5 hours ago
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It’s a chapter she’d like to forget.
A Bronx librarian was forced to quit her job because she was traumatized by the unending parade of unhinged patrons — including one who flopped around on the floor naked, and another who threatened to “cut off [her] f–king toes,” according to a lawsuit.
Kelly Coffey said her New York Public Library horror story began after she started as a senior librarian in the young-adult sections of the Parkchester branch in November 2022.
An agitated man came in, talking to himself and looking for his phone, according to Coffey and court papers. “He had his hands in his pockets” and suddenly “pulled his hands out and started screaming.”
Coffey — who said she now struggles with anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder — feared the man had a gun.
“I was hiding behind a column. That’s when everybody ran. … If he did have a gun, he would have been pointing it at seven teenagers.”
A security guard, who had allegedly been glued to his phone, ran away along with other staffers, Coffey, 46, claimed.
Then the maniac ripped his clothes off.
“When he got fully naked that’s when I actually” blocked the stairs leading to the children’s area, she said.
The episode lasted about 20 minutes. She was stunned, but for her co-workers “it was just another day at the library and that’s when I really became concerned. I said to them, ‘This is not normal.'”
In a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” moment in July 2023, a man enterd in only his underwear, exposing himself to Coffey and two teenagers, she claimed.
Coffey repeatedly told supervisors she felt unsafe and questioned a lack of action from security, but was chastised for “escalating” incidents and complaining, she said.
“I was told I’m ’emotionally fragile,’ and I’m ‘too emotional,’ and I’m ‘being dramatic,'” she said.
The constant chaos left her full of “dread and despair” and turned her “dream job … into a nightmare,” she said in the lawsuit.
Even the possibility of a macabre ending apparently didn’t disturb her supervisors, Coffey said.
“If you are severely hurt at work, or even God forbid … it be fatal, your job will be posted by the end of the week. And that’s the reality of it,” a supervisor allegedly said during a December 2023 meeting, according to the lawsuit.
When Coffey transferred to the Eastchester branch in 2024, the crazies followed.
One man grabbed Coffey’s arm and threatened to slice off her toes. Another patron flashed Coffey and an 8-year-old girl. Two customers got into an altercation that ended with one threatening to kill the other with a machete.
A week later, yet another apparently emotionally disturbed person “entered the library wielding a circle point needle” and threatened staff, according to the legal papers.
There were 68 calls to 911 at the Parkchester Library in the last four years, and 80 at the Eastchester branch during the same time period, said the NYPD.
Crime in both precincts rose in the time Coffey worked in the Bronx, jumping 10 percent between 2022 and 2024 for incidents such as drugs, theft, weapon possession and criminal mischief and other crimes in the 43rd Precinct, which includes Parkchester, and 39% in the 47th, which covers Eastchester, according to police data.
Coffey finally quit in October “because of the constant harassment she received from library patrons and the discrimination, harassment and retaliation of her supervisors,” she said in the legal claim, which seeks unspecified damages.
“All they did was make her more scared by threatening her job,” said Coffey’s attorney, Paul Bartels. “They couldn’t have handled the situation any worse.”
“We take employee accommodations and safety concerns with utmost seriousness,” a New York Public Library spokesperson said. “We are dedicated to treating our staff across the Library with fairness and respect and ensuring the physical safety of all staff and patrons.”
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