Mayor's Office Says No Press At Heated Queens Jail Meeting

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Reporters were banned from a heated meeting in Queens about a much-contested plan to build a new jail in Kew Gardens.

Dozens of Queens residents argued Thursday night with Mayor's Office representatives for more than two hours over the proposed jail, which is one of five possibilities to replace the detention center on Rikers Island, attendees later told Patch.

"They don't seem to get the message," Queens resident Sylvia Hack said. "This is the wrong project for the wrong community."

Patch planned to be one of those attendees, but a spokesperson from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice refused to allow our reporter entry, saying it was closed to press. Patch reached out to that spokesperson on Monday for comment.

"They aren't public meetings," Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for the mayor, wrote on Twitter. "The general public isn't invited en masse."

Phillips did not respond to Patch's requests on Thursday and Friday for further comment.

Several Queens locals expressed their anger that a journalist had been barred from reporting on the plans, which they argue would only worsen mounting congestion near the Queens Criminal Court, Queens Boulevard, the Van Wyck Expressway, Grand Central Parkway and Union Turnpike.

"How did they throw you out? It's a public space," Hack said. "They can't decide any such thing. It's our community center. They had no right to throw you out."

"Something of this scope needs to be a transparent process," added Andrea Crawford, a Kew Gardens resident and member of the jail project's neighborhood advisory committee.

Crawford argued Thursday's meeting, should have been open to the press because local community associations, such as the Community Preservation Committee, had invited others who don't sit on the advisory board.

"It's a demonstration of their trying to prevent light being shed on this very poorly constructed farce that they're engaging the neighborhood," Crawford added.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to build four new jails throughout the city to replace the notorious Rikers Island jail in 2018. The Kew Gardens jail at 126-02 82nd Ave. would be 30 stories high — 1.9 million square feet — with 1,510 beds, according to the Forest Hills Post.

To gather community input on each of the new jails, the Mayor's Office created "Neighborhood Advisory Committees" to meet with local stakeholders. Those meetings have so far been shrouded in secrecy.

The Mayor's Office has barred the press from the meetings, as The Villager has reported, stating that the meetings are closed without providing a specific explanation of the rationale for that decision. Jan Lee, who attended one of the neighborhood advisory meetings for the new jail in Chinatown, told Patch that the Mayor's Office told him to stop recording the meeting.

"A meeting to gather 'input from Queens residents' certainly should be open to the local press," said Patch editor-in-chief Dennis Robaugh. "The only reason to exclude the press is to limit public debate and discussion on an important neighborhood and city issue."

At Thursday's Kew Gardens meeting, attendees raised concerns such as how the jail would be evacuated in the case of an emergency, Crawford said. Officials reportedly answered that the building is fire-proof so the detained individuals would not have to be evacuated.

Attendees also mentioned a plan for an acute care medical center at the Kew Gardens site that would serve all four new jails, according to Crawford, who said she's concerned about the congestion that would bring.

"They still didn’t have answers to the questions we’ve been asking for months,” she said.

"This is not a ‘not in my backyard’ situation," Crawford added. "This jail is wrong, its concept is wrong.”

This article has been updated to clarify that Jan Lee was asked not to record a neighborhood advisory committee meeting. The article initially said he was asked not to record a scoping hearing.