4 MAY 16, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Board 5 shares its vision for Forest Park
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
As the city Department of
Parks prepares to revamp
an entrance and pathway
off of the Jackie Robinson Parkway
through Forest Park, Community
Board 5 approved on May 8 a set of
recommendations to work in their
own vision.
Board 5 members hope to see a
wider pathway to accommodate bikes
and pedestrians as well as security
measures around certain lengths to
ward off crime aft er a Parks Services
Committee report detailed at the May
8 meeting.
“From the diagram we have, the
light poles are 65 feet apart,” Steve
Fiedler, who chairs the Board 5 Parks
Services committee, said. “We’re
trying to get them close to 30 feet part
with suffi cient light now with LEDs …
It’s going to be pretty desolate.”
For the path that will run next to
Forest Park Drive from Myrtle, CB5
is asking Parks to consider bollards 5
feet apart and instead of a 5-foot path,
a 10-foot path.
Parks originally put a bid out
for $2.3 million with companies
coming in as low as $3.3 million and
$3.29 million, according to Fiedler,
although the agency has already
allocated $2.39 million.
CB5 Chair Vincent Arcuri said
that out of concerns for security, the
board will pursue an expansion of
a camera program launched since
the fi rst time the advisory body was
briefed by the agency in 2017 on the
park revamp.
“When we originally reviewed
their plan, we talked about security
cameras. At that point in time they
said they had no program or system,”
Arcuri said. “Since then through the
offi ce of Assembly member Mike
Miller, there are security cameras
spotted throughout Forest Park. So
I think we should be asking for an
extension of the security camera
system through that pathway, but we
would need funding from the elected
offi cials.”
Parks presented their plan to CB5
for expanding bike options in and
around the park in April.
A clearing currently exists at the
southern end of Forest Park Drive
where concrete Jersey barriers
prevent cars from driving into
the park, instead guiding them left
onto the Jackie Robinson Parkway
entrance ramp.
“This project proposes a new
As the city Department of Parks looks to revamp an entrance to Forest
Park, the community has its own ideas.
pedestrian entrance and pathway
into the park along Forest Park Drive
from Myrtle Avenue connecting with
the picnic, bandshell and carousel
areas,” a Parks spokeswoman told
QNS in April. “The new proposed
entrance to the park will be enhanced
with plantings and a seating area. The
new pathway will be made from both
concrete and asphalt and will feature
new security lighting for enhanced
safety.”
With $1.89 million from City Council
and $500,000 from the borough
president’s offi ce, Fiedler said they
are working with Councilman Robert
Holden’s offi ce to attain more funds
for the project.
108th and 104th Pcts. had longest dispatch times
BY MAX PARROTT
MPARROTT@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Residents in Long Island City and
surrounding neighborhoods
who call 911 wait the longest out
of anyone in Queens before dispatch
sends out police offi cers, data shows.
The 108th Precinct — based in Long
Island City and also patrolling nearby
Sunnyside, Woodside and West
Maspeth — takes an average of 3.72
minutes to send out a car, according to
data compiled by the city’s Independent
Budget Offi ce.
The data, which was culled from
dispatch data in the Mayor’s Offi ce of
Management Budget, does not show
how long it takes the police department
to actually respond to a 911 call — from
the initial call to the time officers
arrive at the scene. What it does
show is dispatch time – the number of
minutes it takes for a police dispatcher
to fi nd and assign offi cers to respond to
a possible crime in progress, localized
for diff erent precincts for the fi scal
year 2018.
But it’s not all bad news for Queens
residents.
The borough also contains the fastest
precinct response time in the city. The
100th Precinct in the Rockaways took
an average of 1.57 minutes to send out
a car. On the whole, the borough has
one of the speediest dispatch times in
the city with an average of 2.67 minutes,
coming in second overall aft er Staten
Island.
In fact, even the 108th Precinct’s
dispatch time is faster than the city’s
average of 3.8 minutes. The Bronx is
the outlier of the data set, driving up
the city average with an average of 5.36
minutes. Across the city, nine precincts
had crime in progress dispatch times
greater than 5 minutes. Six of those
precincts were in the Bronx.
The study also notes that the
New York Police Department has
not provided the City Council with
quarterly reports on police response
time disaggregated by borough,
precinct, and the three daily police
shift s even though they are required to
do so under Local Law 89 of 1991. Such
data would allow the public to see how
long it takes between the 911 call and
the police’s arrival to the scene.
Here are the Queens precincts with
the fi ve longest dispatch times:
• 108th Precinct (Long Island City) –
3.72 minutes
• 104th Precinct (Ridgewood,
Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village) –
3.42 minutes
• 105th Precinct (Queens Village,
Laurelton, Cambria Heights and other
southeast Queens neighborhoods) – 3.4
minutes
• 102nd Precinct (Kew Gardens,
Ozone Park, Richmond Hill,
Woodhaven) – 3.2 minutes
• 115th Precinct (Corona, East
Elmhurst, Jackson Heights) – 3.07
minutes
“The NYPD response to crimes in
progress and critical crimes in progress
has gone down year-over-year since
2014,” an NYPD spokesperson said in
a statement. “Reducing response times
to 911 calls is a priority of the NYPD so
offi cers can provide assistance, initiate
an investigation or render aide. Safety
is a shared responsibility and we
encourage individuals to call 911 when
there is an emergency. The NYPD will
continue to work closely with members
of the community to in order to make
every New York City neighborhood
safe.”
LIC-based 108th Precinct’s lagtime beats the rest of the borough.
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