Bed-Stuy's Volunteer Ambulance Team Wins $143K in Much-Needed City Funds

Photo courtesy of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — "We're broke as hell," Capt. James "Rocky" Robinson, co-founder of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, said Tuesday.

Well, maybe a little less broke now.

That's because the New York City Council recently allocated $142,000 to the volunteer emergency-response team, a staple in the neighborhood and a fascination to outsiders (see: the Vice News mini-doc embedded below).

New York City Councilman Robert Cornegy, whose 36th District includes Bed-Stuy, presented the group with a big, ceremonial $100,000 check earlier this month, representing the bulk of the funds.

The $142,000 now available to the Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps will be drawn from the discretionary budgets of New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other councilmembers. The money can be used to pay off any of the org's expenses in Fiscal Year 2016, which stretches from July 1, 2015 to July 1, 2016. (So the group can also use these new funds to pay off expenses that have built up since last summer.)

As reported by Bed-Stuy community newspaper Our Time Press, Cornegy praised the volunteers for responding to the fatal shootings of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in Bed-Stuy, as well as the killing of former Andrew Cuomo aide Carey Gabay in Crown Heights.

A profile of Robinson and his team in the New York Daily News detailed their lifesaving work in Haiti following the massive 2010 earthquake, among other heroics.

But Robinson told Patch on Tuesday that funding for the Corps, founded in 1988, remains critically short.

The organization's annual budget is about $250,000, he said. According to Robinson, he has had to personally close funding gaps by putting a reverse mortgage on his home and dipping into pension money from his 40 years as a member of the FDNY.

Robinson said he's currently running just one of five Corps ambulances, because the group can't afford to insure the others.

"Our bills are insurmountable," Robinson said. "They're threatening to cut off our lights."

At full capacity, the Corps responds to about 150 jobs a month, he said — but that response rate is lower now.

No city money was allocated to the Corps in 2015, according to budget records. The previous year, in 2014, they received $31,875; in 2013, $20,000; and in 2012 and 2011, $10,000.

"Hundreds of awards, hundreds of [EMT] classes, no money," Robinson said, reflecting on the group's history. "Could you imagine if people actually funded us?"

Members of the public can donate to the Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps here.