January 19, 2020 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAG E 11
BAILING OUT
Boro’s bail industry crumbling under new criminal justice reforms
Bail bondsman Ira Judelson estimates the bail reforms affect half of his clients. Photo by Kevin Duggan
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Who’s going to bail out the
bail bondsmen?!
The Brooklyn bail industry
is reeling from recently enacted
state-wide bail reforms, with the
owner of one decades-old Downtown
fi rm preparing to shutter
multiple storefronts in response
to a rapidly shrinking market.
“We’re not going to able to sustain
rents and payroll if there’s no
bail,” said Wendy Fordin-Saler,
one of the owners of Empire Bail
Bonds on Livingston Street. “It’s
emotionally and mentally traumatizing
to say the least.”
The family-owned business,
which has operated its offi ce in
America’s Downtown for a quarter
of a century, closed shops
in Queens, Long Island, and
Westchester at the beginning of
the year as a direct response to
defendants of low-level criminal
charges — who make up 95 percent
of their clientele — no longer
having to make bail, according to
Fordin-Saler.
“We’ve had to lay off dozens of
employees, we’ve already closed
three of our six locations and if
this continues on, we’re going to
lay off a lot more staff and close
all our brick-and-mortar locations,”
she said.
State legislators passed laws
thats took effect on Jan. 1, limiting
judges’ ability to impose bail
on most misdemeanors and nonviolent
felonies, while not allowing
them to keep defendants in
custody pre-trial for any misdemeanors
and most non-violent
felonies.
Fordin-Saler and her competitors
in the bail industry strongly
Judge delays city’s
plan to ax 83 trees
in Fort Greene Park
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The city’s controversial scheme
to ax a small forest’s worth of trees
in Fort Greene Park hit a snag after
a state judge ordered the Parks
Department to provide evidence
that its plans will not impose a
signifi cant impact on the green
space and surrounding neighborhood,
setting back renovations to
the area’s largest park.
State Supreme Court Judge Julio
Rodriguez III sided with the environmental
watchdogs at Friends
of Fort Greene Park in ruling that
the Parks Department failed to
substantiate why its $10.5 million
overhaul of the park — which entails
chopping down a whopping
83 trees — does not constitute a
signifi cant alteration of the neighborhood’s
namesake playground,
according an attorney for the
plaintiffs.
“This decision should awaken
the department to reality,” said
legal advisor Michael Gruen in a
statement. “Environmental regulation
is not enacted to be evaded
as if it were merely an annoyance.”
The tree advocates argued
that the city tried to bypass the
State Environmental Quality Review
Act by classifying the parks
project as routine maintenance
and accessibility upgrades, and
the plant lovers are seeking the
court’s intervention in forcing the
city to conduct a lengthy environmental
assessment.
The judgement will stall a
planned upgrade of the 1867 park
designed by famed Prospect Park
landscape architects Frederick
Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux,
and the city is still weighing
whether to follow the order or contest
it, a spokesman for the Law
Department said.
“We disagree with this ruling.
The city followed the law and the
approvals needed for this type of
project. view was not required,”
said Nicholas Paolucci. Continued on page 4
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