Gothamist, NY - On the evening of October 1st, as the temperature dipped into the 50s and a steady rain began to fall, Floyd Parks and a few other homeless men and women sought shelter under the overhang at Choir Academy, a public school in East Harlem. The rain was still falling at 5:00 a.m., when the group was rousted by police and Parks Department employees in white hazmat suits. The authorities told them they were no longer welcome underneath the overhang, and began to toss their possessions into a waiting sanitation truck.
"They said 'Get up we're taking your carts,'" 61-year-old Parks wrote in his Civil Complaint Review Board report filed later that morning... "I grabbed my cart and was trying to get my stuff out, and the [officer]... just took my stuff and threw it in the [truck], and just crushed it up. And I said, 'Yo, I got personal property.' They said, 'Too bad.'"
Among the items the NYPD and Parks Department took from Parks, he says, were a few pairs of pants, some shirts, and medication he takes for high blood pressure, bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They also took his handwritten list of important phone numbers. "Numbers for organizations that can assist me with my homelessness and find me temporary shelter," Parks explained.
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