INSIDE: DINE THE BOROUGHS STARTS ON MARCH 18! MORE ON PAGE 5
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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 16 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 11 • March 15–21, 2019
PRISON BREAK! DA lays out plan to end trend of excessive incarceration in boro
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
He wants to raise the bar.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez on
March 11 unveiled his long-awaited
plan to reform criminal prosecution
in Kings County.
The so-called Justice 2020 initiative
aims to divert people away from the
criminal-justice system by pushing prosecutors
to avoid excessive incarceration
— a trend the district attorney admitted
to promoting himself in his two-plusdecade
prosecutorial career.
“I’ve put a lot of people in jail, in
prison, I’m not afraid to do that when
it’s necessary. But I’ve also learned the
lesson, in time, that many of the people
I’ve put in jail did not need to be there,”
Gonzalez said while announcing the
plan during a press conference at his
office in America’s Downtown.
The district attorney conceived of the
17-point initiative , whose terms he hopes
to implement before the end of 2020, with
help from a committee of more than 60
members, who included criminal-justice
reform advocates, union reps, heads of
local do-good groups, academics, cops,
and community leaders.
In order to promote alternatives to incarceration,
Gonzalez said he will direct
some of his office’s resources toward
treating the underlying causes of specific
incidents, such as rapes and hate
crimes, each of which in 2018 spiked
by 22 and five percent in Kings County,
according to police statistics . And he already
began some of that work, including
efforts to vacate dozens of low-level
weed convictions last year , as well as
the creation of a dedicated hate-crimes
bureau in his office, along with another
unit dedicated to keeping law-enforcement
accountable.
Dominatrix Charlotte Taillor is looking to move her Quincy Street
classroom of kink to flee her angry neighbor.
Whipped out
Dominatrix is fl eeing Bed-Stuy
dungeon in wake of harassment
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
She’s at the end of her rope!
A local dominatrix is coiling her
whips and packing up her paddles as
she prepares to flee her Bedford—
Stuyvesant neighbor, a woman who
vilifies the businesswoman as part of
an ongoing harassment campaign, according
to the dom.
“She just stays outside screaming,
mostly to neighbors, about us, saying
things like, ‘They’re kinky weir-
Charlotte Taillor
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, center, on Monday unveiled his Justice
2020 action plan to reform the Kings County criminal-justice system
alongside local leaders who helped him compile the 17-point initiative,
which seeks to end the trend of incarceration-as-first-resort in
Brooklyn over the next two years.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office
“Often, less is more, often times
prison does not equal public safety,”
the top prosecutor said. “We’re going
to make criminal convictions and incarcerations
a last resort, and when we
do seek it, we’re going to try to minimize
excessive sanctions whenever
possible.”
When asked if relying less on incarceration
would promote criminal activity,
Gonzalez argued that the current
mindset of locking every perpetrator
up is not necessarily a deterrent, and
comes at a high cost to taxpayers.
“We want people to be accountable
for the crimes they commit. It’s just
that sending someone to jail is the most
expensive and least effective way that
we now know how to do this work,”
he said.
The Justice 2020 plan also calls for
more community engagement within the
criminal-justice system, proposing the
formation of so-called neighborhoodsafety
councils and new partnerships
with local civic groups, both of which
will survey residents about how they
want justice to be served.
Creating these groups will help the
district attorney’s office sooner identify
the driving factors behind some
crimes, and potentially allow law-enforcement
officials to intervene before
a bad deed is committed, according to
Gonzalez.
“My wife is a teacher, and I’ve heard
from many of her friends that teachers
could tell you the five percent of students
that they deal with, who they understand
are at great risk. And there’s unfortunately
nothing that can be done in
those cases until they act out and commit
crimes,” the top prosecutor said.
A press-conference attendee fired
back that such community monitoring
could easily devolve into over-surveilled
neighborhoods and predictive policing,
but Gonzalez countered that his team
will tow that fine line by heavily communicating
with cops and the local liaisons
his office puts in place.
“We’ll work with our Police Department,
we’ll use data, to understand
who may be drivers of crime, or who
is most at risk for committing serious
offenses,” he said. “But we’re also going
to work with our community leaders,
stakeholders, clergy, and the other
people who know the young people in
their communities that need help before
they go down the path, you know
the wrong way.”
See DOM on page 4
FUR FLIES: BAD NEWS FOR DOGS, BUT GREAT NEWS FOR CATS!
Paws in the air
Dog owners outraged by offleash
crackdown in Carroll Park
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Call it paw enforcement!
Department of Parks and Recreation
patrolmen ambushed dog
walkers at a Carroll Gardens park
this month to crack down on pup
owners who walk their furballs
off-leash, according to one hapless
human, who said one minute
he was walking his dog Cassie,
and the next minute he was surrounded!
“It reminded me of ICE tactics,”
said a Carroll Gardener Remko
de Jong, referring to the federal
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agency. “It was definitely
an ambush — it came out
of nowhere. There was no way
to escape.”
Locals for decades have used
the gated black top at Carroll Park
on President Street as an unofficial
dog run, according to De Jong.
The park is plastered with signs
strictly forbidding taking dogs off
their leashes at any time, but rogue
visitors who do let their hounds
loose are generally respectful,
cleanup after their four-legged
friends, and limit their time offleash
to the early hours before 9
am, the local claimed.
On Sunday, March 3 at 8:30
am, however, half a dozen officers
with the Parks Enforcement Patrol
suddenly appeared and blocked all
entrances to the black-top area of
the park, issuing $50 citations to
De Jong and six other dog owners
one-by-one as they filtered
out of the recreation space — a
raid the Carroll Gardener called
excessive.
“That’s so many resources for
seven people walking their dog on
a Sunday morning,” he said. “It
seems like you could spend your
resources on other things.”
The sting outraged another local
dog walker, who said officials
should create a dedicated space
for pups in Carroll Gardens —
where the closest places that permit
pups to run freely are Red Hook’s
DiMattina Dog Run or Hillside
Dog Park in Brooklyn Heights
— before penalizing pet owners
who just want to give Fido a few
Photo by Maya Harrison
Shayna Wellington received a $50 fine in the recent sting,
for allowing her pooch Sam to run off-leash in Carroll
Park.
minutes to roam.
“I understand the rules of the
park, but they must understand
our needs and that the dogs need
space,” said Carroll Gardener
Shayna Wellington, who also received
a ticket for walking fuzzy
buddy Sam off-leash. “There must
be a compromise, even if it’s just
early morning hours.”
Parks Department officials
ordered the Sunday raid, which
agency patrolmen followed with
another ambush on Monday
morning, in response to recent
complaints about locals breaking
Carroll Park’s leash rules, according
to department spokeswoman
Maeri Ferguson.
And there are no further
stings scheduled, said Ferguson,
who added that park police
commonly patrol on-leash
parks during the peak walking
hours before 9 am.
The sudden change in enforcement,
however, is a break from
what De Jong said was an unspoken
understanding between
dog owners and the park officers,
who would routinely show
up at 8:55 am and give folks a
five-minute heads up to leash
their mutts and scram instead
of ticketing them.
“They would be there at 8:55
am, waiting until 9 am, so everybody
knew to leash their dog
and leave,” he said.
And as along as pups behave,
there’s no reason they shouldn’t
get their own time to play, according
to a Cobble Hill mom,
who claimed to never witness
any problems with unleashed
pooches at Carroll Park.
“The park is for everyone; we
should accommodate both parents
and dog owners,” said Lucy
Ham, who frequently visits the
recreation space with her son.
“The dogs are never in the way
of the kids at the playground,
they stay in their own area, so I
don’t mind it.”
— with Maya Harrison
Scratch comedy show
Cat cafe all spiffed up by SNL set designers
By Maya Harrison
Brooklyn Paper
Live from Brooklyn, it’s Caturday
night!
Feline fans at the Brooklyn Cat
Cafe recently unveiled a pawsh,
custom-built terrarium inside the
shelter’s new Montague Street
home that Saturday Night Live
set designers created specifically
for its littlest furballs.
“We partnered with the design
team from SNL, and they built
us this incredible terrarium for
the newborn kittens,” said Rachel
Foster, a co-founder of the shelter
staffed by volunteers with the
Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare
Coalition.
But the crew from the popular
NBC sketch show didn’t just create
the glass-walled space for kittens
to cuddle up in, Foster said.
They also spruced up the entire
rescue by adding a fresh coat of
paint to the walls of the new location
it moved to last December ,
after vacating the Atlantic Avenue
storefront the shelter opened
in back in 2016.
“They were here every day to
help create and paint the entire
cafe,” she said.
The cafe’s new, larger Brooklyn
Heights digs between Montague
Terrace and Hicks Street allow its
owners to host even more community
events, including film nights
and yoga classes in the company of
cats, according to Foster, who said
she hopes to introduce even more
programming, including seminars
for youngsters and oldsters
on how to properly care for the
Photo by Maya Harrison
Saturday Night Live set designers crafted a glass-walled
terrarium, left, for the shelter’s tiniest residents.
adoptable kitties the rescue temporarily
houses.
“We can have yoga class in the
back of the building while still
having guests come in for adoption,
we’ve never had the option
to do both simultaneously,” she
said. “We would love to have more
partnerships around youth education,
teaching kids how to properly
care for cats, and we would
love to work with elderly populations
too.”
And shelter leaders are in the
process of applying for permits
to serve food and beverages prepared
in the space’s new kitchen
— a facility the old cafe ironically
lacked — so they can offer
patrons fresh treats in addition
to the pre-packaged snacks
and drinks they currently provide,
according to Foster.
“We hope to get a barista in
here soon, it would be a great
place for people to gather and
have a cup of coffee,” the coowner
said.
To date, cafe volunteers found
some 99 cats furever homes this
year, according to cafe reps, who
said all kitties adopted from the
shelter are either abandoned by
their owners, dropped off by other
local rescues, or saved from the
streets of Brooklyn.
Officers with the Parks Department ambushed dog owners
at Carroll Park on March 3, according to the pet parents.
Photo by Remko de Jong
Fuzzy
Brooklyn
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