The cops descending on the Bedford-Atlantic Armory are all looking for the same guy: A homeless black male, about 5-feet-10 and 170 pounds, aged 19 to 25.
Brooklyn’s most wanted is not a felon. He just looks the part.
Day after day, city police arrive at the enormous Crown Heights men’s shelter seeking “fillers” for NYPD lineups where crime victims are summoned to ID their assailants.
“Usually, we see two a day,” said Troy, 31, a black man from Flatbush who shrugs off any deeper implications of the practice. “Some days there’s more. Some days they don’t come at all.
“But if you average it out, I’d say two a day.”
A horde of homeless men typically rush the marked or unmarked NYPD vehicles, eager for the $10 cash payment awarded for at least an hour of lineup work.
The shelter at the corner of Bedford Ave. and Pacific St. is a hub for the filler trade, although the process is repeated across the city.
Prime time for pickup is between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to accommodate the work schedules of most crime victims, Troy said.
But the lineups can happen at any given moment, with up to five men at a time climbing into the police vehicles.
“They don’t want to search eight hours for people on the street when they can come here and, within five minutes, have the guys,” said Troy.
“I’d say nine out of 10 times, the guys they pick up are homeless. That’s how I knew about it: I was homeless, living in the shelter. When I was in the Armory, the cops would come into the day room and ask you, ‘Do you want to do a lineup?'”
Troy, after years in the city shelter system, now lives in a two-bedroom apartment after receiving aid from a now-defunct rent subsidy program.
He still returns to the shelter every day, lured by the promise of day labor and lineups.
The NYPD pay works on a sliding scale: Robbery, the most common crime for lineups, pays less than homicide.
Sources told the Daily News that the Brooklyn corner is not limited to the NYPD for filler fodder.
Troy said he’s made upwards of $50 working for the Nassau County Police Department, although the suburban cops deny using homeless men from Brooklyn in their lineups.
The frequency of lineups parallels the frequency of crimes committed; for the homeless, that means a crime wave is profitable.
Sources said there were many instances where the homeless men exited one police car after lineup duty to find another vehicle waiting.
A tall homeless man named Andres Villaluel, 52, sleeps at the Borden Ave. veterans’ residence in Long Island City, Queens — but travels to the Brooklyn corner almost every day.
He’s worked more than 70 lineups in his lifetime; one took so long, he said, that the police served pizza and juice to the fillers. His biggest payday was $25, after a police officer was shot on nearby Eastern Parkway.
Villaluel, like many in the workforce, says his employment desirability dwindles with each passing birthday.
“The lineup is based on the age and the way you look,” he said. “A lot of the times, it’s young guys, not old guys. I don’t get as many lineups any more.”
The accommodating Villaluel recounted instructions to shave his mustache or wear a specific outfit for a better match with the suspect.
Villaluel, unlike some on the corner, said the cops keep coming to the shelter because that’s where the men are — and many of them need the cash.
“They have nowhere else to go!” he said. “Where are they gonna go? To your home?
“If I have money in my pocket right now and a lineup comes, I’m not going! But if I don’t have any money, I’m gonna go because the lineup is attractive to me. It’s like, ‘Okay, I could use $10. I’m not working.'”
Sheldon Smith, 42, a homeless man from the Bronx, argues that lineup calls at shelters are driven by simplicity.
“What I’m saying is that it’s convenient,” he explained. “All I have to do is sit down and hold a piece of paper. And that’s why people do lineups.”
Smith recalls doing over 40 lineups since his 18th birthday.
But he doesn’t go as much any more — his silent protest of what he sees as hypocrisy by the beat cops who patrol an area once known for its high crime rate.
“Why am I doing the community service? It needs to be put in terms: why should homeless men keep on doing this if the police are going to harass them?” he asked.
“You need to leave them alone if you want them to help you.”
Marcus Moore of Picture the Homeless, an advocacy and activist group in the Bronx, cited desperation as the main motivation for the homeless fillers.
“We know police will use these men for any purpose they deem fit,” he said.
An NYPD spokesperson told The News that the shelters provide police with a selective pool of willing applicants, and detectives are given a handbook for direction in picking fillers.
Other sources are also used to complete the lineups, the spokesperson said.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office declined to comment on the practice, as did the New York Civil Liberties Union.
While the validity of police lineups have come under scrutiny over the last few years, using the homeless in them has not.
The NYPD passed new guidelines for lineup identification in 2010 intended to prevent bias and influence. No mention was made of filler candidates, just instruction that they must fit the description of the perpetrators.
Troy, along with others on the corner, has no quarrel with the practice.
He’s getting paid to do the right thing, which means potentially preventing an innocent person from going to jail. If the shelters’ demographics cater to crime statistics, so be it.
“In this city, the perps are inner-city minorities,” Troy said. “Most of the guys in lineups are in between the ages of 19 and 25. The shelter is really the only place they’re gonna get people.”
