April 26, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 17
Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts- The current issue
- Neighborhood Map
- Bay Ridge
- Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
- Brooklyn Heights
- Downtown, DUMBO
- Carroll Gardens
- Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
- Fort Greene
- Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
- North Brooklyn
- Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
- Park Slope
- Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
- GO Brooklyn
- Brooklyn Cyclones
- Not Just Nets
- Police Blotter
- Perspective
- Parenting
- Politics
- Transit
- Podcasts
- The Brooklyn Bride
- Brooklyn Boom
- Classifieds
- Merchant news
- About The Paper
- RSS Feeds
-
A man was ticketed by police for walking through Cobble Hill Park after closing time — now he’s heading to court.
Similar stories
Print this story
digg
del.icio.usPolice swept through Cobble Hill Park at least twice last week, issuing summonses to several people for allegedly violating the park’s curfew.
Neighbors around the park, boxed in by Congress, Clinton, and Henry streets and the mews-like Verandah Place, complained of late-night carousing inside the park, leading to the police crackdown, according to a source in the 76th Precinct.
But one of the people snared in the dragnet said she and her husband were being quiet as mice and should not have been ticketed because their stroll was a victimless crime.
“They are doing more harm than good, messing with people out for an evening constitutional,” said a woman whose husband was issued a summons. Though she was with her spouse last Thursday, cops let her off the hook because she didn’t have any identification with her.
She requested anonymity to protect her husband, a lawyer applying for admission to the New York State Bar.
She added that several people walking dogs or sitting on benches were also given summonses, which requires an appearance at the Community Court in Red Hook, where a judge can mete out a fine or impose community service penalties on trespassers.
The question of what time the park becomes off-limits is open for debate, because the signs are inconsistent. At the entrances on Congress Street and Verandah Place, the posted rules say the park closes at dusk, but another one, near the playground, says 9 pm is the cutoff.
On a recent evening in Cobble Hill Park, as the sun was setting, several parents were more concerned by the reports of youths drinking beers and smoking joints in the park — which belies the park’s reputation for good, clean fun — than by enforcement of closing time.
“That’s why we like this park more than Carroll Park,” said Alicia Chang, referring to the Carroll Gardens venue which saw a spate of incidents last summer involving stone-throwing, roughhousing ragamuffins.
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
Enter your comment below
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
