“No Reason for These Takeovers”: New NYPD Youth Commander Pitches a Reset at East New York’s Community Hub

Community Board 5 wrapped its last general board meeting of the session with a new face at the mic: Captain Lori Perez, the NYPD officer now overseeing Youth Strategies inside the 127 Pennsylvania Avenue community center.

She didn’t come in talking stats. She came in talking faith, family, and the building itself.

Perez introduced herself as “a child of God,” a mother, a wife, and a Bronx girl on her first Brooklyn assignment, asking East New York to “hold my hand” as she learns the neighborhood. Then she zeroed in on the center CB5 calls home. Her first priority, she said, is to “restore this” building so anyone who walks in officers, kids, neighbors feels inspired. Clean floors, bright energy, and affirmations on the walls. A garden activated, a kitchen working, a space that feels like it belongs to the people who use it.

From there, she went straight to the street.

“Once we clean up this building, my next goal is programming,” Perez told the room. “We got to bring these programs back for these kids.” In her view, youth “takeovers in the street” aren’t just about bad decisions; they’re about boredom and a lack of options. Her promise was clear: if young people say they’re bored, she wants this building to be where you send them a place with real programs, resources, and reasons to stay off the corners.

Perez also tried to cut through the usual distance between police and residents. She said her door upstairs is always open, she loves ideas, and she left cards for anyone with programming to pitch. The invitation on the table is for CB5 members, gardeners, clergy, youth leaders, and neighbors to help shape what Youth Strategies looks like in East New York, inside the same building where board business gets done.

CB5 leadership, which regularly calls itself “the best board citywide” and prides itself on recording meetings and putting them on YouTube and Instagram, made a point of thanking her for showing up in person rather than sending a representative. That’s the standard they’ve set for electeds and agencies; now NYPD’s youth commander has stepped into that expectation.

What happens next is where the story really lives. Over the break and into the fall, residents will be watching to see whether the promises about a cleaner, more inspiring center, a working kitchen, and real youth programming turn into something you can feel when you walk into 127 Pennsylvania and whether those changes actually move the needle on how young people spend their evenings in East New York.