The shuttered school in Arrochar that was transformed into a shelter is a 67-year-old structure that was never intended to be an around-the-clock residence, and bathroom, for up to 300 adults.
Its ejector pumps are incapable of moving so much raw sewage into the city’s sewers, so a septic-treatment company must come several times a day to pump the raw sewage that collects in a concrete pit and truck it away.
During the half-hour pumping operations, the odor of poop wafts through the neighborhood.
“It absolutely smells,” said Scott Herkert, who lives adjacent to the shelter on Landis Avenue. “It’s disgusting and nobody should be subject to that.”
Months before the building’s repurposing, the city had deemed the location “not viable” for a shelter, said Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella.
“These residents now have to endure this on top of everything else,” he told The Post.
Scott Herkert says ongoing nuisances at the neighboring shelter include loud construction, smelly waste pumping and overflowing garbage.Gregory P. MangoEjector pumps that typically move waste into the city’s sewers are not up to par at the old building.Gregory P. Mango
St. John Villa Academy closed in 2018 and was bought by the city soon after, with plans to create a 1,000-plus seat public school.
“There were going to be significant capital investments required to make it ready to become a school again,” said Councilman David Carr.
The stench is the latest in a long list of disturbances Herkert and his neighbors have had to deal with since the migrants moved in.
On the first day back to school on Thursday, his sons were woken up at 5 a.m. by inexplicable drilling at the shelter that shook his home.
Herkert and Republican lawmakers, including Borough President Vito Fossella, tried to sue to block the Staten Island shelter.Paul MartinkaThe shelter, which could accommodate around 300 migrant adults, has gotten fierce pushback from nearby residents.Steve White for NY Post
A crime tale straight out of Charles Dickens is unfolding in the Big Apple — with adults “directing” children who appear no older than 10 to steal from unsuspecting businesses, witnesses told The Post.
The chubby-cheeked crooks have terrorized bars on the east and west side of Manhattan and Brooklyn for months, graduating from snatching money in unattended bags to stealing cash from open safes in at least two bars in the last few weeks, according to workers and owners.
In many cases, the kids at first try to solicit money to raise money for their “basketball team,” and then run amok.
In several incidents, adults were seen waiting for the kids outside the plundered businesses.
“The weird thing is it just feels like a modern day ‘Oliver Twist’ story,” said a manager at Lexington Publick, one of several of owner Jacob Rabinowitz’s watering holes hit over the past few months.
“When they go out, there’s either a man or a woman waiting for them and directing,” Rabinowitz said.
“These are little kids — this is child abuse!”
The child was caught on camera in the office at Washington Commons in Brooklyn.Courtesy of the Lexington Publick Bar
The kiddie crime wave began about eight months ago, when two children repeatedly wreaked havoc at Amsterdam Ale House on West 76th Street on the Upper West Side, at first taking whatever they could snatch from unattended bags.
Things swiftly got out of hand in February when the pair grabbed food off a table, pushed a customer and flashed a knife, said manager Whitney Kaufman.
“I watched a kid take a wing off someone’s plate and eat it,” Kaufman said.
“I went to escort him out and he cursed at me. The 8-year-old turned around and said to me, ‘I don’t have to do anything you say fat lady’ and punched me in the stomach. He ran into the back of the restaurant, stole a child’s toy. Then grabbed a knife off the table and wielded it like a weapon. They shoved a guest.”
On Aug. 13, a young thief was at it again at Upside on Amsterdam at West 89th Street on the Upper West side, stealing $600 cash from an open safe, cops said.
A child, who told staffers he was 8, allegedly took money from the safe at Upper West Side bar The Upside.Courtesy of the Lexington Publick Bar
Bar owner Stephanie Slone, 40, said she had previously seen the boy — who told staffers he was 8 — with an older child and they always asked for donations to their basketball team, offering few specifics about the alleged squad.
The night of the theft “it was just the youngest one,” she said. He waited until the bartender went to the bathroom to walk downstairs to the office, surveillance video provided to The Post shows.
“You can kind of see him looking in each area and doorway and then he notices the office, gets in the office,” she said.
Screen shots show a young boy leaving the Upside Bar carrying a folder as he is chased out by two employees.Courtesy of the Upside BarThe Upside bar was one of the bars where safes were robbed.Helayne SeidmanStephanie Slone, owner of The Upside, a bar on Amsterdam Ave. on the Upper West Side, was recently burglarized by a child who snuck downstairs to the basement and stole $600.Helayne Seidman
She said part of the lock on the safe wasn’t secured.
Stairway to the Upside’s basement office where the cash was stolen.Helayne Seidman
She said the bar is now discussing banning children who aren’t accompanied by an adult.
“The parents are obviously making them do that and have taught them what to do . . . it’s sad,” she said.
On Monday at 8:30 p.m. at Lexington Publick on Lexington Avenue and East 97th Street, one little thief got about $700 in petty cash from the safe, said the bar’s manager, who asked to remain anonymous.
“The kid goes over, he opens the bathroom door, looks behind him to make sure no one’s looking, and then he closes the bathroom door audibly, so that it sounds like he went in the bathroom,” she said, after reviewing surveillance video.
“And then he just slipped right down into the office downstairs.”
A young boy was caught on surveillance video leaving a private area in the Lexington Publick bar.Courtesy of the Upside BarThe door to the bathroom and the door to the basement stand in close proximity at Lexington Publick, where the child snuck down to the office and allegedly stole money.Helayne Seidman
The boy remained down there for about seven minutes.
“It was a rather thick stack of bills so he tucked it in is waistband and tucked his shirt over it and then covered his torso area with his folder,” she said.
When he left, the brat made an off-color comment to the bartender.
“I just took a really big s–t so don’t go back there for a while,” the child said.
“It’s really sad, these kids are being sent in, and they know exactly what to do,” she said.
“I don’t know if someone stakes out the locations ahead of time . . . Maybe an adult came in a few days before and had a beer, and scoped the place out.”
Lexington Publick bar was recently robbed by a child who asked to go to the bathroom but instead went into a downstairs office and stole cash. Helayne Seidman
In several cases it appeared the kids were scouting their targets, workers said.
On July 19 at Washington Commons bar near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, a boy burst in and made a beeline for the basement, where he was scoping out security cameras, a bartender there said.
He left when she began recording him with her cellphone — and he spit at her on his way out.
And around that same time, a boy went into Chick Chick, a restaurant on West 90th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and said he was fund-raising — and then bolted to the basement, said manager Josh Ayers, 25.
“I’ve had to physically remove him before. He spit at me.”
It is unclear if the same children are involved in all of the incidents, but several of the Manhattan bar workers said they appear to be.
A police spokeswoman said cops were investigating two recent safe thefts, and whether there is a citywide pattern.
When asked if there was a gang connection, she said the probe was ongoing.
Rabinowitz, 61, said the troubling trend recalled a much more recent time than Twist’s 1830s London.
“I haven’t seen anything like this since the ’80s.”
When pseudoephedrine moved "behind-the-counter" nearly 20 years ago, it left oral phenylephrine (with brands including Sudafed PE and Suphedrine PE) as the only nasal decongestant available without pharmacy assistance. But there's one big problem: phenylephrine doesn't work, the FDA has finally determined.
The drug's over-the-counter (OTC) indication rests on meeting criteria for safety -- which hasn't been questioned and won't be discussed by the FDA advisory committee -- and "a reasonable expectation that, in a significant proportion of the target population, the pharmacological effect of the drug, when used under adequate directions for use and warnings against unsafe use, will provide clinically significant relief of the type claimed."
When weighed by that standard, "we have now come to the initial conclusion that orally administered PE [phenylephrine] is not effective as a nasal decongestant at the monographed dosage (10 mg of PE hydrochloride every 4 hours) as well as at doses up to 40 mg (dosed every 4 hours)," the FDA documents noted.
The agency is weighing whether to scuttle the indications for phenylephrine hydrochloride and phenylephrine bitartrate due to lack of efficacy.
"However, we are concerned about avoiding potential unintended consequences," the reviewers added. "We anticipate that any action taken by the Agency in this regard will have significant downstream effects, including effects on both industry and consumers, because the only other oral decongestant listed in the CCABA [Cold, Cough, Allergy, Bronchodilator, and Antiasthmatic Drug Products for OTC Human Use] Monograph is pseudoephedrine, which is now regulated as a 'behind-the-counter' product under the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005."
In response to that law, most OTC decongestants switched from pseudoephedrine to phenylephrine.
If phenylephrine is off the market, it would keep people from unnecessary costs and delay in care from taking a drug that has no benefit and avoid the risks of potential allergic reactions or other side effects, especially from taking more in order to seek some benefit.
But, people will need to learn to "make the appropriate choices for alternative treatments," the FDA document noted, albeit without spelling out what that should be.
FDA started looking at the efficacy of oral phenylephrine in response to a 2007 citizen's petition and held an advisory committee meeting on the issue that same year.
In addition to the meta-analyses of the original studies supporting approval, that 2007 meeting included industry presentations of "new bioavailability data that show that <1% of an oral PE dose is systemically available in an active form as well as clinical information from two environmental exposure unit studies that suggest that PE is not more effective than placebo."
Still, the advisory committee had called for more clinical data before a final decision would be made regarding the effectiveness for patients ages 12 and older.
A second citizen's petition from the same group in 2015 requested that, based on large clinical trials conducted in the interim, phenylephrine hydrochloride and phenylephrine bitartrate be reclassified as not generally safe and effective, which would require their exit from the market.
Because the adolescent and pediatric monograph was based on historical data and extrapolation of adult data, the FDA reviewers noted that "any recommendations made regarding the efficacy of oral PE in adults would apply to its use in adolescents and children."
Likely to figure prominently in the discussion are four studies:
A 2015 study of adults with seasonal allergic rhinitis, in which none of the groups getting fixed phenylephrine hydrochloride doses of 10, 20, 30, or 40 mg had a statistically significant change from baseline in instantaneous or reflective nasal congestion scores compared with people getting placebo
A 2016 trial in adults with seasonal allergic rhinitis, in which 30-mg modified-release tablets of phenylephrine hydrochloride didn't improve mean change from baseline during the entire treatment period in daily reflective nasal congestion score compared with placebo
An industry representative group, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, argued for keeping the drug, citing the "totality of the scientific evidence" with pre-existing studies to support efficacy. They criticized the more recent clinical studies as having "important limitations (e.g., inadequate blinding and concomitant use of an antihistamine) and were conducted using a study population that is not appropriate to evaluate the efficacy of PE for OTC use."
Their briefing documentopens in a new tab or window posted ahead of the advisory committee meeting cited the importance of "direct, on-shelf access to phenylephrine as a safe, effective oral nasal decongestant since symptom severity, product availability (both the number of product options and the availability of stores that offer them), and consumer preference may vary."
The stakes are high, as one nationally representative consumer study of 100,000 U.S. households showed about half purchased OTC medications containing phenylephrine over the course of the year, and most of those did so multiple times a year.
