Kew Gardens jail opponents get loud
Give City Councilwoman an earful during Board 6 meeting, then rally on Boro Hall steps
BY MAX PARROTT
A group of vocal
opponents of the de Blasio
administration’s Kew Gardens
jail proposal showed up at the
Community Board 6 general
meeting last Wednesday.
Though the jail’s proposed
location at 126-02 82nd Ave.
falls within the border of
Community Board 9, which
voted unanimously against it
last month, the site is just two
blocks south of the Community
Board 6 area, which includes
Forest Hills and Rego Park.
At the April 11 Board 6
meeting, tensions ran high
between antagonistic residents
and City Councilwoman Karen
Koslowitz, who appeared
welcome the new members of
the board and also spell out
her support of the plan.
Koslowitz, who has accepted
the new jail as an inevitability,
argued that the best outcome
is for the neighborhood is to
work to force their input into
the rest of the process to make
the conditions of the plan more
favorable to their interests.
“We just knocked a few
stories off the building and
we intend to go even lower.
That’s because I’m sitting at
the table. The building was
going to be 29 stories. They
just lowered it. They were
bringing in a firm, which
wouldn’t have anything to do
with the Queens residents. I
stopped that,” said Koslowitz.
While all three of the
opponents who addressed
the community board in
the public forum insisted
that they wanted criminal
justice reform on Rikers
Island and merely disagreed
with the plan’s execution,
other residents in the
audience appeared to have
different views.
Koslowitz began to say
“There is not one person that
thinks Rikers Island should
stay where it is,” but several
audience members loudly
interrupted her before she
could complete her statement.
“I think so,” one speaker
called out.
In response, an animated
Joseph Hennessy, the
community board’s chair,
boomed over the hecklers,
forcefully reminding them that
they needed to let all speakers
have their say “with courtesy
and without interruptions.”
During the public forum
after Koslowitz’s statement,
Forest Hills resident Charlotte
Picot argued that the mayor’s
multi-borough plan is an
ineffective form of criminal
justice reform, on top of
having a number of adverse
environmental effects on Kew
Gardens area in particular.
“Massive penitentiaries
reflect the failure of
imagination rather than a
sustainable and equitable
division of criminal justice
reform,” said Picot. “I ask you,
Community Board 6, as our
fellow Forest Hills residents
City Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz addresses Community Board 6. Courtesy of Offi ce of Karen Koslowitz
and neighbors, please do not
let a flawed plan that fails to
meet any positive objectives
destroy our quality of life.”
The City Planning
Commission certified the
ULURP application earlier
this month and will begin the
public review process in the
weeks ahead.
Kew Gardens residents
doubled down three days later
at an April 13 rally on the steps
of Queens Borough Hall.
Dominick Pistone from
the Community Preservation
Coalition and a member of
the Neighborhood Advisory
Committee was just one of
the speakers who lashed out
against the administration
for restricting meeting
attendance and barring
journalists.
“For those of you who
thought there was supposed to
be some community input on
this, you’re wrong,” Pistone
said. “From the beginning,
Mayor de Blasio’s plan was
to site the jails in places that
had a courthouse and an
existing jail. It was never his
intention to seek input from
the community about the
sites. In fact, the mayor went
so far as to say that since it’s a
representative democracy, the
representative can site the jail.
Who’s that representative?
The mayor.”
Pistone was referring to a
March 27 meeting which was
closed to the public but for
several community leaders
in which de Blasio defended
himself against claims that
he was being “dictatorial”
in his approach to including
communities.
“It’s a democratic process, it
still has to go through a whole
lot of hoops and I guarantee
you it will go through further
changes,” de Blasio said in
a recording of the meeting
obtained by QNS. “In the
end, we have a representative
democracy where it’s our job
to say, ‘This is what we think
is a good policy for the city.’”
The facility at 126-02
82nd Ave. would detain the
majority of incarcerated
women in the city and include
a maternity ward. It will be
about 1.3 million square feet,
according to the draft
environmental review.
Tyler Nims, executive
director of the Lippman
Commission convened by
former Council Speaker
Melissa Mark-Viverito to
advise on the closing of Rikers,
told QNS in an interview that
the purpose of moving the
jails to the boroughs was to
keep detainees not only close
to courthouses and reduce
travel time from the island,
but also to make family
visitations easier.
Mark Hallum contributed
to this report.
Dominick Pistone helped lead the April 13 protest against the proposed
Queens community-based jail. Photo: Mark Hallum/TIMESLEDGER
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