There was tension last week as Kew Gardens residents expressed their opposition to the city’s proposal to reopen the existing Queens Detention Center complex as part of the city’s plan to shutter the Rikers Island prison over the next 10 years.
Hundreds of Kew Gardens residents attended the Queens Scoping Hearing, held Wednesday, Sept. 26 at Queens Borough Hall, located at 120-55 Queens Blvd. City officials were unable to finish their sentences amidst the loud interruptions in the Helen Marshall Cultural Center.
Misael Syldor, of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform — who was born and raised in Queens — delivered the testimony.
“At Rikers, people come out worse off than when they go in,” said Syldor. “The proposed facility in Queens is an opportunity for us to be closer to our loved ones, legal representation, and other services that will help them rehabilitate and become productive members of our communities.”
Audience members were divided on the closing of Rikers Island and the implementation of community-based borough jails. Residents who stood up to speak stated that there was no community involvement on the city’s plan to reopen the Queens jail complex.
In August, the de Blasio administration announced a proposal to redevelop Queens Detention Complex — located at 126-02 82nd Ave., adjacent to the Queens Criminal Courthouse — and the neighboring municipal parking lot into a corrections center with space for 1,510 prisoner beds.
“Why is $10 billion being funneled into the jail plan when that money can be used for creating affordable housing, our public schools and creating new roads,” asked Grace Wong. of Fresh Meadows.
Residents stressed the issues of overcrowding, parking availability, nearby schools, and transportation in the neighborhood.
Andrea Crawford, counsel to the Kew Gardens Improvement Association, said the city’s plan to build the jail complex will “cripple the neighborhood,” and has no economic benefits to the community.
From CBS2:
Residents gave city representatives an earful in the Bronx Wednesday night in response to a plan to build a jail to help replace Rikers Island.
The opposition was loud and clear as families from Mott Haven spoke out angrily against the city’s plan to open a jail at an old tow pound on Concord Avenue.
“Some of us residents have made lives and raised families on Concord Avenue for over 70 years,” resident Myra Hernandez said. “We are enraged.”
Hernandez lives two blocks from the proposed site in the Bronx.
“For anyone to propose that this is going to be beneficial for these communities that are oppressed and marginalized, has no clue,” she said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to close the jails on Rikers Island and move towards a borough-based jail system. It would build facilities on the Concord Avenue property in the Bronx, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, Centre Street in Manhattan, and 82nd Avenue in Queens.
From the NY Times:
When the city moved its youngest inmates from Rikers Island to a juvenile detention center last week, the goal was to shield them from the violence of the adult jail and place them in an age-appropriate setting, as required under a new state law.
But so far the mayhem has followed them.
Since last week, when the city’s youngest offenders began moving into Horizon Juvenile Center, there have been at least five violent episodes. These brawls among inmates have caused dozens of injuries to correction officers assigned to the center, union leaders said.
On Wednesday, 20 correction officers suffered minor injuries when a fight involving 16 inmates from two rival gangs broke out about 11:30 a.m., correction officials said. The officers’ union said the fight started when one group of teenagers, who were in school at the facility, spotted members of a rival gang in the hallway.
After the fight, unions representing correction officers and social workers, as well as two City Council members, criticized the mayor and city officials for moving the young inmates before addressing safety and security concerns.
Oh, shit!
31 comments:
Re the last video and the great speech by that guy.
It's actually the next mayor that will be handling the inevitable rise in convicts. Which is why a neoliberal like de Faustio (and that idiot collective at the Kennedy NPO) is fast tracking the depopulation from Rikers, because he won't conveniently be there to fix the mess. The ironic thing is that releasing these punks, as Horizon clearly shows, is only going to cause crime to rise again and these skells will be re-arrested and re-tried and sent back to Rikers.
This corrupt mayor is not looking to run for president, he's looking to be a lobbyist posing as an activist exploiting progressive issue, which as the emails show is what he has been doing all along since he's been elected.
Crime has been remaining steady and murders and rapes are up. The culprits getting caught are not pot smokers or fare beaters with no money to get to work, they are recidivist offenders that need more time incarcerated for their violating acts against the citizenry. They don't give a shit about progressive values or politics and maniacally laugh at those giving them humanitarian opportunities to better themselves.
But all these neoliberals that support these wrong-headed policies just want to look good discussing their beliefs at cocktail parties. They are giving progressives a bad name and are squandering the ambitions of those that want to bring positive change and equity to poor communities.
And yet again, de Faustio and his other neoliberal deputy mayors (especially Glen) and city planners will not even consider allocating this money for real affordable housing. But apparently, when they were using the bullshit program to integrate it with building luxury towers, now they are integrating it with building jails. This warped idea must be coming from REBNY and Goldman Sachs (Deputy Glen's former employer, natch), maybe that's what that meeting de Faustio had a week ago was all about (but all the news media reported on was about Mayor big slow talking about the Red Sox in the meeting with them), somehow they got that info and nothing else)
They don't care about how much you protest. Mayor dumbdumb only wants what's best for developers. He doesn't care about your feelings.
There are relatively few escapes from Rikers because it is an island, if a jail door is accidentally left open it doesn't amount to much, that changes with local jails scattered throughout the city, the inmates escape into the community. These inmates are not turnstile-jumpers, they are in Rikers because a judge decided based on their records that they are dangerous and set bail accordingly, Queens DA's office recently stated that on average Rikers inmates have six prior felony arrests.
There are relatively few escapes from Rikers because it is an island, if a jail door is accidentally left open it doesn't amount to much, that changes with local jails scattered throughout the city, the inmates escape into the community. These inmates are not turnstile-jumpers, they are in Rikers because a judge decided based on their records that they are dangerous and set bail accordingly, Queens DA's office recently stated that on average Rikers inmates have six prior felony arrests.
Here's a nice trial balloon citizens and officials can bring up to rebut these thoughtless hazardous policies of transferring prisoners and the stupid "raise the age" legislation and also that moronic Kennedy 5 million dollar bailout:
None of these inmates being transferred and released are Kaleif Browder.
They are using that poor guy's name and memory to justify these neoliberal programs.
Mayor Dumbhead wants what's best for his criminal and illegal voters. Free pot for all! Free bail for all! Free subway rides for all! Just jump the turnstile and fear not from the Police.
Crooks,Crooks,Everywhere!
I love how they mention there will be a Retail component. Who the F%#^ is going to jail complex to go shopping???
Lets go to that lovely boutique by the jail said no one ever.
Maybe some tall boys and some looseys will enhance our shopping experience at the jail. I love to sit and watch the baby mama, and baby daddy drama unfold among the visitors to the jail complex.
Stop this $10 billion dollar boondoggle. By measure can they say that simply moving a secure prison in the middle of the East River to a family friendly neighborhood near you, can make these convicted felons better citizens. It's a made up sham. Get rid of the Democrats, they're all nuts.
And, not a single jail cell open to incarcerate de BLASS-hole, an openly practicing criminal sociopath/psyhcopath, who appointed everyone in City Hall's 'lunch-and-a-manicure' as a stressful day of work output, not to mention the entirely vapid, insipid and vacuous City Council, all of whom are about to receive a 32% raise, on top of giving a $67,000 raise to some Affirmative Action case (and perpetual lackey), named Wiley Norvell (naturally a Black incompetent, among too many people of color to name), and everyone else's pay wages in private industry are static――and, We, the People are paying for this government tyranny without consent, much less public referendum! Where is Power to the People, and not Power to the Party?
I swear, if one day I can glean enough power to rid City Hall of the most virulent and lethal scourge in the history of mayoral fungus, then I would install industrial size ovens at Gracie Mansion and incinerate the entire 'kakistocracy-kleptocracy' that has so completely betrayed all pretense of public trust, ethics, integrity, accountability and transparency, that this system of totally failed government now DEVALUES honesty itself
❝It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.❞ ―—Voltaire
The chains of habit are too light to be felt—until they are too heavy to be broken.
❝I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if they knew they were slaves.❞ ―—Harriet Tubman
❝It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.❞ ―—Upton Sinclair
❝Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.❞ ―—Robert LeFavre
❝Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.❞ ―—Benjamin Franklin
❝The system cannot be fixed by the system.❞ ―—Tom Morello
❝It's ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society that is dominated by huge, oligarchical corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside of a corporation? They're totalitarian institutions—you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There's about as much freedom as under Stalinism.❞ ―—Noam Chomsky
❝No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.❞ ――William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
❝Voting is not act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: ‘You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.’❞ ―—Wendy McElroy
❝If voting was any good, they wouldn't let us do it.❞ ―—Mark Twain
❝You may fool ALL of the people SOME of the time, but if you do it just once—it lasts four years❞ ―—Alfred E. Neuman
Finally, when injustice becomes law—then resistance becomes duty!
❝No man will ever be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.❞ ―—Denis Diderot, French philosopher
❝I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.❞ ―—Jay Gould, robber baron
❝Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3—while 1/3 watches.❞ ―—Werner Twertzog
To ignore corruption, graft and kleptocratic greed is to condone it!
Believe NOTHING until it has been officially denied.
❝We'll use the Democratic and Republican Parties and keep them busy with matters that have no consequence to our business, whatsoever.❞ ――Banker's Magazine, 1892
❝The war was not meant to be won, it was meant to be continuous.❞ ――George Orwell
This latest version of City Hall as a criminal enterprise deserves to be stripped of all flagrantly abused positions of power, money and privilege for which everyone else continues to pay the ultimate, soul-crushing price - and, the public be damned (again and STILL)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMntvVwwWM
https://www.facebook.com/TheWorldofKnow…/…/811456132314126/…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2098405710190047&set=p.2098405710190047&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10214764657083455&set=p.10214764657083455&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2131559983776832&set=p.2131559983776832&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155924064003269&set=p.10155924064003269&typ
The closing of Rikers should be put to a vote by the people who will be forced to share their neighborhoods with these criminals. This deal is just a land grab for the politicians who will line their pockets with delvelopers money.
This mayor is looking to improve the lives of inmates and homeless, 2 groups that pay no taxes to keep this city moving forward.
Inmates are not in prison because they are the pillars of society.
Yes, lets focus on reducing the amount in Rikers due to bail resources that are first time offenders for non violent crimes, I can get behind that. Other than that, I really don't care how convenient it is for your family members to visit you. You are not in jail because family was your first priority. There are working class families that don't get to spend time together because they work 2 or more jobs or constant overtime, give me a break about inmates having a support system. Please show me the support system they had before going to jail, that's a joke.
Now homeless is another issue #1 there should be facilities for different levels of homelessness. 1- for working homeless that can't make rent (but how long can they stay here... they either need a solution or to move out of the state) 2- for mental health, with medical treatment on site where they are not put onto the streets during the day- this should be done upstate where there is room for them to wonder without fear of harm to others. Where they can get the medication needed to go back into society. 3- drug and substance abuse, they need a rehab setting to get clean. They need to be tested daily and make process otherwise let them stay on the streets. 4- sex offenders and convicts - they should be held in transition housing with a police presence.
I am so tired of the focus of this administration of being to better the lives of criminals and those who've made bad choices at the expense of those of us trying to live a good life and protect our families. Do what's right for the MAJORITY of this CITY. Today anyone can make a decent living in this city with hardwork - you don't even need college, you can do vocational training or a trade. There are so many free opportunities offered to low income that they do not take advantage of but want to scream racism when they end up homeless or in jail. LAZY stop being lazy, stop handing down the welfare handbook to your kids, start teaching about birth control. Pay attention and check your kids. There is a reason the asians and whites do better, because they give a shit about what's happening at home. Break the cycle instead of always looking for that handout.
IT'S TIME TO MOVE OUT OF NEW YORK CITY !!
Great to see New Yorkers pushing back. Fight for your rights. This is an attempt by those in power to destroy your neighborhoods and tell you it's good for your. Dump the Democrats.
Could be worse, in Denmark they bring them to your house on an ankle LoJack if you have an extra room that can be utilized. And They will arrest you for discrimination and obstruction if you protest it.
By the looks of these communists, democrats and socialists running the city that may be coming here. Better pray Trump seats that republican supreme court judge or the Constitution and your right to own a private home & fire arms will soon be history
Just a reminder, Crappy. I said you weren't posting my anti-jail comments and you said I never sent them. Well you're at it again. I warned you early that this issue is a very hot button item and you went for cover. People do not want prisons in their neighborhoods. They don't want 'em. Rikers Island was designed to keep the felons where the felons belong, away from law abiding citizens. Until New Yorkers see the Democratic party as the enemy within, this crap will keep on happening. New York needs a change. Change parties for God's sake, change parties. If you don't like the Republicans then vote Libertarian, the third largest party in America. But don't just sit there and complain then go back and elect another Democrat. Sheeeeesh!
...nothing new to see here...keep moving on...same old progressive stupidity masquerading as city planning and societal improvement.
Again, I will point out how this is the result of Democrats voting in stupid.
Where are the long term studies and criminology reports to support the idea that breaking up a large jail and scattering the pieces among the middle class populations will necessarily improve conditions within the jail system?
The administration points out that the incarcerated will have better access to their lawyers and loved ones. Why is this a priority exactly when the middle class in this city are being squeezed out and homelessness is at an all time high?
What's the great advantage of criminals having better access to the E train? That their "family" can bring them up to date on their outside connections better? That they can keep better tabs on their shady enterprises outside?
You are not changing the prisoner population, you are not changing the guard population or the administration per se. You are not changing the sentence structure or the criminal justice system itself but somehow, somewhere, this mayor and his toadies have pulled out of their asses a fascinating "new" approach to a societal issue which has been debated since Cain and Abel.
There is some usefulness to be gleaned from this rearrangement of the deck chairs however.
In a quick, real-time experiment, New Yorkers get to experience what is happening in Venezuela on a large scale.
You get to see the consequences of voting stupid and against the time-tested ideas that have sustained this nation for 250 years.
In Venezuela, they decided that free-markets were an oppressive construct set up by outsiders to bleed the people. Now they get to eat rotten meat and use old glossy magazines for toilet paper as millions flee to beg in free societies.
In New York, you elect a socialist mayor and you get to benefit from the lack of mental fortitude and foresight of a man who still thinks that pandering to the lowest common denominator in society is what moves us forward.
So hold on for more attacks on the few public schools actually succeeding,
more attacks on property owners and small business owners through higher taxation and regulation, and more pandering to criminals while people that didn't prey on society are left homeless.
Harry Haller
Anonymous said... "They don't care about how much you protest. Mayor dumbdumb only wants what's best for developers. He doesn't care about your feelings."
Nor does he care about what YOU, as citizens of Queens, NEED, or WANT, or will make your life EASIER even though the citizens of Queens pay his salary.
And, let us not forget we also make the secretaries of his "wife" happy with a combined salary of $300,000. We did not elect her but IT DOES NOT MATTER. He not only doesn't care about your FEELINGS, he simply doesn't care about YOU.
When can we vote out this useless POS? Is there anyone out there who is not in the back pocket of the ruling party?
“Just a reminder, Crappy. I said you weren't posting my anti-jail comments and you said I never sent them. Well you're at it again. I warned you early that this issue is a very hot button item and you went for cover.“
What the hell are you talking about? Do you think I sit with this page open all day waiting for comments to moderate? I approved every one that was left on this post. I didn’t realize I was to do this on your schedule and not my own.
Many are seeing the decline of quality of life in Forest Hills/Kew Gardens, it starts off small and slow, with litter and garbage appearing, then there is panhandling by the homeless and mentally ills folks dumped into the area, thanks to deBlasio (the mayor of destroying communities), a graffiti marked Austin St Pedestrian walkway underneath Union Turnpike where gang graffiti, litter and empty beer and alcohol cans/bottles can be found and where it has become a go to place for people to piss and take a shit. While the crime rate in Forest Hills is still low compared to many other places like Jamaica and Jackson Heights, there has been changes taking place in this community and we are seeing more crime than before.
AND with a problematic big homeless shelter for single men that was dumped onto 82nd Ave and Queens Blvd in the Comfort Inn hotel and now talk of the disastrous .orough based jails in 4 boroughs, including here in Kew Garden/Forest Hills on 82 and Queens Blvd at Borough Hall, could we begin to see more of the kind of shit, like the armed robbery that took place in Forest Hills - https://qns.com/story/2018/10/05/armed-thief-robs-man-gunpoint-forest-hills-uses-victims-credit-cards-buy-stuff-cops/
At a public meeting for the Kew Gardens/Forest Hills jail proposal (yes, by the destructive deBlasio), the majority of people were outrage (and no this is not a “white people anger thing” as some have suggested, because an even more angrier crowd at a public meeting in the Bronx, who may also get a jail dumped smack in their residential area, the crowd consisted mostly of people of color. FACT: While people feel that the NY jail system needs a long overdue reform, people do not want a jail right in the middle of their residential area, PERIOD.
Ironically and not surprising, the two HACK elected officials representing the Kew Garden area, Councilman Karen Koslowitz and Senator Leory Comrie (the do nothing politician of Jamaica), refused to speak and give their comments on the issue, Comrie citing some bullshit, that the meeting was for the community. As if Koslowitz and Comrie are not part of the community. Typical crooked behavior from the corrupt Democratic Queens Machine, which is destroying Queens and saying FUCK YOU to the hard working constituents who pay taxes, while cow towing to the homeless and criminals, neither who pay taxes and help to keep this city running.
Good for you, Queens Crapper! Now, if only the terminally 'crooked-and-corrupt' powers that be had any allegiance to ANY of the constituency comments that have been left on this blog site for years. Even the empowered idiots of yore are cringing at the new breed of Demon Seed government tyranny that is now openly practiced: Caligula is rolling in the aisles, I tell ya!
By the courthouse, and your crying? This is the best place,logistacally,to put a jail.
Rikers is the training ground, and citywide network of crime. Rikers university.
Maybe cops can stop packing them in on bogus charges, it won't be so overcrowded.
DeBlASSio insisted that Rikers teens under 18 years old be transferred out of there. And the results of this ill-considered action: the NY Post reports that "Fists have been flying at the Bronx juvenile-detention center where Rikers teens were transferred — and apparently, so has the furniture.
A teacher at the Horizon Juvenile Center said he and other instructors begged city officials to bolt down chairs and other easy-to-throw objects when the 16-year-old defendants were moved in as part of a criminal-justice-reform program.
“Furniture has been flying, almost on a daily basis,’’ he said. “I’ve seen with my own eyes a thick security window that has been broken during the riot [The Post] covered, by a student hitting it with a classroom chair."
This is not the only story I've read about way out-of-control behavior by these transferred Rikers teens and I'm sure worse things are in the offing soon; assaulted, raped, or murdered students found in school bathrooms or stairwell, vandalized equipment, etc. These things are already being done in the regular public schools, so imagine how much more will continue to be done in "Rikers Transfer Academies".
When the crime rate rises and more people are convicted of crimes,where will we put them?
The people who visit the inmates are sometimes as bad a they are,...
Ten Billion dollars = 6,000 inmates! Now let me see, that calculates to about 1,700,000 per Jail bed. Sound like a good deal New York? So they want to move Riker's University to an extension campus near you. Sound like a good deal New York? Somebody's gettin paid! This jail expansion is going on all over America. Why? Who knows? It just is. Most often they are paying between $70 and $80 thousand per unneeded bed, but not NYC! Nope NYC can do better, almost $2 million per bed. Plus jury trials are way, way, down. Nonexistent in many parts of the country. Sound like a good trend? Big expensive jails and no trial by jury? I'm just sayin! Keep up the fight. Stop this mega-boondoggle!
As far as the argument that it would be easier access to courts with neighborhood jails, that's another piece of nonsense. If Rikers would use SKYPE, which the Supreme Court has approved for many court hearings, they wouldn't need to move so many inmates back and forth to courtrooms everyday. They would save New Yorker's millions of dollars at the same time.
Kind of ironic that these elected hacks states that families would be closer to inmates (like why should that matter at all, not like family is coming every day, if at all), but yet they will move a family from the Bronx, whose children go to school in the Bronx, yet move them to Jamaica when they become homeless. JUST MORE BULLSHIT.
For all those who wondered why they were not notified about the hearing....The city keep it very low keyed. ...I wonder why....
>If Rikers would use SKYPE, which the Supreme Court has approved for many court hearings, they wouldn't need to move so many inmates back and forth to courtrooms everyday.
People have the right to face their accusers. They have a right to look the judge and jury in the eye. Looking at a pixelated face on a tiny screen doesn't cut it.
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