Unread letter day in Albany
Union to bus 800G pleas against cop-killer parole to capital
Sorrow filled a Harlem church Monday where mourners said goodbye to a promising Fordham University student who fell to her death from the school’s iconic clock tower.
Friends and family at the Mount Neboh Baptist Church on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. remembered Sydney Monfries as a loyal and ambitious go-getter who was excited about the next chapter in her life and career.
The 22-year-old journalism student, a resident of Portland, Ore., was weeks away from receiving her degree when she tripped on a landing and fell 40 feet through an opening in the stairs inside the Keating Hall tower with a group of fellow seniors early April 14.
The stair climb is an informal rite of passage jaunt for graduating seniors. Officials said Monfries scaled the tower with friends to take pictures of the city. The city’s largest police union is resorting to a bit of street theater to shine a spotlight on a serious issue: It’s busing 800,000 letters to Albany opposing the release of cop killers they say were never read by the state Parole Board.
A caravan of 10 buses carrying 400 police officers and 24 widows of slain cops on Wednesday will ferry 360 boxes of the letters to the Parole Board offices on Washington St. in the state capital.
The Daily News reported in March that Grace Russell, the widow of a cop fatally shot in 1979, discovered the letters had never been read by the Parole Board.
“I just think it’s a great way to make a statement physically rather just sending an email,” said Russell, 69, the widow of Officer Michael Russell, who was killed in 1979 in Brooklyn. “My sisters are going, my daughter, my brothers . ... The fact they never read them all these years is just horrible.”
Michael Russell was 30 when he was killed chasing a gunman who had shot a shop owner in East New York.
Grace Russell learned of the foulup when she asked parole officials in February how many letters it had received opposing the release of her husband’s killer.
Under a 2012 deal between the Police Benevolent Association and the Parole Board, people could submit a letter directly to the board from the union’s website. The board ended that two years later; the PBA thought it was indefinite.
“My daughter wondered how many [letters] they had gotten. I asked and a [board official] said that was only good for two years,” she told The News in March. “I was shocked, and then I got angry.”
State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesman Thomas Mailey on Monday said discontinuing online letters of opposition “has in no way prevented the PBA or anyone else from providing letters of opposition or support. The board always has — and continues to — accept letters that are electronically submitted through the department’s website or submitted by mail.”
The department would accept the letters being sent to Albany “and forward them to the Board of Parole to be reviewed and placed in the appropriate files,” Mailey said.
PBA President Patrick Lynch said the Wednesday event was a necessary “physical demonstration” to show the strength of the opposition to the parole of people convicted of murdering police.
“When you attack a police officer whose job it is to protect society from violence, then you attack all of society,” Lynch said.