Boerum Hill residents are frustrated that the city won’t help them install two security cameras on their crime-ridden block — even though a camera a block away helped solve a murder last year.
Warren Street homeowners bought two $500 security cameras with a grant from the Hoyt Street and Boerum Hill associations this year order to hang them on a post near Nevins Street, but the NYPD and ConEdison refused to help. And the Department of Transporation, which owns the pole, has no record of their request.
“We’ve been waiting for six months,” said Warren Street resident Rich Rollison. “We could climb up in the middle of the night and put them up ourselves.”
Warren Street between Bond and Nevins streets is one of Boerum Hill’s most-expensive blocks, but it is also bookended by two housing projects.
Over the past two years, the area has experienced scores of petty crimes, including a car theft on Sept. 17, a larceny on Sept. 16, and a rash of burglaries on Aug. 4.
Neighbors also complained last week that teenagers have been climbing on top of parked cars and breaking their windows during the summer.
And a violent gunman shot and killed a 16-year-old girl on Warren Street in front of a Methodist Church near the corner of Bond Street last May — one of Boerum Hill’s two homicides in 2010.
A security camera affixed to a pole by the 84th Precinct five years ago across the street from the crime scene recorded the incident and helped police find the suspect a mere two days later.
Rollison and his wife, Anne Lytle, appealed to the NYPD in July to put up the cameras, but NYPD Deputy Chief Raymond Spinella wrote back that it wasn’t in police purview. He said he forwarded the matter to ConEd — which wrote back a week later to say that the energy giant could not help because the pole belongs to the city.
So Rollison called and wrote to the Department of Transportation, but has not still not heard back from the agency. A Transportation spokesman did not reply to an e-mail requesting comment, but a city source said that the department claims it did not receive Rollison’s request.
Rollison and his neighbors are getting frustrated.
Last Tuesday, a crew of car thief stole two rims from a Nissan parked directly under the lamp post where residents want the camera to be put up.
“If the cameras were up, maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” said Rollison.
Reach reporter Aaron Short at ashort@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2547.
