Police 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.
