Multiple groups of people have been captured on surveillance video entering and emerging from New York City sewer manholes at night. They’ve since drawn forth an investigation by both the New York Police Department and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. The groups appeared on Brooklyn streets in the early hours of last Friday morning. Some of them came out carrying shovels.
The earliest of the videos, recorded by surveillance cameras and circulating online over the past week, show what appear to be coordinated entries through manholes at multiple Brooklyn locations. Going by the footage, the people involved wore coveralls or protective clothing while underground and changed out of those clothes shortly after coming back to the surface. Several of the groups, according to the reports, carried headlamps.
New York police haven’t yet made any arrests in connection with the incidents. The NYPD has not yet identified the people involved or said publicly what they think the people are looking for. A leading theory among investigators, however, has emerged.
According to a senior law enforcement official who spoke to NBC News, police now believe the leading explanation is that the people in the videos are scouring the city’s sewer system for valuables that have ended up in the wastewater and are essentially, treasure hunting underground.
The NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit has been into the sewers to check that nothing dangerous was left behind, and Department of Environmental Protection inspectors have also been down. Both agencies say nothing nefarious or damaged was found.
What the Videos Show
One of the more widely shared clips shows at least seven men descending through a manhole at McDonald Avenue and Colin Lane in Flatbush late Thursday night, May 28, before emerging from the same manhole just after 2 a.m. Friday.
In another video, NBC News reported, a man in a white shirt and shorts picks up a manhole cover near McDonald and Bedford avenues to let seven men out, all of them appearing to be wearing coveralls or protective clothing that they quickly changed out of afterward.
In a separate clip from Brooklyn, a man in a red shirt opens a manhole cover from underneath and climbs into a street with traffic before six other people emerge behind him. At least three of those people were carrying shovels, NBC News said, and all of them appeared to be wearing or carrying headlamps. Their reasons for doing so were unclear.
The Police Theory
The NYPD posited that authorities had conducted a thorough investigation following reports of unauthorized people inside the sewer system on McDonald Avenue, and that the NYPD and other agencies had completed a sweep of the area and confirmed it was safe and free of hazards.
According to the same senior law enforcement official who spoke to NBC News, the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit was sent into the sewer system to verify that nothing dangerous had been left behind, and nothing was found. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the sewer system, conducted its own inspection and reported that the infrastructure at the location had not been damaged.
The Department of Environmental Protection warned that entering the city’s sewer system is both illegal and extremely dangerous. The agency listed the hazards as potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces. They added that members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole or outfall.
The current investigation is not the first time New Yorkers have been caught taking the city’s sewer system as a personal treasure hunt. In 2014, three men were arrested after spending hours in the sewers below Flatbush in what authorities at the time described as a “treasure hunt” using metal detectors.
Police said one of the three, a part-time Department of Environmental Protection employee, was accused of uncovering the manhole to let the other two in. The three were charged with criminal trespass and reckless endangerment, and the DEP employee was suspended and faced additional charges. The men were pulled out empty-handed.