Bogus 911 Call Gets Brooklyn Woman Help She Needs Clearing Years Of Hoarding
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Sometimes when people know there is a hoarder in their neighborhood, they call 911, instead of 311, out of sheer desperation.
CBS2's Jessica Moore spoke with a victim of one of those bogus 911 calls who ultimately ended up getting the help she needed.
Gloria Chow showed Moore the Brooklyn apartment she's lived in for 40 years, where plywood leaned against the broken door frame since Tuesday.
"Somebody made a 911 call, and it was bogus, that there was a slip and fall on the third floor. Not true, I wasn't here," she said.
Once inside, firefighters uncovered what Chow believes was the real reason for the bogus call.
"This is overwhelming. All I do is cry. When I get upset, when people pick on me and my daughter, I just go buy stuff," she said.
Decades worth of boxes and bags leave Chow with little space to sleep and no way to access the fire escape.
With a vacate notice hanging over her head, Assistant Police Chief Jeffrey Maddrey and his team stepped in to help.
"We'll help you just enough, that way the Building Department won't want you to leave. And then after that, once we have a path there and we know that you're safe, I can sleep at night because I know if there's a problem, you're daughter can get to the back window or the front window. That's it, OK?" he told Chow.
Chow said she's had problems with her landlord in the past and suspects she called 911 instead of 311 as a way of forcing her out.
Police tell CBS2 the fake 911 call came from 534 Wilson Avenue, which is also the office of the manager for Chow's building. Moore tried to get a comment, but no one responded.
"We'll look into it to make sure that no one is harassing the tenant here. We don't want that," Maddrey said. "We're going to look into that, absolutely."
While the 911 call could have been made in desperation, police say it's always best to call 311 if you suspect someone is hoarding and needs help. In this case, the wrong decision led to the right outcome.
"Like I said, they're good, strong men," officers told Chow.
"Thank you so much," she said.
The Building Department plans to help Chow clean out her house and the Red Cross has offered to put her up in a hotel while things are being cleared.
Choice New York Management, which oversees the building on Wilson Avenue, told CBS2 no one from its office placed the call to 911, saying it would not have been in its financial interest to do so.
