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Read the press release here.

Parole Office Across from Whole Foods Will Serve Up to 400 Ex-Cons a Day

By Leslie Albrecht | September 16, 2014 1:11pm
 The construction site at 15 2nd Ave. in Gowanus, where a parole office is scheduled to open in January 2015.
The construction site at 15 2nd Ave. in Gowanus, where a parole office is scheduled to open in January 2015.
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DNAinfo/Nikhita Venugopal

GOWANUS — About 300 to 400 ex-cons a day will visit a new parole office opening in January across from a Whole Foods gourmet food store, officials said Monday.

Representatives from the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision met with locals Monday night to reveal details of the parole facility, which will serve roughly 4,000 parolees from across Brooklyn.

Neighbors said the meeting left them shocked and worried about safety. "The sheer numbers of traffic — 40 [parolees] an hour and 400 day — is terrifying, really," said Frieda Lim, a member of the Eighth Street Block Association.

The three-story, 55,000-square-foot-building at 15 Second Ave., across the Gowanus Canal from Brooklyn's first Whole Foods, will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., officials said. Parolees will report there to meet with their parole officers, get tested for drug use and to access services such as job placement and housing help.

The goal of the office is to help former inmates build a new life post-prison, said DOCCS Deputy Commissioner Tom Herzog. "Our job is to put us out of business."

About 97 parole officers will work at the facility, along with 35 support staff and five bureau chiefs, officials said. Video cameras will monitor the outside of the building.

DOCCS officials played down neighbors' safety concerns, saying that the former parole center at 350 Livingston St. opened in the late 1980s and had only one serious incident a parolee walked in and shot a parole officer at his desk in 2008.

"We've never had problems," said DOCCS Regional Director Mary Smith. "[Parolees] come in, they make their report, then they want to get away from us as quickly as possible. They don't linger."

City Councilman Brad Lander said he supports the agency's mission of helping former inmates, but he was "disappointed" that DOCCS failed to tell locals of plans for the new office until July 2014 — nearly three years after the agency started its search for a new building.

Lander said the community was still waiting for answers to a list of questions about the facility that Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman sent to DOCCS in July. The verbal responses given at Monday's meeting were a start, Lander said, but “for this to have any credibility, there have to be really solid written answers to those questions."

Brooklyn's parole operations were previously divided among three sites, but DOCCS lost its lease at all three locations, said DOCCS Deputy Commissioner Dan Marticello. 

The agency launched a search for a new location in 2011 and came up with four options, including a site at 239-257 Butler St. in Gowanus and 5205 Third Ave. in Sunset Park. Some sites were ruled out because they were too close to schools or daycare centers, Marticello said.

Neighbors said DOCCS didn't seem to be aware how much Gowanus has changed since 2011. The neighborhood is quickly transforming from a sleepy industrial backwater to a magnet for new businesses and real estate development.

Many of those businesses are unaware of plans for the parole office, said Eighth Street Block Association member Ellen Foote. 

"I don't think the community at large is aware of this," Foote said. "It's not on the radar. Even people with businesses across the street and next door are oblivious. They're going to be sorely impacted."