New York City Housing Authority
Sad news this week in Brooklyn where a five year old boy fell ten stories to his death through an elevator shaft in South Williamsburg. Residents of this particular building have made many complaints to the New York City Housing Authority regarding the elevator bank which was due for inspections in April of this year, but upon investigation seems to have not been inspected since October 2007. City law states that elevators are to be inspected once every six months, but the investigation into the accident clearly shows that this particular elevator hadn’t been inspected in over nine months.
Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said it was too early to say which city agencies, if any, would be investigated. He said the first step would be to obtain safety and elevator inspections records to determine who was responsible. “We have officially begun an investigation through our rackets division to determine if there is any criminality involved or laws were broken,” he said.
A housing authority spokesman, Howard Marder, said on Wednesday that the district attorney’s office had served subpoenas on the authority. He also said the authority’s chairman, Tino Hernandez, asked the city’s inspector general to participate in a joint investigation by the authority, the Police Department and the Department of Buildings to determine the cause of the accident.
The death of Jacob Neuman brings to light an issue that many believe should’ve been addressed earlier according to some. Are federal cutbacks to blame for such a horrible tragedy?
The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, said in a statement on Wednesday that elevator problems were among the major complaints that he received from housing authority residents in Manhattan. “Yesterday’s tragedy should be a wake-up call for the New York City Housing Authority,” he said.
Although the elevators in Jacob’s building were due to be modernized in 2004, the authority said it deferred the work twice because of federal cutbacks. Authority officials said the 17 unsatisfactory ratings the elevators received in the last 21 inspections were mostly for minor problems like broken light bulbs, but officials have failed to provide detailed inspection records to reporters. Officials had said through most of Tuesday and Wednesday that they were unable to find them. But late Wednesday, Mr. Marder said the subpoenas prohibited them from turning them over.
