Work begins to open high school in September

Letters to the editor

Ferry editorial

To The Editor:
I agree with your editorial this week about ferry pollution (July 8 – 14, 2003, editorial, “Ferry pollution”). It’s so smokey. And it’s somewhere where kids play. I suggest they clean the motors of the boats. We have picnics there, but now my mom won’t want to have them. There are always boats there and a big cloud of smoke comes right over the lawn.

Caroline Scannell, 8 years old

Closure endangers neighbors

To The Editor:
The continued closing of Park Row has ramifications that go beyond the immediate area (news article, July 8 –14, 2003, “Judge says police are ‘heavy handed’ on Park Row”).

Any surrounding areas (Little Italy, Chinatown, Lower East Side, Soho, Civic Center, workers in Federal Plaza, the courts & tourists) that depend on emergency response from NYU Downtown Hospital and Fire Engine #6 on Beekman St should also be concerned because the response time from these units can more than double. The only north/south street in this area is St James Pl. — a heavily-trafficked, one-lane-each-way street, never designed to handle the volume of weekday traffic that takes place. An emergency vehicle must battle its way through constantly backed-up traffic with four city bus lines and increased truck and auto traffic just to get to Chatham Square. If that vehicle has to go to Little Italy or west on Worth St, you can add more valuable minutes.

I have personally seen a fire engine get stuck – horn, lights and sirens going. Ambulances also. This can be verified by speaking with the drivers.

City Hall/N.Y.P.D. have put these communities in peril by closing Park Row (under the guise of security) and using it as the private parking area for N.Y.P.D. H.Q. personnel.

Rich Scorce
Reopen Park Row Committee

Doublespeak on Park Row

To The Editor:
The technique for making a lie appear true is to keep repeating it, as everyone in either advertising or the political propaganda business knows.

In reporting on the court hearing of June 27th concerning the closing of Park Row, the city’s attorney, Janet Siegel, is paraphrased as saying, “there were security dangers connected to allowing private vehicles near the police headquarters infrastructure” (news article, July 8 –14, 2003, “Judge says police are ‘heavy handed’ on Park Row”)

Apart from being a perfect example of Orwellian duckspeak (“the appropriate noises come out of a person’s larynx, but their brain is not involved because there is a gap between real aims and declared ones”), the city’s attorney is repeating a falsehood. Private vehicles (nearly one hundred, and with out of state license plates) have been parked adjacent to Police Plaza, since the street was officially closed.

The N.Y.P.D. suffers from a shortage of parking places because members of the police force do not use public transportation.

Since the seeds of violence and acts of terrorism are sown in the soil of fraudulence, injustice, and duckspeak, both the city and the N.Y.P.D. are contributing to a bleak future for themselves and those who happen to be their neighbors.

Shelly Estrin