Gangs of Glendale

From the Daily News:

A youth football league that was booted to a Maspeth Glendale-Ridgewood field last year after playing in Juniper Valley Park for more than two decades said its new turf is plagued by gangs.

The longtime coach of the Queens Falcons - who now play ball in Mafera Park after the city took the team's cleats off the grassy Middle Village field - said the dark lot is a magnet for quality-of-life crimes and makes the area unsafe for the young athletes.

"It's just a matter of time before something bad happens," said Tim Cavanaugh, 46, who has coached the team for almost 20 years. "At the end of the day, we just want our kids safe."

Since it began playing on Mafera's artificial turf last year, the team has witnessed trouble just past its sidelines, including fights, kids "throwing" gang hand signs and graffiti that seems to mark gang turf.

The Parks Department recently painted over the letters "TGWK" - which sources said stand for Together We Kill, one gang in the area - that were spray-painted on the team's storage unit on the field, Cavanaugh said.

Cuts in police staffing have made it harder to patrol the field area regularly, but officers from the 104th Precinct are always quick to respond if a call is made, Cavanaugh said.

Well they should be considering the precinct is only 3 blocks away...

Parks denies denying permit to football team

From the Daily News:

The kids from the Queens Falcons youth football league got sacked for another loss on Tuesday.

Lawyers defending the city against a lawsuit filed by the Maspeth-based league told a Queens judge the kids were never denied a permit to use the grass fields in Juniper Valley Park.

Instead, the city says they never actually applied for the permit.

The Falcons say they did apply for a permit, but were denied because their football cleats chew up the dirt and grass on fields used for baseball in the spring.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Cullen has given them until next week to prove the permit application was in order.

Longtime Falcons coach Tim Cavanaugh accused the city of attempting an end run to avoid telling hundreds of mostly minority kids they can't use the baseball outfields that Falcons teams have been using for two decades.

"Maybe we don't fit the profile of what they want for the community," Cavanaugh said.

That's looking like a stronger possibility since the Parks Department's own website says they do not give out permits for practices... In other words, this sounds like B.S. made up to cover someone's ass.



Adrian?

Dorothy?

Is the Irish football field going here?