A Note from Washington Square Park Blog on the NYPD “Community” meeting

Updated 3:56 p.m. – WSP Blog Ed. Note:

Washington Square Park Blog is concerned at how last night’s NYPD meeting (6/16) addressing issues at Washington Square Park played out. Over the last 13 years of this blog’s existence covering virtually every meeting addressing this park, the city’s Parks Department and Community Board 2 have taken a lead role in oversight, addressing ‘issues’ at the park at public CB2 meetings. Rarely, but occasionally, the NYPD would attend. Instead, this important meeting was handed over to the New York City Police Department’s Sixth Precinct entirely. It’s disconcerting that concerns would be passed on to the NYPD to ‘police’ this public space. It’s the scuttling of civilian mechanisms for deriving policy decisions. There is a precedent for how issues at city parks have been handled for years; curiously, all such mechanisms were disregarded which – intentionally? – only heightened tensions.

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