Parole Facility Planned Next Door to St. Ann's School
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is planning to open a major parole facility at 147 Pierrepont Street, a Ratner-owned property located between the lower and middle school buildings of St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights. The new center, which would consolidate two existing parole offices in the Downtown area, is slated to serve 1,700 Federal parolees…
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is planning to open a major parole facility at 147 Pierrepont Street, a Ratner-owned property located between the lower and middle school buildings of St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights. The new center, which would consolidate two existing parole offices in the Downtown area, is slated to serve 1,700 Federal parolees and be manned by armed guards, according to an email from a member of the school community. A call to Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s office revealed that she and other public officials are trying to schedule a press conference at some point in the future to protest the location of the new facility. They better get moving: The new space (pictured on the jump) is supposed to be open for business as early as mid-August, just in time to welcome the kids back to school. UPDATE: This statement just in from Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez: Locating a parole office just steps away from a school is extremely troubling. Anything that puts the security of our children at risk is unacceptable. Before all other considerations, their safety must be the top priority.GMAP
I’ve been teaching at St. Ann’s for over 30 years. It’s a city school–safe for reasons that make suburban schools unsafe. Our safety comes from knowing all kinds of people firsthand, and knowing that people, young and old, live in the same society, gate their communities how they will. The biggest danger, statistically, to teenage people is not parolees or other potential lawbreakers, it is the automobiles they use to get around and hang out beyond the reach of urban public transportation. For kids under those ages, I could easily argue that the greatest risk could be poor immunities due to lack of everyday contact with large numbers of disease carriers. That’s the paradox: protect yourself by excluding others and you run the greater risk that the protection will fail. I’ll throttle incipient references to national politics except to point out that the Eastern (east of Brooklyn Bridge) and Southern (west of Brooklyn Bridge)Districts of the federal court system are quite separate, but that both handle drug prosecutions, which are, because of the dumb “war on drugs,” an overflow business in every District.
These offices are already scattered throughout the neighborhood (both U.S. and State). It doesn’t sound like there’s an increase in capacity planned.
I walk past the state parole office every day on Livingston & Nevins. On the days where they have appointments there will be a bunch of folks outside lined up and/or smoking. It was a little unsettling at first, as they’re a scary-looking bunch, but over time I’ve realized it’s just not a big deal — if you’re going to worry about all the “bad people” you might run into on the street, near the courts, on the subway, etc. you might as well move to a gated community in New Jersey.
In any event, it turns out that parolees waiting to see their parole officer tend to be on their best behavior, since THEY’RE ABOUT TO SEE THEIR PAROLE OFFICER, WHO CAN SEND THEM BACK TO JAIL.
Some of the screechy, whiney st. ann’s parents think that parolees on pierrepont st are fine and that the other screechy, whiney st. ann’s parents should just shut up about this, like right about now. The complaining and call to arms in incessant emails is unseemly and NIMBY and the facility is fine where it is. We live in a CITY. You don’t like it, sent Ophelia and Harrison to Andover and move to Westport. Please? We’d all be so much happier that way.
The building pictured has St Ann’s foreign language classrooms in it. Maybe even the Greek classes.
St Ann’s does not have a “smoking room” except in the sense that it offers a smoking hot education in most of its rooms.
St Ann’s and nearby courts/jails/urban life have co-existed for many years with no obvious detriment to either institution. I’d be surprised if St Ann’s or any but its wackiest parents get up in arms about the parole office moving 2 blocks over.
We had a smoking room in my high school. Ah, good times.
Did St. Ann’s really have a smoking room?
On the flip side, this could be a learning experience for the students.
“147 Pierrepont Street, a Ratner-owned property located between the lower and middle school buildings of St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights” –
so how is this ‘Between’ – isn’t the one school closer to Clinton and the other one over further on Henry?
The ‘Ratner-owned’ (gotta add that in, ’cause it is real relevant’) building is corner of Cadman Plaza, isn’t it?
In addition to St. Ann’s, the Rotunda Gallery and the Brooklyn Historical Society are on this block. Both bring in a lot of school groups. The library is just down the block. That street is usually full of kids; absolute worst spot you could imagine for this facility. This is really bad news.