City Hall beefed up security at a pair of controversial Brooklyn migrant shelters after back-to-back, potentially gang-linked shootings rattled residents in the once-peaceful neighborhood over the weekend, officials told The Post Wednesday.
An additional 14 NYPD cops joined the four officers stationed near the twin shelters housing nearly 4,000 migrants along Hall and Ryerson streets in Clinton Hill starting Monday, officials said.
Metal detectors were installed Tuesday in the massive 47 Hall St. shelter near Park Avenue, adding to the scanners already standing in the Ryerson site a block away, according to City Hall.
But downsizing or moving the shelters — as demanded by concerned neighbors who protested Tuesday after the Sunday shootings near Brooklyn Navy Yard — is unlikely at best, said Mayor Eric Adams.
“When they say move the shelter, my question to them is where?” he said during a Tuesday news conference. “Which community should I move it in? Those who are already oversaturated? Or should we all share the burden of this?”
The shelters at 47 Hall St. and 29 Ryerson St. this week respectively housed roughly 3,100 and 850 migrants, officials said — an influx that many Clinton Hill residents contend their neighborhood cannot handle without major public safety problems.
Whether Adams will visit the troubled shelters has yet to be decided, despite what an official told protesters, sources said.
Duane Bray, 55, who has lived on Hall Street for 13 years, said Wednesday that 4,000 people in such a tightly packed space is untenable for either the migrants or their neighbors.
“A 200- to 400-person shelter is reasonable,” he told The Post. “We’re happy to have a shelter at the end of our block, it’s just the scale of it that doesn’t work.
“Too many people in too small an area.”
Melissa Wood, 41, a worker at Storrow Management self-storage, said the once very quiet block has devolved into chaos since the Hall Street shelter opened across the street.
“They fight a lot,” she said. “There’s a fight out on the street here at least once a week.”
Wood added: “The security and shelter staff tell us, ‘Once they leave the shelter, we have no control over them, and we can’t tell them to leave the sidewalk.’”
Residents’ safety fears were reinforced by a late Sunday shooting by scooter-riding ruffians outside the Ryerson St. shelter near Park Avenue left Enny DeJesus Urbina Mendez — a 21-year-old Venezuelan national — dead and critically wounded as-yet-unidentified 59-year-old man, who was shot in the head, police said.
The gunfire unfolded minutes after Arturo Jose Rodriguez-Marcano, a 30-year-old homeless man, was shot and killed in nearby Steuben Park, cops said.
Investigators believe the shootings are connected and potentially part of a turf war between the notorious Tren de Aragua migrant gang and former members of the Venezuelan crime group.
The bloody violence spilled over amid bump in crime across the 88th Precinct, which covers the area near the shelters, according to police data.
Major felonies were up nearly 14% in the precinct so far this year compared to the same span in 2023, the NYPD data shows.
Felony assaults jumped 24% during that time, while auto thefts shot up more than 100%, the data shows.
Beyond crime, neighbors have officially griped about quality of life issues, according to a handful 311 complaints.
Cops responded to three noise complaints of loud music or talking on the street or sidewalk near 29 Ryerson St. in recent weeks, 311 data shows.
The Hall Street shelter had five noise complaints since last summer, in addition to one public urination complaint, the data shows.
Security measures that were already in place before the bloody weekend gunplay included curfews at both shelters along Ryerson and Hall Streets, four NYPD officers on 24/7 duty at both shelters and a nearby park and metal detectors at the Ryerson Street site.
The new NYPD officers were out in force Wednesday afternoon.
Pairs of cops could be seen posted on all four corners of the blocks surrounding the shelters, and two cops stood in Washington Hall playground across Park Avenue.
Protesters who crowded Clinton Hill’s streets Tuesday contended the shelters were simply too big and overcrowded to be ever safe.
“You cannot throw all of these thousands of people in our small community,” said event organizer Renee Collymore, who is the Democratic liaison for the 57th Assembly District.
Collymore contended that Adams wouldn’t visit the shelters or take action unless Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, who represents the area and has faced criticism from fed-up community members, pressured him.
A spokesman for Hudson told The Post that Hudson sent a letter to Adams in May detailing what the councilwoman’s six-person team did to provide support for the community near the shelter.
But the letter argues the city provided no material support.
“More people means more trash, greater use of public facilities like parks, and more neighborly disputes around issues like noise or loitering,” the letter states. “My office and my neighbors have been asking for your assistance for the better part of a year to no avail.”
“To date, our office has not received an official written response to our requests,” Hudson’s spokesman said Wednesday.
— Additional reporting by Amanda Woods
