Bellevue Men’s Shelter Posed a Threat to the City Well Before Ramon Rivera’s Rampage
The ugly story of deranged stabber Ramon Rivera has somehow gotten even uglier.
Residents — who include recent Rikers releasees — have threatened and even robbed people working in the area, per the letter.
A bombshell letter reveals the extent to which the Bellevue Men’s Shelter, where Rivera was living after his shameful early release from prison, has long been a hive of menace and disorder.
The letter comes from Joel Marcus, a businessman behind the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which is located right next to Bellevue.
One of Rivera’s victims was killed steps away from the building.
Alexandria is the city’s first and only commercial life sciences campus.
When it was built in 2006, the letter argues, the city made noises about moving the troubled shelter (which is known for being dangerous).
New York never did. Quite the opposite.
Per the letter, the Department of City Planning even had the chutzpah to try and go after Alexandria for daring to partly close one of its front gates against the endless flood of vagrants through the building plaza.
These creeps reportedly threaten passersby, try to use the sidewalk as a dormitory, drag their belongings around with them, and brandish weapons.
Even from inside the shelter, the residents are a menace.
Their habit of throwing things through their windows toward the Alexandria campus got so bad, the letter states, that Alexandria had to cough up for window protection to be installed on the shelter’s facade.
Here’s an idea: How about not putting places like this smack in the middle of Gotham’s busy residential and commercial areas? How about a new shelter on Rikers Island? Or maybe one outside the city entirely?
As things stand now, the city is helping the forces of disorder while punishing the law-abiding for trying to defend themselves.
Hmmmmmm. Sounds very familiar: Just ask Daniel Penny or Jose Alba.
Ramon Rivera’s murderous rampage is the inevitable and poisonous fruit of the policy thinking behind this, in which lowlifes and dangerous insane people are first-class citizens and everyone else comes second.
Absent near-total political change in Gotham and Albany, it’s only a matter of time until the next Rivera emerges for a rampage.