Big Wigs Say Boro Isn’t A bus Stop for Ex-Cons

After spending 10 days in the mens lockdown on Rikers Island, Enno Tianen wasnt thinking about mischief as his corrections bus pulled up to Queens Plaza just before dawn last Thursday.
He was thinking about eggs. Runny. With enough hash browns, Wonder Bread and orange juice to help a 22-year-old four-time-loser forget about prison; the fitful nights sleeping next to grunting, angry strangers and the days spent counting empty time and making empty vows.
"I am not thinking about crime anymore, especially tonight," said Tianen, who pledged hed be trading in his graffiti paint cans for a career in graphic arts.
Though a free man, Tianen, like the other newly released prisoners seated in Donuts Unlimited, gulped down his food as if still being prodded by prison guards.
"I just want to fill up my stomach and get home to my girlfriend."
Ask anyone in authority if the busload of Rikers inmates who are released four mornings a week in Queens Plaza cause trouble and youll routinely hear that they dont. The police, community board heads, local politicians and business bigwigs all agree that complaints about the ex-cons who are completing sentences of less than a year for non-violent crimes, mainly misdemeanors are few and far between.
Neighborhood Improvement
So, if the Department of Corrections (DOC) has been dropping off released prisoners in Queens Plaza without incident for nearly two decades, why are the same officials now doing everything in their power to rid the area of the Rikers buses?
The answer can be found in the Citys multi-million dollar facelift for the area, a blueprint to lure large companies from Westchester and New Jersey, unify the transportation hub, increase foot traffic and generally turn Queens Plaza into the "Gateway to the Borough."
Already on the drawing board are a 1.5 million square foot development on the site of the City-owned municipal garage on Jackson Ave., which will include office and retail space, said John Young, director of the Queens office of the Department of City Planning. The Department of Transportation has also earmarked $2 million to redesign the roads in the plaza to attract more pedestrian traffic. Other large-scale developments are also in the works, particularly between 27 and 28 Sts., on Queens Plaza South, but only if the area overcomes what Young, Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Woodside), Borough President Helen Marshall, and others call its "image problem."
"If you are trying to market an area you have to offer people a good perception of that area," said Dan Miner, executive director of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation. "Im sure they could find other places to send the buses."
Much of the uproar over the Rikers buses is being expressed directly or indirectly by MetLife, the insurance giant that moved 900 of its employees to Long Island City last November. With plans to break ground on a new 12-story structure next door to its current location later this month, MetLife officials say that appearances are more important than ever.
"Before moving in, we were assured that there was a commitment on a City, a state and local levels to revitalizing the area," said Met Life spokesman John Calagna, who admitted that his company got no promises from either City Hall or Borough Hall about the Rikers buses before the company moved last year.
Bus Stop
No one is really sure when the Rikers prisoners were first let off in Queens, only that the drops have been occurring for a long time.
George Delis, district manager of Community Board 1 said that the practice began at Queens Plaza 17 years ago. Before that, the newly freed prisoners were left in front of the Neptune Diner on 31st St. in Astoria, where they routinely hung out "waiting for their friends," said Delis.
Not even DOC spokesman Tom Antenen can pinpoint when the Rikers buses first began to roll. What he is certain about, however, is the belief that the communitys concern over the ex-cons is misplaced. "Our experience is that they dont hang out in the area," said Antenen, who said that the DOC recently did a videotape of the bus drop at Queens Plaza to prove that the ex-prisoners neither loiter nor break the law.
Local merchants overwhelmingly agree, a pre-dawn visit to the area by The Queens Courier revealed.
"These guys want to eat something sweet and then get on the subway," said Mohammed Haq, who has worked at the neighborhood Dunkin Donuts for a year and a half. "If the buses didnt come here we would lose money."
Antenen rejects two proposals that have been floated for solving the conflict; the first would drop prisoners off in their home boroughs, instead of all in Queens; the second would alternate the prisoner drops from borough to borough.
But both plans would violate the prisoners rights, by leaving them in custody longer than necessary, said Antenen. "After midnight on the day of their release they are free. We have no right to keep them," he said. "Thats why we drop them at the closest place possible."