CB12 leaders - whose tweet helped spark the backlash - spoke with BoroPark24 about 18th Avenue Park

Edel Pearlstein, chair of community board 12, here with Barry Spitzer, district manager. Uh, which we're happy everybody showed up here. We also uh you know normally I don't congratulate ourselves but I think that the tweet which got a right now over two and a half million views uh put a lot of pressure on all the city agencies the city council retweeted it the mayor retweeted it and it's making everybody take it on a very very serious level as far as not all the other incidents which happened in the past where they say all right let's see what we can do but in a few days later it passes I think people are starting to see that when you ignore these it. Look what ends up now and who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Um I told the city council speaker on the way out. Um to me it's special troubling that it's 15y old kids because that shows it wasn't just another act of vandalism. It shows that it's a issue with education. It's an issue of the surroundings of the adults around them of the kids in the school what they're discussing because these kids most probably don't even realize of what they did. So, we're happy that everybody's here taking it very serious and we're going to keep Commun 12 is going to keep on putting pressure every day, every night. Um, I think Barry was in talks supposed to be maybe a secret with the commissioner, right, of uh, you want to say what the commission told the commission of parks and he promised me that at least for now he's going to start the parks department will be locking the park every night and keep it locked uh, till the morning. Um, legally, the you're not allowed to be in a park after sunset anyways. But the parks department doesn't have the manpower to lock every park in New York City, but uh after what happened here, the parks the commissioner said that he's going to lock this park for the foreseeable future, >> right? And again, like I said, it's great to lock the parks and these things are great because we need it anyway, but this is not where the core of the problem is coming from. uh the core of the problem is coming from the education is which we have to work with the surrounding public schools and we have to continue putting pressure on the city council and the mayor to realize that when you speak hate it ends up becoming words end up becoming actions and of course we want to uh that we thank their work they do every day but especially with the the NYPD [snorts] the hate crime task force um how serious they're taking this situation and the the sham local sham which was around here uh with the minutes of when it happened and has been out here as far as even repainting the walls and >> they together they gathered with Kavaram they uh Sham Sham was here in the cold uh standing here for hours in in 10°ree weather um working supplying video uh canvasing uh tracking down if we can get good pictures from them. So Sham had a big hand in helping NYPD make the arrest they made today. the chairman said, as Edidel said, um the work they do every day, but now um I got to see a couple of days uh close hand how they work uh so well with the NYPD and uh there was a successful uh arrest today because of that work. >> Yakov Kaplan, Community Board 12. I'm happy that the actions that community board did that uh led that helped to this uh this conclusion and the arrest of the uh offenders uh community board 12 was out there from the start. They were there uh Barry Spitzer, our district manager, was there making sure that the uh right agencies took care of the situations and [snorts] um and very important that I want parents to know that this park is safe. The NYPD is here. The parks department is here. This park is safe. It has always been safe. These were just some younger children who are doing things and it's nothing to be uh scared of and we should and both of them were apprehended and we shouldn't be scared to use the park and continue to come out here. Today itself is a beautiful day and uh enjoy.