Call It ​“Bedsheet Policing”

A bunch of cops and parking enforcers weren’t issuing tickets at 2 p.m. Thursday. They were busy making sure kids in the Hill neighborhood had linens on their beds.

The group assembled at the 200 Orange St. offices of the city’s transportation department to fill a police cruiser with boxes of sheets, pillows and blankets.

Twenty-four department staffers have been collecting the items for the past six to eight weeks.

They launched their drive after their boss, city transportation czar Jim Travers, learned that cops in the Hill, under the watch of Lt. Holly Wasilewski, have been regularly encountering bare mattresses on calls inside people’s homes.

“Kids are sleeping on [bare] mattresses as a matter of course,” said Hill beat cop Rob Clark, who joined Thursday’s relief crew.

Travers brought that word to a staff meeting. Almost all his employees pitched in, Travers said. The department filled five to six boxes.

“You don’t expect that people don’t have a set of sheets on their beds,” Travers said. ​“There’s not a place to go” the way hungry people can obtain meals at a soup kitchen.

“Some people are proud. They don’t want to say anything. This way they don’t have to be embarrassed about it,” said parking enforcement supervisor Velisha Cloud (pictured with Travers loading the cruiser Thursday).

Wasilewski, a prototypical community policing cop, has organized past coat drives and blanket drives at neighborhood Christmas parties. This is the first drive to involve linens. She said she’ll keep the bedding at the Hill North substation. She’ll let her officers know about the stash so they can retrieve linens and pillows when they encounter people in need. Anyone wishing to donate can contact her at 203 – 687-0529.