Needle Alert: Panic In Sandbox Park!

Don't you hate it when you're building a kick-ass sand castle in your favorite sandbox, and you're digging with your plastic blue shovel, and the sun is beating down on your skin, and your overalls are getting all dirty, and you have to avoid the used needle sticking out of the ground? We do. So do families in Great Kills, Staten Island, where a mother found such an item sticking up in a sandbox at the newly opened Seaside Wildlife Nature Park where her child was playing.

She was sent on the red tape merry-go-round between 911, 311 and Parks and Recreation, who said they'd get back to her by email in a week or so. "I don’t want to see the park destroyed. It’s beautiful, but we have a right to enjoy it free of litter, free of language, free of drug paraphernalia," said the mom.

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By Ben Yakas in News on October 13, 2010 6:25 PM

Comments [rss]

Spudster

Sigh. Similar story: last year my neighbor found a needle in the playground where she was playing with her 2-year-old (Gulick Park, off Delancey St.). She threw away the needle and called both the police and the Parks Dept. several times; each office told her it was the responsibility of the other. As a result, neither department filed her report.

krinkle cut fires

I have definitely noticed a spike (HA!) in the number of used needles on the sidewalks and parks around the east village over the last few months. It kinds of sucks, but at the same time, it is one of those "gritty New York" experiences that drew me here from Ohio in the first place.

PaulaNYC

I'm sure glad that the liberals in the NYS Legislature decided that the Rockefeller Drug Laws were "racist" and had to be repealed.

That way, all these fine victims of racial prejudice will be able to spread their filth wherever they like with impunity. And ultra-liberal Attorney General candidate Eric Schneiderman will keep them out prison because, as we all know, they're victims of racism.

random transplant

PaulaNYC, the whole point to 'drop the rock' was that it was ineffective at combating drugs.

Drug use rose and rose and rose under rockefeller drug laws.

What they need is a tarp over the sand - syringe today, bird poop tomorrow. Maybe a couple street lights wouldn't hurt.

MOST syringes are used by diabetics, no? We should make insiline use punishable by twenty years on the first offense. Obviously.

OSN!

eitan:

Check out this site on alexa.com. It'll give you all kinds of info like reader demographics and what not. And you're right, demographics slant heavily towards young, unmarried, no kids,female.

I was in the small parking lot of my local train station early am the other day and saw:

condoms

beer,vodka bottles

dudes underwear

lots of butts

fresh graffiti

various other signs of vandalism

In the past I've also seen syringes.

This place is right across the street from residences and businesses. I'm sure whoever was responsible for the mess made a lot of noise. Didn't neighbors call the cops? Didn't cops show up?