July 16, 2008

Federal Probation Officer Defends Proximity to St. Ann's

In response to the story we broke last week about the federal parole office set to share a building with St. Ann's School, Tony Garoppolo, Chief Probation Officer of the Eastern District, pictured above, forwarded us a letter he recently sent to parents defending the decision. "Our anonymity has been blown," he told us, adding that his agency has been in the neighborhood, within walking distance from the court system, since the 1930s. "So I guess the best solution is to be out in the open with everything." The new office would share One Pierrepont Plaza with St. Ann's middle and high schools, and is flanked by St. Ann's main elementary, middle and high school buildings. The parolees and students would not share an entrance, he said. In the letter, Garoppolo discusses the level of security expected at the new building, owned by Forest City Ratner; that they moved after being forced out of their present office to make way for condos; and the types of crimes committed by their parolees. Yes, there will be sex offenders. "Our sex offenders generally have no criminal record for ever having abused a child," he wrote. "Their crimes are generally downloading child pornography images onto their personal computers and being stimulated by viewing the images." The Brooklyn Eagle has a follow-up article and a column further delving into concerns about the move, and frustrations among parents and elected officials over not being notified of the decision in advance. Click through to read the letter. Editor's note: The final paragraph of Garoppolo's letter was omitted in the original post. In it, he invites St. Anne's parents to a meeting to discuss the move and included his contact information. He asked that we include that paragraph in the post.
Parole Facility Planned Next Door to St. Ann's School [Brownstoner]
Probation Office to Share Building With Elite Brooklyn Hts. School [Brooklyn Eagle]
Probation Office Controversy: Consequences of Hiding Decision [Brooklyn Eagle]

Parents, I am the Chief of U.S. Probation Office in the Eastern Disrict of New York. I'm going to provide you with some historical background and factual information about our agency and its long standing location in Brooklyn Heights.

First let me address the security guard concerns that I know some of you have. All non-law enforcement visitors are screened for weapons prior to entering our reception area, and this is done inside the building. Our security for Pierrepont will be upgraded as we are being assigned Court Security Officers (CSOs) to conduct the weapons screening. Weapons screening is performed to enhance the safety of the office work environment for our staff.

I obtained more detailed information this morning about the CSOs from the Chief of Operations for the U.S. Marshals Service in our district. The Marshals Service will be supervising our security at Pierrepont. The CSOs are the most upscale and professional contract security officers employed by the federal government. They are the same security officers who screen vistiors for weapons in the lobby of the U.S. Court House, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and U.S. Attorney's Office on Cadman Plaza East. They are retired, federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who are carefully screened for their positions, and all have to pass a firearms proficiency and safety examination every year conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service. They are also deputized by the Marshals Service to provide them with federal arrest power if needed.

Our Probation Office is an agency of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which covers the counties of Richmond, Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk. We have been located in the Brooklyn Heights area since the inception of our agency in the 1930's, first being located at the Post Office on Cadman Plaza East, which formerly housed the U.S. Court House. In the 1970's we grew to be too big to stay in the Court House, and moved to our first commercial office building at 175 Remsen St. Several years later we had to expand and we added an office at 189 Montague St.

We have to be located within a very short walking distance of the U.S. Court House and the U.S. Attorney's Office, as our officers are streaming back and forth between those locations and our offices every weekday. Further, our judges sometimes need to see one or more of our staff on almost an immediate basis. We also need to be located very near a major subway complex with the most lucrative subway lines for easy access to our office, and being near the 7th Avenue and Lexington Avenue lines, among others, serves that purpose. In 1988, we moved to our present headquarters location at 75 Clinton St., and expanded a few years later to a smaller office at 111 Livingston St.

Until now, community residents have generally been unaware of our presence. We have been unknown because during the entire history of our agency, we have never had any type incident near our building space, and none of our offenders have ever been arrested for any criminal acts in Brooklyn Heights. This is the last place they would misbehave. Also, our offenders have never loitered in front of our building space, and we would never allow it. They generally want to get away from us and leave the area as soon as their office business with us is over.

Our building at 75 Clinton St. is now delapidated and has become a very uncomfortable work environment for our staff. To address that issue, the original plan was to have the landlord renovate the building, close 111 Livingston St., and consolidate all of our staff in a newly modeled 75 Clinton St. But the landlord was dissatisfied with the rent offer made by The General Services Administration (GSA), and he sold the building to a developer who is waiting for us leave so that he can, as I have been told, convert the building to condo apartments. GSA canvassed landlords in this area about taking us in, and the only suitable building that expressed interest was Pierrepont Plaza.

Pierrepont management vetted us thoroughly, coming to our offices several times, touring our entire faciltiies, and interviewing members of my staff. They correctly concluded they we are not much different than the U.S. Attorney's Office which they had at Pierrepont for many years without incident. Offenders out on bail enter and leave the the U.S. Attorney's Office on a daily basis. Our officers see up to half of our NYC offenders in the field in lieu of coming to the office.

Our Brooklyn based operation supervises slighlty over half of our offenders, the remainder, living in Eastern Queens and Long Island, being covered by our Central Islip Office in Suffolk County. Most of our offenders have no history of violence. They are mostly wholesale, high level drug distributors and smugglers, and various types of white collar offenders. The wholesale drug traffickers are not the type of offender that sells drugs in the street to drug abusers and addicts.

Such offenders are prosecuted by the local district attorneys and supervised by NYC Probation and NYS Parole. Our white collar offenders were involved in crimes such as myriad financial fraud shcemes, money laundering, bribery of public officials, income tax evasion, customs violtions, defrauding medicaid and medicare, and defrauding financial lending institutions. I know one or more parents were concerned about us supervising murderers. That would be a very rare occurrence. Those prosecuted in federal court for crimes involving murder are generally sentenced to life or the death penalty. Parole in the federal system was abolished in 1987, so a life sentence means life, unlike the NYS system.

We have a small subset of offenders who are classified as sex offenders. But these are not the type of offender who a parent would understandably first think about. Our sex offenders generally have no criminal record for ever having abused a child. Their crimes are generally downloading child pornography images onto their personal computers and being stimulated by viewing the images. They also usually traded such images with other like minded people over the internet. The viewing of child porn tends to be an addiction. We have the best sex offender officers and program in the country.

Our protocols and equipment are being studied by NYS as a model for supervising sex offenders, as we have been assisting NYS in the State's plans to upgrade its handling of sex offenders in the NYS system. We realize that an individual who views child porn may be more likely than the average person to abuse a child. With that in mind we routinely conduct physical surveillance on such offenders, and we subject them to polygraph (lie detector) examinations periodically with our own officer doing the tesitng. Further, we place security software on any internet portal they have to check on which web sites they are visiting. They are also in treatment with contract psychotherapists who specialize in treating sex offenders.

I hope that Ben and I will be able to organize a meeting soon to address all of your issues, and to give you an opportunity to ask as many questions as you wish. I will await contact from Ben about suggested dates and times for such a meeting. My Court can provide meeting space in the late afternoon/early evening. For the time being, if you have one or two questions you would individually like to get answered, feel free to call me at my office at 347-534-3717. The best time to call is in the early morning.

Tony Garoppolo

In above photo, St. Anne's School main building is at left; the building that houses some middle and high school classes, where the parole office is set to move, is at right.

Posted by sarah ryley at 10:31 AM | Comments (35)
Categories: Brooklyn Heights, Crime, Downtown Brooklyn, Quality of Life, Schools

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