Flood Lights on Avenue C These Days Akin to Supermax Prison, Locals Argue
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Alphabet City public housing along the FDR is lined with NYPD mobile flood lights. Just walk on by or travel southbound on the Drive and you’ll easily see the daylight-at-night conditions. It’s easily visible from blocks around. But what of the folks living in and around this area?
One fed-up neighbor wrote to us about how the Housing Bureau HQ at Police Service Area 4 (130 Avenue C) also turned on fifteen of its own 3,000-watt bulbs. Strange, given that they’d reportedly been dark for almost two decades.
Apparently Community Board 3 had some less than constructive feedback for those affected. Like installing blackout shades (i.e. deal with it).
More context from the bleary-eyed neighbor:
Fifteen 3,000 watt rooftop perimeter floodlights at the PSA 4 housing police building have now been on 24/7 for the past month. (Yes they are on during the day as well). for 18 years they had seldom been used but now this is the new normal for Ave C and 8th St. No other precinct has the good fortune to be lit up like a supermax prison yard.
The housing police must have figured that there is no such thing as too much of a good thing: just down the street at the Jacob Riis NYCHA housing, high intensity mobile flood lights were installed this past summer and have been on every night since then.
CB3 recommends that the unhappy residents at Ave C and 8th St, install ‘black out shades’ and get used to living in a Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
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