking comment, and a message left at a number listed for Janjan Realty was not returned. A lawyer for Schweid did not return a call or an email from THE CITY.

On Thursday, fire department officials cited the Dyckman Street fire at a press conference touting a recent public service announcement they released following an April fire at a building on East 187th Street in The Bronx that resulted in two deaths. Officials said firefighters entering that building found many apartment entry doors had been left wide open.

First Deputy Fire Commissioner Dan Flynn advised New Yorkers to always close their doors and leave them closed when fleeing the scene of a fire.

Open doors create a chimney effect that spreads fire, smoke and flames — a factor that was in play during the May 4 Dyckman Street conflagration that killed three tenants, including People magazine journalist Yolaine Diaz and her mother, Ana Mirtha Lantigua.

“This year we’ve had many fatalities that have resulted from residents opening doors or leaving doors open,” Flynn said. “Closed doors will limit the spread of that fire, limit the spread of toxic gases and smoke.”

Flynn cited two examples in The Bronx where open doors contributed to the rapid spread of fatal fires — a December 2017 blaze on Prospect Avenue that caused 13 deaths, and a January 2022 fire in the Twin Parks building that killed 17.

“If not for an open door, I am confident that nobody would have died in either one of those fires,” he said.

Contributing: Lilly Sabella

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One detainee was found dead with 66 pills in his cell.

Another lay in distress for five minutes during an apparent overdose before staff administered Narcan.

A third was left locked in his cell, unsupervised, for nearly half an hour as he spiraled into a medical crisis.

Those were some of the damning findings outlined in the latest report issued by the city’s Board of Correction on Friday. 

The oversight board’s 25-page report highlights a familiar pattern: Rikers Island correction officers off post, missed safety checks, unsecured cells and a housing unit where rules appeared optional. The report also details how Correctional Health staff failed to properly care for detainees. 

“This report shows that Rikers jail supervisors still cannot get staff to do the fundamentals of the job, namely to stay on post during a workshift and vigilantly supervise people in their custody,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas of the Legal Aid Society. “The jails have tolerated this lax approach to basic corrections for too long, and too many people have died from it.”

The same failures have been flagged in report after report, year after year, as the detainee population at Rikers includes a significant and growing minority with serious mental health needs.

The latest board report documented three deaths on Rikers: Edwin Ramos, 38, on Nov. 21; Aramis Furse, 32, on Dec. 7; and Kyron Randall, 33, on Dec. 22. 

Death by Infection

Kyron Randall’s death reads less like an isolated, poorly handled medical emergency and more like a slow-motion systems failure inside Rikers. 

He died from septic shock after medical staff failed to properly diagnose and treat him, the report found. 

Randall’s record revealed a long history of serious mental illness and substance use, the Board of Corrections report shows, and he cycled through suicide watch and Bellevue Hospital, as well as to a state mental health facility. 

He was returned to Rikers after medical staff there determined that, with the help of medication, he was ready to stand trial for allegedly murdering his 56-year-old neighbor. 

In mid-December, Randall missed multiple doses of medication over several days for a mix of reasons that are routine in the jail system. They include court appearances, refusing to take his pills and what officials described as “no response.”  

Medical staff made repeated attempts to evaluate him for complaints of stomach pain, but he refused to leave his cell. 

The morning of the medical emergency, one officer in charge of his housing unit left the area unsupervised for nearly three hours, from 5:58 a.m. until 8:42 a.m. (A probe by the Corrections Department’s internal review team concluded the officer did not violate any rules, according to the death review.) 

When correction officers finally noticed Randall was in trouble later that morning at 10:11 a.m., he was lying incoherent in his cell in vomit with his pants pulled down. 

For the next 11 minutes, jail staff stood at the front of the housing area while he lay inside his cell alone. 

When emergency response staff did arrive, a staffer briefly entered Randall’s cell twice for a few seconds before going back to watch him from outside the door, according to surveillance video.

Randall then fell out of his bed.

It wasn’t until 10:56 am — 45 minutes after the emergency was called — that staff finally entered his cell for good, rolling the 350-pound man onto a blanket with help from three fellow inmates and carrying him to a gurney.

Randall didn’t reach Elmhurst Hospital until just after noon. He was dead before 1 a.m. the next morning.

The Board of Correction recommended Correctional Health Services retrain staff to ensure continuous monitoring of detainees in medical distress, which the health service accepted.

Narcan Delay

Another death detailed in the report points to similarly routine breakdowns. 

Edwin Ramos, 38, entered custody in August 2025 and was initially flagged for high blood pressure and obesity. He said he had used fentanyl and cocaine but, for reasons not made clear in the report, was not deemed eligible for medication-assisted drug treatment, according to the board review. 

Two months later, jail officials obtained records from the state that showed a more serious medical history that included “unspecified psychotic disorders.”

Still, Ramos was placed in a general population dorm at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers instead of a medically monitored unit. Surveillance footage from the night of Nov. 20 shows multiple people openly smoking what looked like rolled cigarettes while an officer sat at the post or briefly left the area. 

Just before midnight, Ramos was seen placing an unknown substance in his mouth. Minutes later, he staggered into the bathroom, appearing lethargic, before collapsing face-first onto the floor.

After a five minute delay, a correction officer administered multiple doses of Narcan and began chest compressions. Medical staff arrived shortly after and continued resuscitation efforts, eventually transporting Ramos to the jail clinic and then to Mount Sinai Queens, where he was pronounced dead.

Contraband

In the case of Furse, the breakdown played out over hours inside a locked housing unit. 

Surveillance video reviewed by the Board shows detainees freely leaving their cells during a lockdown, passing around what appeared to be contraband and even entering one another’s cells while officers conducted cursory tours or left the post entirely. Detainees were supposed to be locked in their own cells at the time. 

Later, while the officer was off the unit, someone appeared to slide a cigarette-like item under Furse’s cell door. Other detainees repeatedly stopped by to check on him, flicking the lights on and off and trying to get his attention.

According to the report, people in custody ultimately alerted staff after hearing Furse make “weird noises” in the early morning hours of Dec. 7. 

By the time officers responded at 2 a.m., he was unresponsive.

“Responders found Mr. Furse in bed, water and vomit on the bed, the floor, and his mouth,” the board report said. “He showed no signs of breathing, had no pulse, his pupils were fixed and dilated, and he was not responding to any stimuli.” 

A correction officer administered Narcan five minutes later, before medical staff arrived, but he had no pulse. He was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Queens.

DOC later sent a Special Search Team and K-9 unit to search the housing area. They found 66 pills inside of a cup located on the desk in Furse’s cell. 

Furse’s death was the only case in the report that resulted in discipline for staff. 

According to the Board, the so-called “B” post officer assigned to his housing area was suspended for 30 days for a string of failures that included neglecting to check for signs of life, leaving the post, and failing to patrol the unit as required. 

Investigators also found the officer made false logbook entries and engaged in conduct that brought discredit to the department.

No other staff were disciplined in connection with the three deaths outlined in Friday’s report.

The report recommended the Correction Department retrain staff in several basic tasks, “including but not limited to, correction officers’ responsibility to remain on post and remain vigilant.” A department spokesman said, “We will review the recommendations.”

The Correctional Health Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Two weeks ago, a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot with a handgun on a Queens playground during a water gun fight. This Monday, another 15-year-old boy was shot multiple times on the A train. 

On Thursday, groups that work to curb teen gun violence gathered at a forum in Brooklyn to highlight the programs that they say give kids the help they need but are woefully underfunded. 

“What they do is develop trusting relationships that express to young people that you are loved, you are not thrown away by us–like, that’s not happening,” said Stanley Richards, the new city Correction Commissioner who is the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the department.

“And so there needs to be an investment in that relationship, because that’s the relationship that will disrupt and interrupt and break down the cycle of incarceration.”

While overall shootings are down in New York City in recent years, shootings involving young people have remained elevated since spiking as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the city in 2020, NYPD data shows. 

On average, roughly 127 minors have been shot each year over the past five years, and 111 minors have been identified each year as shooters, according to police data.

There have been 29 people under 18 shot so far this year through mid-April, in a city of 8.5 million. But in communities where gun violence is concentrated, the fear and grief can be pervasive. 

“Young people who carry guns are afraid of being killed,” said Julia Davis, who heads the service provider and advocacy group Youth Represent. “They experience life as an urban siege.”

There is no great mystery about why shootings persist on the city’s historically violent corners, especially among teenagers.

 Poverty and isolation send young people into the street, where impulsive teenage decision-making plays out amid mortal fear and the pressure to conform, advocates said. Social media serves as a new crucible in which threats beget threats.

“They want to be a part of something,” said Jamaal Clarke, 30, who works as a peer facilitator with Haywood Resilience Project in the Bronx. 

“You feel less valuable, you yearn for social acceptance and social equity, and that causes people to go shoot people.”

‘Simply Not Enough’

During the forum, the conversation centered on hundreds of millions of public dollars set aside for such youth. 

In 2017, elected officials passed the Raise the Age law to stop treating most 16 and 17 year olds facing criminal charges as adults. 

That reform was designed to be paired with significant resources to address the root causes that often lead young people into the adult criminal justice system. Lawmakers allocated $300 million in 2018 and 2019 and $250 million annually after that. 

But only a fraction of that funding has been used statewide, as Politico previously reported. As of last year, localities have spent just $569 million of the $1.55 billion set aside, state budget records show. 

And the law was written so that not a penny of its funds reach New York City, despite the fact that in 2024, the most recent year for which state data is available, there were more juvenile murder arrests in the five boroughs than in the rest of the state combined.

“The current programs as they exist are simply not enough,” said Renita Francois, the Mamdani administration’s Deputy Mayor for Community Safety. 

Advocates are calling for a change to the state law that would direct $50 million of the annual $250 million straight to community-based organizations that provide support services to young people for mentorship, family therapy, and programs that get kids back in school and into jobs, among others. 

That change would allow some of the funding — which has been limited to localities that agreed to a 2% cap on their property taxes at the insistence of then-Governor Andrew Cuomo — to reach the city.

Former Department of Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi said the critical funding had been lost to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s political fight with then-Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“When Raise the Age was enacted and all this stuff was negotiated, Cuomo and de  Blasio were really at each others’ throats,” Schiraldi said. “And New York City got no money to support Raise the Age, got no access to the $250 million allocated.” 

At the forum, Shawnda Chapman of Women Building Up questioned why existing funding has yet to reach frontline groups.

Even the proposed $50 million for the Youth Justice Innovation Fund is “probably not enough,” she said.

“What does it mean that the money exists but hasn’t reached the communities doing this work?”

Davis of Youth Represent said a public records request filed three years ago revealed how little of the money set aside for Raise the Age implementation had actually reached communities.

“What it showed us is that the politics around serving young people are a powerful barrier to the change we need,” Davis said. “When advocates and young people aren’t at the center of those decisions, the money goes right back to the usual suspects.”

She said most counties spent little on prevention, early intervention or alternatives to incarceration, and instead directed funds toward policing, detention and probation.

State lawmakers are currently hashing out proposals to send some of the funding for alternative to incarceration programs tied to the Raise the Age legislation, City & State reported in February. 

‘High Risk and Hard to Reach’

Thursday’s forum, entitled “High Risk and Hard to Reach: Solutions for Young People Often Over-Prosecuted, Underserved, or Ignored,” was held at the headquarters of Women Building Up in Boerum Hill. More than 100 people attended, including nonprofit leaders, formerly incarcerated people, and top city officials. 

The forum focused on the idea of directing intense resources and attention on a concentrated group of young people deemed most likely to be involved in gun violence, either as victims or perpetrators. 

Schiraldi described a program he led in Maryland that targeted a group of youths deemed at extremely high risk of shooting or getting shot and surrounded them with an engaged life coach who had the resources to help them pay for school, get housing and otherwise stabilize their lives. 

“When someone’s friend got shot, that’s the day they become high risk,” he said. “And that day we need to be there for them.” 

But advocates also noted the needs of girls, who are less likely to be shooters. The gun violence is a smoke signal, in a way, pointing to a much larger class of kids trying to meet basic needs without much support. 

“These young people are not even able to be young,” said Naquasia Jones, the founder and CEO of PureLegacee, a group that aims to empower girls and young women impacted by incarceration, foster care, and systemic trauma. “They got adult problems.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani vetoed a controversial bill approved by the City Council last month instructing the police department to establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational institutions.

A related bill calling for security perimeters around houses of worship passed by a veto-proof majority.

In a statement Friday, the mayor said he had reviewed both bills but found the one for education institutions “meaningfully different.” 

“The problem is how widely this bill defines an educational institution and the constitutional concerns it raises regarding New Yorkers’ fundamental right to protest,” he said in the statement. “As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions.”

Mamdani’s statement echoed the concerns of labor groups and other allies who said many buildings could technically be considered an educational facility, further limiting protests.

Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for both bills, saying they were needed to combat rising antisemitism. She and her allies have said the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability in the NYPD’s protest protocols, and won’t infringe on free speech rights.

In a statement Friday, Menin said the purpose of the bill was safety.

“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” she said. “This bill simply requires the NYPD to clearly outline how it will ensure safe access when there are threats of obstruction or physical injury, while fully protecting First Amendment rights.”

The veto is the latest confrontation between Mamdani and the Council, with the most recent being over the city’s contentious budget negotiations. 

The Council can attempt to override Mamdani’s veto in a new vote, or let it stand.

United Auto Workers Region 9A, which fiercely opposed the bill, sent a message to its members Friday morning taking credit for the veto and said it would begin whipping Council members to make sure any re-vote fails. The union represents thousands of educators and researchers at Columbia University and New York University.

Menin, the memo read, “is potentially going to attempt to override the veto by flipping multiple council votes.”

“We will begin a whipping strategy with Council members in the next week but for now, the most important thing is an overwhelming display of public support for this veto.”

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin.

Despite the overwhelming Council majority that supported the bill affecting places of worship, Mamdani, speaking in a social media video, portrayed his decision not to veto it as a matter of principle, adding that he nevertheless disagreed with “its framing of all protests as a security concern.”

In recent weeks, labor and community groups closely aligned with Mamdani have urged him to veto the bill, known as Intro 175, saying that it threatens free speech and worker rights. Legal groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union also strongly opposed the measure. 

Menin’s bills came as an answer to the widely-criticized police response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

A consortium of prominent Jewish organizations including the UJA-Federation of New York rebuked Mamdani on Friday, calling the planned veto “a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.”

On April 17, a representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met with leaders of more than a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council who pushed for a veto.

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City Hall officials met last week with union and labor leaders who are pushing Mayor Zohran Mamdani to veto a controversial City Council bill that would establish anti-protest “buffer zones” around schools and educational facilities.

A representative of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su met via video call with leaders of more than a half a dozen unions and the New York City Central Labor Council, according to multiple sources who were at the meeting or briefed on the talks. 

Su’s representative gave no indication whether Mamdani would issue a veto, according to multiple sources. Last month the Council approved two bills creating protest “buffer zones,” one affecting houses of worship and the other targeting schools and “educational facilities.” 

“Mayor Mamdani is aware of the concerns raised regarding the potential for 175-B to limit the constitutional and labor rights of New Yorkers,” City Hall press secretary Joe Calvello said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the bill’s formal designation. “The Mayor will weigh these concerns seriously as he makes a final decision on this legislation.” 

The meeting came amid a growing pressure campaign from labor and other allies of Mamdani to veto the bill. Last week, several labor and community groups sent a letter urging him to veto the bill, describing it as a “radical overreach” that limits free speech and endangers New Yorkers.

Mamdani Faces Saturday Deadline

The two so-called “buffer zone” bills passed March 26 with the goal of targeting hate crimes across the city, with one bill related to religious sites and the other for schools and education facilities. The bills require the police department to create security perimeters during protests – instructing the NYPD to establish how far away the buffer zones would place demonstrators. 

Two unions that represent large numbers of college and university teaching staff — United Auto Workers Region 9A and Professional Staff Congress/CUNY — are leading the opposition to the bills, claiming that they would restrict their rights to strike or protest in their workplace.

The religious sites bill passed 44 to 5, a veto-proof majority, but the schools buffer-zone bill passed by a 30 to 19 margin — which the mayor could more likely successfully veto. 

Under the city charter, Mamdani has until Saturday to veto the bill or officially sign it into law. If he does neither, it automatically becomes law. 

A spokesperson, Dora Pekec, said Wednesday there was no update to what the mayor would do. 

Council Speaker Julie Menin, a moderate Democrat, pushed for the legislation as part of her efforts to combat antisemitism. She and her allies have maintained that the so-called “buffer zone” proposals are meant to provide greater accountability to the police department’s protest protocols, not to infringe on free speech rights.

Her proposals came as a response to the police’s widely-criticized response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented space to an organization that helps Jews move to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Bank, as well as the 2024 pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations say the bills are Constitutionally dubious.

Menin, speaking at the 92Y in Manhattan on Wednesday evening at an event on “the future of being Jewish in New York,” defended the bills and warned of a potential mayoral veto, City & State reported.

“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more divisiveness when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.

Labor and community group leaders told THE CITY they were lobbying Council members who voted for the schools bill to change sides in a future vote to override a veto, sending nearly 11,000 emails to the mayor and Council members.

Representatives from multiple unions who met with Su’s team on April 17 expressed a variety of concerns about the bill, including the vagueness around what could be considered an “educational facility,” sources told THE CITY.

THE CITY reached out to several unions who attended the virtual meeting with the deputy mayor’s team. None agreed to comment on the meeting, citing the confidential nature of the conversations. The New York City Central Labor Council also declined to comment.

But some, in addition to the UAW and PSC-CUNY, have gone public with their opposition.

Representatives from healthcare unions, including the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU and 1199 SEIU, are among those calling on the mayor to veto the schools bill. They say many teaching hospitals where their members work could technically fall under the bill’s scope — meaning members would be barred from rallying outside in the case of a strike or other union action.

Teamsters Local 804, which represents UPS and Amazon truck drivers, has also called on a veto.

However there is no consensus among labor. 

Kevin Elkins, political director of the carpenters’ union, told THE CITY that his union does not oppose the buffer-zone bills. He said the bills allow the Mamdani administration the ability to implement the buffer zones as it sees fit, and that the union trusts the mayor’s commitment to protect worker and free speech rights.

“I think the mayor has demonstrated his commitment to labor several times over at this point, so I have full confidence in his administration’s ability to do that justly,” Elkins said.

Jewish and Catholic Leaders Voice Support

Religious organizations who favor buffer zones around schools also send their own letters to Mamdani.

“Schools are not just buildings, they are spaces where children should feel safe, supported, and ready to learn,” the letter said. “When access to those spaces is compromised, the impact is immediate and serious.”

The letter was signed by Jewish school leaders as well as the superintendents of schools within the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers nearly 150 schools across the five boroughs. 

Disclosure: Irizarry Aponte is a PSC-CUNY member in her role as an adjunct instructor at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY.

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Labor and other allies of Mayor Zohran Mamdani are urging him to veto one of two City Council bills aimed at restricting protests around educational facilities, saying the “radical overreach” of the bill limits free speech and endangers New Yorkers.

The two “buffer zone” bills passed March 26 with the goal of targeting hate crimes across the city, with one bill related to religious sites and the other for schools and education facilities.

The religious site bill passed 44-to-5, a veto-proof majority, but the other passed by a 30-to-19 margin — which the mayor could veto. 

The buffer zone laws rose from demonstrations last year outside a pair of synagogues in Manhattan and Queens where some protesters chanted in support of Hamas. The synagogues were hosting an organization that helps American Jews emigrate to Israel and the Israel-occupied West Bank. Critics said Mamdani’s initial comments failed to condemn the pro-Hamas slogans.

The bill focused on “educational facilities” comes after college campuses across the city were rocked by protests against the Gaza war.

Nearly a dozen organizations sent Mamdani a letter on Friday imploring him to veto the bill creating security perimeters around schools and other “educational facilities,” with opponents saying the language is so broad that any location could be deemed one. 

“By defining ‘educational facility’ as any place where ‘educational programming takes place’ and not solely traditional educational institutions, 175-B functionally subjects any building in this city to the proposed law, including the more than 200 public libraries,” the letter said. 

It was signed by the steering committee of the People’s Majority, along with the union representing CUNY professors, United Auto Workers Region 9A, Desis Rising Up and Moving and other organizations.

“The broad reach of the legislation again means that the NYPD must create a plan for just about every building in this city,” the letter said.

Speaker Julie Menin said last month the bills will stop hate crimes. “The increase in hateful acts across the city is absolutely abhorrent, and we have to do something about it,” she said.

Mamdani can veto the bills within 30 days of their passage in the Council, giving him until April 25. He said Thursday he’s still weighing his options.

“I’ve heard from a number of New Yorkers about their concerns about aspects of this legislation,” Mamdani said. “And I will be making a decision on that shortly.”

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After years of delays and cost overruns, the city plans to finally open part of a quarter-billion dollar unit at Bellevue Hospital for seriously ill detainees on Rikers Island, THE CITY has learned. 

The Mamdani administration also plans to close the North Infirmary Command, the original Rikers Island hospital constructed in 1932, according to multiple sources briefed on the plan. The facility has been used to house high-profile detainees like disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. 

Some 314 detainees were in NIC as of March 10, the last publicly available count. An estimated 25 will be transferred to the new unit on Bellevue’s second floor. The others will be transferred to different locations on Rikers, according to jail insiders. 

The 104-bed Department of Correction unit has nearly doubled in cost and is years behind schedule, with its price tag climbing from $130 million to $241 million, according to Correctional Health Services, the NYC Health + Hospitals division that provides care to detainees.

That works out to just over $2 million per bed — including recreation space — spread across much of the historic hospital’s second floor.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to hold a press conference Tuesday morning at Bellevue announcing the long-awaited partial opening of the new unit. 

“It’s going to open in phases,” said a source familiar with the plan. The first phase is expected to be just around 25 beds, the source said.  

At least one veteran clinician working in the jail system said the shortage of space at Bellevue raises the risk that patients with significant medical needs will be housed in general population units on Rikers, where they are often more vulnerable to other detainees and poor medical care.

“Health care providers are scrambling to find beds,” the clinician told THE CITY.

Jeanette Merrill, a spokesperson for Correctional Health Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Bellevue already has a jail ward on the hospital’s 19th floor where some 60 detainees were housed last month. 

First unveiled in 2019 with a planned 2022 opening, the project fell years behind schedule and has now spanned three mayoral administrations. Construction records indicate the delays were driven in part by repeated requests from jail officials to modify the design to better protect correction officers.

Last year, former  Corrections Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie pointed to a separate obstacle, saying the project had yet to receive approval from the New York State Commission of Correction, the state’s jail oversight body.

The commission has refused to disclose what outstanding issues remain. 

Behind the scenes, city jail officials during the Adams administration also said they would need to hire at least 200 new officers to staff the specialized site, THE CITY reported last summer. 

The Mamdani administration came up with a solution: move staff from infirmary on Rikers Island to the Bellevue unit, jail insiders said.

City Hall officials have repeatedly tried to shutter some of the 10 jail facilities on Rikers Island ahead of the broader plan to close the complex. But those efforts have repeatedly stalled as the jail population has climbed since the pandemic.

There were 6,797 people in custody as of March 10, up from just under 4,000 in 2020, according to jail records.

In 2022, officials in the Adams administration said they would immediately close the Otis Bantum Correctional Facility, which housed 1,410 detainees last month.

Similarly, de Blasio administration officials announced plans in 2019 to shutter the Eric M. Taylor Center, where 1,397 people were being held last month, records show.

Officials in the Mamdani administration are expected to frame the infirmary’s closure as permanent, since the facility will be decommissioned with the state Commission of Correction, a move that would complicate any attempt to bring it back online.

In recent years, the infirmary was where jail officials “disappeared” detainees who repeatedly act out, according to advocates. 

“It was like a pseudo- solitary area,” a jail source said, noting that the facility had many empty spots where high-profile detainees could be “stashed” for months. 

Victor Pate, co-director of the HALT Solitary campaign and a former Rikers detainee, said he welcomed the opening of the Bellevue unit as “an important step” in getting medically vulnerable people out of “deplorable conditions,” while calling NIC “one of the most extreme sites of isolation” in the jail system. 

He added the city must still go further to end solitary confinement and close Rikers entirely.

NIC was the site of a major fire three years ago. 

A 2023 investigation by the New York City Board of Correction found widespread lapses in fire safety protocols during the blaze, which broke out on April 6, 2023, inside a restrictive housing unit. 

Board officials said the incident highlighted systemic failures in staffing, oversight and emergency response inside the aging facility. 

Bellevue is not the only Rikers-linked hospital project plagued by delays and rising costs, city records show.

More massive overruns

A plan to build 144 DOC-designated beds at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn has ballooned from $239 million to $381 million and counting, according to Correctional Health Services. The unit, initially slated to open in 2023, is now expected to be completed in 2028.

At North Central Bronx Hospital, a proposed 92-bed detention unit has seen its budget grow from $240 million to $288 million, CHS records show. That project, once scheduled for completion in 2024, is also now projected to open in 2028.

One local elected official was thrilled by the news of the Bellevue unit finally opening. 

“I had not heard this news. That’s freaking amazing!” Brooklyn City Council member Lincoln Restler, who has pushed to open the unit, told THE CITY. 

“It’s disgraceful there have been so many years of delays,” he said, “but I’m thankful the Mamdani administration is finally moving forward.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday named a new deputy mayor tasked with creating and then overseeing a new office of community safety.

He appointed Renita Francoise, a veteran of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, as his deputy mayor for community safety with the job of crafting the new office, which will be run by a commissioner the mayor appoints who will report to her.

The announcement is a slimmed down version of one of Mamdani’s signature campaign promises: the creation of a new $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety aimed at, amongst other things, ending disastrous police responses to 911 mental health calls.

The mayor did not set a timetable for the launch of what he called a “first step” toward the eventual creation of a new Department of Community Safety. Nor did he specify how much he will put in his budget for what he called a “groundbreaking” new approach as he signed an executive order placing five existing mayoral units dealing with mental health and criminal justice issues under Francoise’s supervision to better coordinate services.

The new office is within the Office of the Mayor, which is also footing the bill for Francois’ $290,000 salary. 

“At the core of both the campaign commitment and today’s announcement is a north star on delivering safety to each and every New Yorker and on finally treating the mental health crisis with the seriousness and specialization that it deserves,” Mamdani proclaimed.

Standing next to the mayor in front of dozens of advocates who’ve been pushing for reform for years, Francoise made clear that the move from an office to a department will take time, while promising a careful analysis of existing programs and gaps in coverage.

“That’s not going to happen tomorrow if you want it to be done responsibly,” she said.

Daniela Gilbert, director of the Vera Institute’s Redefining Public Safety initiative that pushes for criminal justice reforms, said it was a good idea to assign a top mayoral aide to look at what’s working and what’s not before creating a new agency.

“The idea of standing something up in a way that allows for executive leadership and authorization — it makes sense to have a deputy mayor leading the charge on that and that once the work is established, it would make it sense to codify it as a department,” she said.

‘A Small Step’

A key element of the new approach will be finding ways to reduce the number of police responses to mental health 911 calls, interactions that in the last decade have resulted in 24 people being fatally shot or tased by cops.

During his campaign, Mamdani vowed to expand a de Blasio-era program called B-HEARD that mobilizes non-police responses to 911 calls to all 78 precincts, increase its funding by 150% and remove it from the city’s Health & Hospitals Corp., placing it in his new community safety department.

The executive order he signed Thursday, however, reversed course on pulling it out of HHC. And on Thursday, while Mamdani promised more funding for B-HEARD, he did not provide a specific figure or repeat his promise to fully expand it across the city.

He also did not address a persistent problem with the B-HEARD model: from its inception in 2016, it has only responded to a relatively small number of the hundreds of thousands of 911 mental health calls NYPD dispatchers field annually. Instead, the vast majority of these calls — between 75% and 80% — are routed to police. 

A spokesperson, Sam Raskin, told THE CITY after the mayor’s announcement that the new deputy mayor will be looking at how 911 dispatchers handle these types of calls.

“The Mamdani administration has started exploring ways to redesign the 911 system to increase the number of calls going to B-HEARD, and this effort is one of the many initiatives the Deputy Mayor for Community Safety and Office of Community Safety will oversee. We need to expand their capacity and that’s something we’re committed to exploring.”

In his own remarks, however, the mayor had noted that even when  calls are routed to B-HEARD teams, the program doesn’t always respond because there aren’t enough teams on duty.

“What we’re seeing right now is that it’s an idea within city government that has constantly been told ‘no’ when it comes to support — whether it be fiscal support or operational support,” he said.

Thursday’s announcement was a good first step, said Ruth Lowenkron, director of the Disability Rights Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and a member of the steering committee for the  advocacy group Correct Crisis Intervention Today, which has long lobbied for a dramatic reduction in police responses to mental health calls.

“It’s a small step but it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” she said.

Brian Stettin, who served as a senior advisor to Mayor Eric Adams on mental health issues, said the plan Mamdani announced Thursday abandoned or deferred much of what he’d promised during the campaign about his Department of Community Safety.

“There’s nothing new in anything they announced today at all. It’s just a reshuffling,” said Stettin, who noted it did not address the fact that year after year, most mental health calls wound up with a police response because of the potential for danger.

Stettin advocates instead for a co-response, pairing police with mental health clinicians.

“That is the single greatest need — to teach police and clinicians to work together and think less about not sending calls to the NYPD. There’s nothing about this in this plan today.”

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For detainees on Rikers Island spiraling into a psychiatric crisis, a trip from the troubled jail complex to one of the city’s public hospitals can serve as a medical lifeline. 

But that relief is often short-lived.

In around half the cases, detainees are returned to Rikers within hours after what critics describe as cursory hospital checks, landing them back in the same environment that jail clinicians initially deemed unsafe for their mental health.

This cycle surfaced publicly during a Board of Correction oversight hearing last month. 

“While we do refer many patients to the hospital when we feel that it’s clinically appropriate, it’s ultimately the decision of clinical staff working at these hospitals as to whether or not patients are admitted,” testified Joseph Otonichar, who oversees mental health care for detainees on Rikers. 

“So a very large number of our patients who we believe may meet hospital criteria are ultimately not admitted to the hospital,” he added. 

After the hearing, a veteran jail supervisor was more blunt. 

“I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been doing this for many years, and I can see when a person is decompensated,” said the jail official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And some of these guys get sent right back. And it’s like, ‘How’s that possible?’”

Detainees can be forced to take medication only while at the hospital. Back at Rikers, even those in the midst of a serious mental health breakdown have the right to decline.

The hospital back-and-forth is particularly notable because medical care at both Rikers and the hospitals is overseen by the same public system, NYC Health + Hospitals. 

The revolving door underscores one of the persistent dysfunctions inside the scandal-scarred jail system, even as it enters a new chapter under recently installed remediation manager Nicholas Deml and Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards. Both began their tenures earlier this month with promises of reform. 

Steve Martin, a court-appointed monitor overseeing the department for nearly a decade, has never made the hospital rapid returns an issue. 

After the hearing, city health officials pushed back on the notion that referrals are routinely dismissed.

According to the city’s Correctional Health Services — the division of NYC Health + Hospitals that provides care in the jails — clinicians consider a broad range of factors when deciding to send someone experiencing a mental health crisis to a hospital. That includes if a detainee presents an imminent danger to themselves or others or cannot meet basic needs because of psychiatric symptoms.

Detainees are typically referred to Bellevue or Elmhurst hospitals for evaluation for possible inpatient psychiatric admission. Hospital clinicians then conduct their own independent assessments to determine whether hospitalization is warranted.

Data provided by the city shows that about half of referrals result in admission.

At Bellevue, there were 650 mental health related referrals in 2024, with 364 admissions, a 56% admission rate. In 2025, admissions ticked up slightly to 410 out of 713 referrals, or 57.5%.

Elmhurst saw lower numbers and a sharper drop: 55 admissions out of 108 referrals in 2024, about 51%. The number fell to 40 admissions out of 102 referrals in 2025 — just under 40%.

By contrast, the national average of people admitted from an emergency room into the hospital for all conditions including mental health crises hovers around 20%, according to studies. 

At Rikers, medical staff sometimes send the detainees right back to the hospitals if they can’t be safely managed behind bars, Otonichar testified before the Board of Correction. 

“These are very challenging situations to navigate,” he added. 

Board Vice Chair Helen Skipper, who was released from Rikers in 2017, questioned why medical staff on Rikers wasn’t better at communicating with doctors in the hospital. 

They are all employed by the city’s public Health and Hospitals Corp., she noted. 

“Does CHS not work with these hospitals and their clinical team? Do you not talk about how you refer patients back and forth and come to a happy medium?” she asked. 

“I understand, you guys are clinicians, how does the hospital deny?”

Otonichar called it a “very good question” but said the issue is complicated. 

“I wish I had a simple answer,” he said, adding that Correctional Health Services works closely with hospital leadership to address challenging cases.

Patsy Yang, Senior Vice President Correctional Health Services at NYC Health + Hospitals, noted that during the early days of the de Blasio administration, the city took over medical care for people locked up on Rikers. 

The move came after years of poor treatment and high-profile deaths due poor medical care under Corizon, a private for-profit provider. It was done in part to improve communication between medical staff at Rikers and in city hospitals, she said. 

Still, Rikers clinicians sometimes believe that detainees may be better off getting admitted to the hospital because sending them back to jail poses a health risk that others who have a traditional home setting don’t have, Yang said. 

“There may be patients who do not meet the traditional community criteria for inpatient hospital admission but in our case, may be best cared for in a hospital setting rather than in jail, and those are the conversations that occur, case by case,” she testified before the board. 

In response, BOC Board Chair Dwayne Sampson asked for a summary of recent hospital referral cases “so that we have a better understanding of the hospitalizations and the issues going on with it.” 

Board Member Dr. Lauren Stossel, who previously worked at Rikers as a supervising psychiatrist, said she believed there’s been “enormous progress in recent years” for patients CHS believes should be admitted but are being blocked by ER staff. 

Yang told the board that space at Bellevue and Elmhurst wasn’t an issue. 

But in an interview, Dr. Luis Marcos, who headed the public hospital system during the Giuliani administration, said space is always the prevailing factor. 

“The question is: do we have a bed or don’t we have a bed? That tends to be the issue at Bellevue,” Dr. Marcos told THE CITY. 

In 2014, two senior doctors at Rikers told front-line clinicians that Bellevue Hospital had no available space and instructed them to keep patients in jail unless the situation was dire.

Last week, the senior jail official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said available space does exist both at city hospitals and inside specialized mental health units on Rikers. 

In Bellevue Hospital, one psychiatric ward had room for 29 patients but held about 15 people on Friday morning, while another unit with space for 39 had roughly 23 detainees, the official said.

The jail system’s specialized mental health housing on Rikers also has empty beds, the official added. As of a recent morning census, the so-called PACE units — designed for detainees with serious mental illness — had about 290 people in a system built to hold 334, leaving roughly 40 vacancies. 

A spokesperson for Correctional Health Services said the PACE units are designed to operate below full capacity to maintain a therapeutic environment. Filling every bed, the spokesperson said, would undermine the units’ ability to function as intended.

Still, some detainees on Rikers are dealing with mental health issues so serious that they cover themselves with feces. 

“There are definitely people on Rikers right now who could benefit from being in the hospital,” the official said. “But the determination about who gets admitted or moved to those units is made by mental health staff.”

Jeanette Merrill, a spokesperson for CHS, declined to detail how many hospital beds for detainees are currently available. Stephanie Buhle, a representative for HHC, did not respond to THE CITY’s request to speak with ER staff at Elmhurst or Bellevue. 

Buhle said people referred from jail undergo comprehensive psychiatric assessments. In some cases, the acute distress that prompted the referral may resolve by the time the person is evaluated in the emergency department or may not meet the legal criteria for inpatient hospitalization.

She also noted that Bellevue Hospital maintains a 55-bed psychiatric unit for people coming from the jail system, which averaged about 76% occupancy in 2025.

The conflict between Rikers medical staff and ER doctors has existed for decades, according to multiple former jail medical staff. The hospitals have long believed Rikers detainees with serious mental health needs are being “dumped” on them, said one doctor who asked to remain anonymous. 

The hospital ping-pong isn’t unique to New York City, said Dr. Marc Stern, a former regional director for the state prison system in the early 2000s, who also headed medical services for the Washington prison system. 

“All around the country, there’s very often a disconnect between the ER and the correctional facility,” he told THE CITY. “The person in the ER just doesn’t understand what the capabilities are, and they’re so varied from jail to jail and prison to prison.”

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