A New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) official has been reportedly suspended for 30 days without pay after being caught naked in bed with a woman during a work video conference.
A video conference for city Housing Authority bureaucrats is scheduled weekly in order to update the managers on how things are progressing in public housing developments. However, an unexpected event occurred as one of the participants, a Bronx neighborhood administrator, Alex Tolozano, appeared in his Microsoft Teams window naked next to a woman.
Another NYCHA employee on the call started videotaping the meeting. A 17-second video emerged on YouTube. "So he’s laying in the bed," said one of the participants in the video call on last Wednesday. Another attendee screamed, "Oh my God!" when an unidentified woman’s face became visible in the frame. Just seconds later, Tolozano appeared, which also shocked other colleagues.
"During the meeting participants observed Tolozano’s phone camera was on the screen for at least two minutes revealing that he was potentially engaged in inappropriate activity with another individual," NYCHA officials said on Friday.
Tolozano started working with the authority in 1988 and made $129,000 last year; he was suspended by the end of the day on Wednesday. The 53-year-old employee was promoted in 2016 to a residential building superintendent making $84,000. After his promotion to administrative housing superintendent, Tolozano gained several significant raises.
NYCHA officials told The City that Tolozano was previously brought up on disciplinary charges three times due to work performance matters. He was suspended temporarily twice, first in 1995 and again in 2015. He was also reprimanded in 2014.
"NYCHA took swift disciplinary action following this incident by immediately suspending the employee, initiating an investigation and beginning the administrative process for dismissal," said spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio.
"Inappropriate activity, absconding from work, and time abuse are not tolerated at NYCHA and will be met with suitable consequences. Most importantly, NYCHA is working tirelessly to root out bad actors and create a culture of compliance, service, professionalism and respect, and we will not allow this unacceptable behavior to deter us from our mission or discourage or demoralize our extraordinary workforce."
The authority is the city’s biggest landlord, with 400,000 tenants in 175,000 apartments across the five boroughs. They reportedly suffered years of bad press due to mismanagement and squalid living conditions endured by public housing tenants. The federal prosecutors learned through investigation that the agency managers had routinely lied about performing required lead paint inspections and covered up mold infestations, rat invasions and pervasive elevator breakdowns.
