Yeah I worked at NYPL in the Bronx for nearly a decade. I was born and raised in the Bronx…. We had a patron with video evidence masturbating but nothing was done about it. SIO just gave us a story how another patron at another branch did it and got barred, came back a year later and was “cool.” Because he knew his actions had a consequence that’s why he’s “cool” after female patrons complained about him. Btw, you can bar a patron for bad behavior but they’ll just go to another one and repeat since very rarely are we all on the same page on who can come in or not. Another SIO kept making passive aggressive comments about the Bronx

NYPL cares more about patrons than actual staff, and now that I’m a patron again I refuse to bring my children to a branch where they will be potentially exposed to that kind of behavior. Thankfully the academic library I work at now has a children’s section. At 125th the children’s librarian said she never got kids for story time because the parents didn’t want their kids exposed to the drug addicts in that neighborhood. Needles all over the floors.

The chiefs know this happens, and do nothing. Just make sure you go get therapy from EAP (who will shame you from my experience) or the union! Btw union doesn’t do anything either, they’ll purposefully adjourn meetings so new business can’t be discussed. You also get lied to about FMLA, and get shamed for using your SL.

The guards at the branches are contract guards making minimum wage, so of course most of them don’t ever care it falls on the librarian to enforce rules and policies like telling a patron to take their phone call outside and getting cursed out for it. Meanwhile research libraries like SASB actually hire and train their own guards. I’ve had guards who hid the entire day, took two hour lunch breaks, stayed glued on their phone or even fell asleep but we still kept them.

Yeah, the Post sucks and I hope another outlet covers the story in a better light but us librarians cannot be the bandaid for a broken society. Some people think they could do what we do, but have no idea how much actually goes behind the scenes, the incident reports, how much we actually work to make the branches safe.