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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 20 pages • Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint Vol. 42, No. 20 • May 17–23, 2019
Macy’s will bring its popular Fourth of July firework display to Brooklyn Bridge this year
and will launch rockets from the span and four barges in the East River.
Macy’s show will return to Brooklyn Bridge
By Kevin Duggan City’s delay now under fi re
19
CB2 votes againt mayor’s jail expansion in heated debate ‘HOUSE’ RULES!
The post apocalypse
Is this the city’s most crime-plagued mailbox?
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100+ Global CuIsines
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Call it a jailhouse knock.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to
raze Atlantic Avenue’s House of
Detention and rebuild a larger incarceration
complex in its stead
stumbled when it failed to get the
approval from Community Board
2 members by a hair-thin margin at
a raucous meeting on May 8.
Members issued their purely
advisory vote with 17 to 16 voting
against their land use committee’s
previous conditional recommendation
to accept Hizzoner’s plan
to raze the Boerum Hill lockup
and replace it with a larger jail as
part of the city’s borough-based
jails plan.
One member scolded the city’s
criminal justice record toward
people of color and abuse by jail
guards.
“If an institution is built 80 years
ago or whatever and they can’t get
it right then, they’re not going to
get it right now,” Samantha Johnson
said at the board’s May 8 meeting
inside a packed auditorium at
New York City College of Technology
in America’s Downtown.
“Melees and assaults and rape have
happened in these institutions. We
cannot trust that the culture is going
to change when we train people,”
the Fort Greener said. “Nobody
is going to hold these people
accountable, not even the mayor,
because we all know, he’s running
for president.”
The land use committee at its
meeting last month voted in favor
of de Blasio’s plan to close
the beleaguered jail complex by
2027 and move its incarcerated
people to four borough-based jails
with several conditions, including
lowering the jail’s target population
from 1,437 to 875, cutting the
building’s proposed size by almost
half — both in accordance with
recent and future criminal justice
reforms — and adding a new jail
to Staten Island, the only borough
spared from the plan.
Several board members said
Fort Greene community
board member Samantha
Johnson voted against the
jail plan, citing the city’s poor
criminal justice record towards
people of color.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
they couldn’t vote for the scheme
due to the city’s continually-changing
plans for the post-Rikers jail’s
size and population.
State legislators passed a sweeping
package of reforms on April 1,
which will end cash bail and pretrial
detention for almost all misdemeanor
and nonviolent felony
defendants, among other reforms,
and which will reduce the amount
of people awaiting trial in jail because
they can’t afford bail.
The legislation will not come
into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, but
a recent study by the criminal justice
reform advocacy group the
Center for Court Innovation found
that more than two out five people
detained pretrial in the five boroughs
would have been released
under the new laws.
On May 6, the mayor’s office
promised to shrink the jails due
to the drop in inmate population
and criminal justice reforms, reported
The City .
Citing that report, one board
member said that it was difficult to
decide on the city’s plan if it kept
changing and due to the fact that
bureaucrats were not forthcoming
with precise figures.
“This shows that the plan actually
keeps changing, which is really
unfortunate, because we very
much want to do the right thing
and we’re constantly given different
information and misinformation,”
said Sandra Rothbard.
“The biggest problem for us was
that a lot of issues with the city’s
plan were very vague. When we
asked for specific numbers, they
were not provided.”
Council Speaker Corey Johnson
reportedly chimed in, saying that
he was worried about the size of the
proposed facility between Smith
Street and Boerum Place, according
to a leader of the board, who
said he had a private conversation
with the Manhattan pol.
“He Johnson too had concerns
about the density of the facility proposed
for 275 Atlantic Ave.,” said
District Manager Robert Perris.
“It was a private conversation with
someone I’d known before he was
in government services.”
A spokesman for Johnson said
that communities around the four
jail sites were concerned about their
height and density, but stopped
short of confirming whether the
speaker himself shared these concerns
with regard to the Boerum
Hill jail, ahead of the council’s future
vote on the proposal.
“Communities around the four
proposed new jail sites have expressed
concerns about the height
and density of the buildings,” said
Juan Soto in an emailed statement.
“Now that the scaled back proposal
is going through our public review
process, we expect to hear substantive
feedback from local community
boards and other stakeholders,
which the City Council will
consider when it’s our turn to review
the proposal.”
Reps for the mayor’s Office of
Criminal Justice handed out guidelines
and principles for the proposed
jail by the borough’s Neigh-
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Civic honchos chastised the
city for delaying the release of
community guidelines for Mayor
Bill de Blasio’s borough jails
plan.
The Mayor’s Office of Criminal
Justice should have sooner
released a document of so-called
“Guidelines and Principals”
that local community leaders
and stakeholders – known as
the Neighborhood Advisory
Committee (NAC) – formulated
on Hizzoner’s borough
jail plan.
Bureaucrats should have released
the document, which contains
recommendations for the
city’s plans as well as broader
demands for criminal justice
reform and investment in the
community, either ahead of
Community Board 2’s public
hearing on April 11 or by the
time its land use committee met
on April 17 to issue their recommendation,
according to the
board’s leader.
“Our feeling was and still remains
that City Hall should have
distributed the guidelines and
principles at the public hearing
Brooklyn Paper
Talk about a fire festival!
Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks
will once again light up
the night sky over the Brooklyn
Bridge this year, according
to a rep for the famed department
store.
The pyrotechnic display
will launch tens of thousands
of shells and effects from the
span and from four barges off a
nearby Manhattan pier at about
9:20 p.m., stunning spectators
along the East River waterfront,
according to the department giant’s
master blaster.
“With a barrage of stunning
shells and effects launching
from its grand span and towers,
along with tens of thousands
more effects coloring the night
from barges on the lower East
River, this year’s display promises
to be a spectacle to remember,”
said Susan Tercero, the fireworks’
executive producer.
Macy’s has fired the patriotic
display for more than four decades
and this year it plans to
add three times more firepower
than last year, including from
more than a dozen points along
the Kings County’s namesake
bridge and its towers throughout
the 25-minute display.
The spectacle has attracted
millions of spectators in previous
years and the company will
announce the full details of the
viewing locations, access points,
special performances, and more
in early June.
For more information, visit
www.macys.com/social/fireworks
.
File photo by Stefano Giovannini
LIGHTING IT UP See JAIL on page 17
See DELAY on page 17
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Crafty kleptos are targeting a
Prospect Lefferts Gardens drop
box — and locals claim no one’s
mail is safe!
The blue mailbox at Midwood
Street and Flatbush Avenue is one
of the single most pilfered collection
points operated by the U.S.
Postal Service in the borough, according
to area advocates, who’ve
created a website called worstmailboxever.
com that locals can use
to petition the city for a more secure
drop box to send out their rent
checks and birthday cards.
“For years right here at Midwood
Street and Flatbush Avenue
our residents have had their
rent checks, bill payments, cards
to loved ones — you name it’s sic
been stolen from this mailbox,”
wrote Seth Kaplan, a longtime area
resident and prolific community
advocate, on the petition site that
went live Sunday. “It’s one of the
worst mailboxes in Brooklyn!”
The USPS blue box is a frequent
topic of discussion at community
meetings hosted by the 71st
Precinct, where cops and postal
reps have singled out that specific
crate, claiming mail there
frequently falls victim to socalled
“fishing scams,” according
to another peeved Prospect
Lefferts Gardens resident.
“It’s the most infamous mail
package theft in New York City
based on the NYPD and Postal
Service’s own admission,” said
Brian Cunningham, who launched
a hard-fought, but losing challenge
for Mathieu Eugene’s Council seat
in 2017. “This is a mailbox people
are advised not to use.”
The fishing scam is a lowtech,
but highly effective technique
for pulling letters from
USPS blue boxes using nothing
more than a length of string and
a sticky glue trap meant for capturing
rodents.
And the selfish scheme is hitting
senior citizens the hardest,
according to Cunningham, who
said many elders don’t realize their
mail’s been stolen until their landlords
start demanding payment
weeks, or even months after checks
were sent out.
“For seniors, who are paying
rent, paying bills, mail checks being
snatched up, or items being
sent to loved ones, is very distressing,”
he said.
NYPD spokeswoman Det. Mason
confirmed there were three
complaints related to that mailbox
this year, including one heist that
nabbed a pricey parcel worth more
than $1,000 on March 5, and officers
at the 71st Precinct are working
with the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service — the law-enforcement
arm of USPS — to outfit that box
with an anti-theft door.
Mailbox fishing scams are not
unique to the Flatbush Avenue drop
box, and the Postal Service is currently
in the process of either replacing,
or modifying all city blue
boxes to reduce theft, according
to USPS spokeswoman Maureen
Marion, who noted that mailboxes
are being replaced in order of highest
priority.
A spokeswoman for the Postal
Inspection Service confirmed that
mailbox is part of an ongoing investigation,
but would not provide
any additional information.
Brian Cunningham said the city must replace what he called
one of its most crime-plauged mailboxes with a more secure
version.
Photo by Trey Pentecost
Old ball game
The members of the Brooklyn Atlantics historic baseball
teams dress just like the team did in the 1860s. See them
at the Park Slope Spring Fling on May 18. Read more on
page 11 in GO Brooklyn.
Stephanie Oxenford
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