8 THE QUEENS COURIER • OCTOBER 4, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Divisions arise at Queens meeting over Rikers Island closure
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
adomenech@qns.com
@AODNewz
Nearly 200 people gathered at Queens
Borough Hall in Kew Gardens on Tuesday
night to voice their concerns about a
plan to rebuild and reopen the Queens
Detention Complex as part of the city’s
long-term plan to close Rikers Island.
A generation gap seemed to mark the
dividing lines in the debate. Sign-holding
20-somethings shouted against cash bail
and a criminal justice system which they
believe is inherently racist, while older
attendees grumbled about decreasing
property values stemming from the
jail’s reopening. Along the way, one
parent aft er another spoke with great
concern about the safety of their children.
Despite the divisions, it seemed
nobody attending the fi rst of three City
Environmental Quality Review (CEQR)
meetings was happy about the proposed
jail in Kew Gardens. New York City agencies
are required to hold such meetings in
order to see what eff ect a proposed project
may have on communities.
“I can tell what is propaganda and this
is propaganda,” said Mara Einstein, a professor
of marketing at Queens College and
author of the book Blackops Advertising.
Einstein, like many of the attendees, did
not believe that the city had the interest
of New Yorkers at heart.
Like the majority of her fellow Queens
residents, Einstein fi gured that the city
was more interested in the potential monetary
gain from selling the land on Rikers
Island to private developers.
“We understand that
parking is a significant
issue,” said Deputy
Director of NYC Mayor’s
Offi ce of Criminal Justice
Dana Kaplan as she
attempted to highlight the
benefi ts of the proposed
Kew Gardens jail site. But
an interruption of boos
and angry shouts echoed
in the high-ceilinged
Helen Marshall Cultural
Center. “You will be provided
with close to 700
publicly accessible parking
spaces provided on sight.”
Th e city is planning
four borough-based sites
in Manhattan, Bronx,
Queens and Brooklyn
that will house a combined
5,000 individuals,
with each facility contains approximately
1,500 beds. Since the city announced its
plan shut down Rikers Island and move
toward a borough-based jail system, the
possible threat of an increased level of
violence has frightened a number of New
Yorkers.
But according to reporting from City
Limits, a nonprofi t media outlet that
takes a deep dive into New York City
issues, there is no evidence to support that
neighborhood crime increases with the
establishment of a jail.
“Th e purpose is to break the cycle of
violence,” said Kaplan, when summarizing
why the city decided to start work on
doing away with Rikers Island, which has
been described as a microcosm of everything
wrong with the American criminal
justice system, including perpetual
inequality and injustice for people of
color and the poor.
“Rikers should be shut down,” said
Abdul Rabani, a member of Deisis Rising
Up & Moving. He stated that growing up
as an undocumented immigrant in Kew
Gardens, he and his friends were the target
of police harassment and were of the
group the criminal justice system is programmed
to victimize.
“It should not be replaced with four
new jails. Seventy-nine percent of inmates
at Rikers are there because they cannot
aff ord to post bail,” he added, only to be
interrupted by fellow Queens resident
Mike Papa.
“One hundred percent of them are in
there because they committed a crime,”
Papa said.
Two more public meetings will be held
in the month of October with written
complaints and concerns being accepted
by the Department of Correction until
Oct. 15. All written complaints can be
made in any language.
Queens residents listen to a summary of the City’s new proposed borough-based jail system at
Queens Borough Hall.
A Queens resident expressed his disappointment at the city’s decision to close Rikers Island at a
public City Environmental Quality Review meeting. “Once these hipsters get married and have kids
they’ll move to Long Island and worry about prisons next to them,” he said.
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