By Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Thousands of New York City residents have perished due to COVID-19. This has led to a tragic backlog of bodies in the city’s morgues, hospitals and funeral homes. As a result, NYC officials have said that unclaimed coronavirus victims will be buried in Hart Island, sparking fear that mass burials may be taking place. NY’s Police Department has seized the drone of a photojournalist documenting the burials on Hart Island.
On Wednesday morning, Aerial photographer George Steinmetz, who has an FAA license to fly a drone, launched his $1,500 drone from a City Island parking lot to record the dismal effort in Hart Island. He was abruptly confronted by plainclothes NYPD officers. Only minutes after he began, the group of police emerged from an unmarked van and stopped him. He was issued a misdemeanor summons for “avigation”, which is an old law barring aircraft or drones from taking off or landing anywhere in New York City other than an airport. As per a report by the NY Post, his drone was also confiscated.
Steinmetz posted the following message on Instagram: “For over 150 years this island with no public access has been used to bury over a million souls who’s bodies were not claimed for private burial. With the morgues of NYC strained, the pace of burials on Hart Island has increased dramatically. I was cited by NYPD while taking this photo, and my drone was confiscated as evidence, for a court date tentatively scheduled for mid-August. #keepthememorycard”
“These are humans, and they’re basically being treated like they’re toxic waste, like they’re radioactive,” Steinmetz told the Gothamist. “I think it’s important.”
Steinmetz is not the first journalist to have his drone seized by the police while trying to photograph Hart Island, since the start of the pandemic. Mickey Osterreicher, the general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said than an Associated Press photographer faced similar consequences last week, while trying to record the alleged mass burials.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has already responded earlier in the month with reassurance. “There will be no mass burials on Hart Island”, de Blasio had said. “Everything will be individual and every body will be treated with dignity.”
The one-mile long island in the Bronx, has over a million unclaimed people buried there over the past few decades. Annually there have been fewer than 1,500 burials there, but now the demand has increased. Access to the island is restricted by the Department of correction, and the burials are traditionally conducted by Rikers Island jail inmates.
