A mom on Park Slope Parents was kind enough to let me reprint her post about a strange incident she witnessed in the 15th Street station of the F-train. She thinks that security has gotten very lax at the 15th and 9th Street stations and asks: How can we get better security in our train stations? What else can we do here? I can’t accept this being part of our beloved neighborhood.
Yesterday afternoon around 3:00 I took my little guy and his baby sister to the F train on
15th street for a trip to the new ice cream parlor in cobble hill. As we entered the turnstile, I
looked up towards one of the staircases, and saw a man sitting on the stairs receiving oral
sex from a woman whom I recognized from the local women’s shelter. I was so shocked that
I just stopped in my tracks, and the man actually made eye contact with me and smiled. Ugh.
I can’t quite find the words to describe how I felt (not very hungry for ice cream, anyway…).
I rushed down the stairs with my kids as quickly as I could and called the police. To make
matters worse, I have often seen this same guy around the neighborhood, drunk and passed
out or stumbling about. In fact, he got on the bus next to us on the way home from the ice
cream trip (there went dinner). Thankfully he was too drunk again to recognize me.
I feel like the security presence in the F train, both the stops at 9th street and 15th streets,
keeps getting worse and worse. I kind of expect that seedy stuff happens in the stations late
at night, but this was in broad daylight, and we could easily have walked down that same
staircase!
That’s really hideous. If you know she’s from the woman’s shelter, you should notify them. I’ve been told that the Park Slope shelter takes these kinds of “offenses” seriously, as they are under consistent pressure from the neighborhood to keep things clean. Recently, we had to deal with homeless guys congregating on 16th Street and PPW with women from the shelter, and that got pretty grim. They (not clear who) left the sidewalk and the 15th Street station (16th Street entrance) a real mess with excrement on a daily basis. Finally, when the women’s shelter was informed, the women stopped hanging out, and the guys stopped congregating. Not sure where they all went, but 16th Street has been visibly cleaner since the Park Slope Women’s Shelter was notified. I have to say, the situation got pretty scary as no one I spoke to from the city or our local precinct wanted to deal with the human excrement issue. Too sick for them, I guess. Seems like the women’s shelter considered the situation serious, wanted nothing to do with the mess, and dealt with their end immediately. So far, the guys have not been back either.
I hope that your contact reported this to the police, especially considering she can confidently identify the offenders.