News

Convicted ‘sexually violent’ sex offenders put up in Upper West Side homeless shelters, blocks from kids

August 8, 2020 | | Print Article

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE.

Thanks to the policies of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his far-left administration, the Upper West Side neighborhood of NYC is now a veritable ‘s***hole’ equivalent in many regards to the dilapidated streets of Venezuela.

The problems all stem from de Blasio’s widely panned idea to combat the spread of the coronavirus by housing homeless residents in hotels throughout the city.

(*Language warning)

“Approximately 13,000 homeless adults are living in rooms in dozens of hotels across the city, taken to those locations in an effort to keep shelters safe and socially distanced amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” WNBC reported this week.

Some of these hotels lie in the Upper West Side, ergo why it’s not shocking to learn that, according to actual UWS residents, their local streets have become a hotbed for drug activity, alcohol consumption and public urination.

“It’s the drugs. We see people inebriated, there are registered sex offenders. Sometimes I go running in the morning and I’ll see, frankly, needles on the ground,” Upper West Side resident Alison Morpurgo, a mother of three teenagers,” said to WNBC.

Watch:

Among the vagrants now crowding the hotels and streets of Upper West Side NYC are convicted sex offenders, according to an investigation by local station WABC. And to make matters worse, de Blasio has no intention to relocate most of them.

“A handful of convicted ‘sexually violent’ level 2 sex offenders who recently moved into an Upper West Side hotel that is now set up as a homeless shelter will likely stay there, over the objections of neighbors,” the station reported.

The offenders were originally tracked down and outed by Mike Mishkin, the owner of ILoveTheUpperWestSide.com.

“It’s dangerous, it’s horrifying, and it’s a very real threat. If you are a registered sex offender or if you are bringing drugs into the neighborhood with children, that’s what people have a problem with,” local resident Jenna McIntyre Cohan, also a mother of three children, all of them under the age of 10, said to the station.

She added that her kids’ school is only a block away from one of the hotels.

Listen:

During press conferences this week, de Blasio basically said tough luck, telling reporters that he intends to keep most of the homeless sex offenders housed in the communities of mothers like Morpurgo and Cohan until a vaccine is developed.

“Let’s say it’s six months-ish. While we’re dealing with this crisis, until people are vaccinated. Then once we get through that we’re going to of course move out of those hotels and go back to the shelter system,” he said.

He did however promise a tiny concession.

“Originally, the sex offenders living at the hotel also included the most dangerous level 3 offenders, but on Thursday Mayor Bill de Blasio told Eyewitness News the city just took action to remove level 3 offenders from the shelter, a group which is legally barred from living within 1,000 feet of a school,” WABC confirmed.

But as of Saturday morning, data from New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services showed that 18 sex offenders were still living in the community, including Devron Vernal, a 26-year-old black man who raped a 4-year-old child in 2014:

(Source: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services)

In a statement to the New York Post, a city rep claimed Friday that the listings aren’t accurate and that the “names you reference are not at that location.”

Either way, local residents want ALL the offenders removed, pronto.

“Look, we’re a progressive-minded community, and we tend to be sympathetic to the homeless. But with sex offenders, draw the line,” one unnamed mother said to the Post.

“It should never have happened. They shouldn’t be there,” Cohan likewise said to WABC.

In response to the debacle, locals have started a petition calling for the homeless be to relocated.

“The safety and well-being of Upper West Side residents is in jeopardy with the conversion of neighborhood hotels into temporary shelters without notice to residents (The Hotel Belleclaire, The Belnord Hotel and The Lucerne). The shelter inhabitants (approx 600 in the aggregate among the 3 hotels) are not being adequately vetted before being placed in our residential community,” it reads.

“This has resulted in 15 Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders, some of which are violent sex offenders, being housed at the Belleclaire (14) and Belnord (1). … In addition, the men who have been relocated to the Lucerne are on methadone and one of the homeless residents … confirmed that many of these men are active drug users.”

It adds that the “situation is making life uncomfortable for residents and putting families, children and the elderly in harm’s way.”

The residents have also set up a private Facebook group, “Upper West Siders for Safer Streets,” where they’ve been sharing “pictures of men urinating, masturbating and laying sprawled out on sidewalks near the hotels,” according to the Daily Mail.

Despite these locals mainly being parents with children, they’ve come under fire from far-left extremists who think their complaints reek of racism.

Look:

Apparently, it’s “classist and racist” to complain about sex offenders living near your children.

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

$10
$15
$25
$50
Other
$
Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

BPR INSIDER COMMENTS

Scroll down for non-member comments or join our insider conversations by becoming a member. We'd love to have you!

Latest Articles