Bill locks himself in
lose Rikers” is a catchy progressive rallying cry; New York City’s old jail complex is wretched in too many ways to count. But the well-intentioned bleeding hearts who want to get it done need to be honest: Building the borough jails necessary to replace the island detention facilities can clang against other progressive priorities.
Which is exactly what looks to be happening in the South Bronx.
When politicians and advocates first got behind the movement to shutter Rikers, their ambitious timetable was 10 years. Then other activists, ignoring the immense complexities of slashing the already lower-than-in-memory jail population, demanded it happen in seven, no five, no three years. Say, how about yesterday?
But consigning Rikers to history begins with picking sites for those new correctional facilities — a task at which Mayor de Blasio, cheerleader for the movement, has so far proved clumsy.
First, he unwisely ruled out Staten Island for any new facility, giving the lie to the notion that, fair is fair, boroughs would each hold their own arrestees. Then, he faced the challenge of finding a site in the Bronx. (In Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, new jails will naturally go near courts, where there are already smaller existing facilities.)
In February, after a prod from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, de Blasio selected and Johnson joined with him to get behind a site in the South Bronx. A press conference conveyed every certainty the jail will go where an NYPD tow pound now sits.
Turned out, nobody had consulted with the community much beyond Councilwoman Diana Ayala, protégé of former Speaker and close-Rikers instigator Melissa Mark-Viverito — and in this case, the community has real cause to raise a stink.
This is no standard-issue NIMBY howl. The site would saddle a struggling neighborhood, for years scarred by virulent drug dealing and gang warfare and now in the midst of a fragile revival, with a jail that could well encourage rival gangsters to stop by for a visit via the No. 6 train.
The heart of the community is a collection of government-subsidized residential buildings known as Diego Beekman. Once run down and crime-ridden, they’ve clawed their way back. New nonprofit management of the complex shored up broken finances, fixed up 1,200 apartments, deployed intensive security and evicted tenants who harbored criminals.
Diego Beekman residents hoped to complete the turn around the corner toward vitality with a 2017 plan that includes developing housing and a supermarket at the NYPD pound — the same pound where de Blasio now wants to put the jail.
The mayor’s people say that the lot, 2 miles from the courthouse, is the only place remotely nearby that is also near a subway station, owned by the city and big enough for the purpose. Prove it.
“I’m not obligated or tied to that site,” Johnson, who just last month backed the site, told the Daily News Editorial Board this week when asked about the local blowback.
No wonder he’s backpedaling. Will de Blasio?