Forest Hills Post
A local coalition made up of several community groups is hosting a “call to action” town hall in Kew Gardens next week over the city’s controversial plans to build what some locals refer to as a “mega jail” in the neighborhood.
The town hall, organized by the Community Preservation Coalition, will take place on Jan. 31, and centers on the city’s borough-based jail proposal released last summer that aims to close the jails on Rikers Island and develop four new jails across the boroughs.
The plan would see the redevelopment and expansion of the Queens Detention Complex on 126-02 82nd Ave., which connects to Queens County Criminal Court, and the parking lot next to it into a 1.9 million square-foot detention facility with about 1,510 beds—a development approximately three times larger than the existing building.
The proposal, while garnering praise by many for its goal toward justice reform, has also been met with much criticism over the amount of community engagement in developing the plan, and even the scope and objective of the project.
Maddy Farooqui, a business owner, lifelong Kew Gardens resident, and a member of both the CPC and the Kew Gardens Civic Association, said locals have lots of questions about a plan that has been “railroaded” in, and are not fully aware of its extent.
“We want to inform and educate our neighbors about this very vague and rushed proposal,” she said, later adding, “A lot of people don’t understand the far-reaching impacts of this.”
11 comments:
That area of Kew Gardens could use some newer and more modern buildings but a fucking jail. You gotta be kidding me !!
That is ridiculous. This mayor needs to go. But the sheeple of NY have spoken and voted for this idiot. Rikers island is the best place for these criminals. Why should they be put right in the middle of an actual neighborhood? What If there was a jailbreak one day and a bunch of child predators got loose and started looking for their next prey again? They would be in a good area to do that because there are alot of apartment buildings around there. This mayor is a sick man. Mayor dumbdumb needs a pysch ward himself.
Good to see community residents organizing and doing what they can to fight this. They may end up being railroaded, or ignored, but passive resignation is so much worse than fighting and failing. It is what their forerunners who lived in a nicer setting would have wanted.
Where are our pols to fight against this? Will Karen Koslowitz be in attendance at the town hall or will she be getting her nails done at that time?
OMG!!! off topic, decided to check in today and see I've missed alot.
So happy you're back!!!!
Best idea ever. Quick trip to court,then ship em out upstate. At least the traffic will get better by laguardia.
And the traffic it will generate, trucks with food delivery for thousands of inmates, laundry delivery, garbage removal, correctional officers and other staff driving their cars to work every single day.
Koslowitz supports the jail so that the Comfort Inn shelter would cease to be used as a men's shelter. She is betting that the next administration will kill this jail plan before any work is done. She's lazy and a hack, but she is probably right on this one.
Court visits can be done by Skype. But there is no opportunity for graft by doing that. Keeping them in a centralized location? No graft in that either.
But 4 new jails?!?? Plenty of graft in that!
But as stated the dopes in these communities either voted for this dip shit or stayed home.
Reopening the already existing jail makes sense. Take some pressure off of Rikers, keep young, low grade offenders closer to home where their families can visit.
But building a giant new jail? Has every elected forgotten how long and over budget it took to build that new parking lot right next to it? The same parking lot they now want to build over? By the time it's completed, the mayor and all the council will be out of office, and so will their successors. The social environment and crime levels will be completely different.
>OMG!!! off topic, decided to check in today and see I've missed alot.
>So happy you're back!!!!
Check again, it's not our beloved and hated Crappy; JQ LLC is filling in for him.
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