OSWEGO, NY – In the wake of a group of basketballers hooping it up on the court at Breitbeck Park, the hoops are coming down prematurely.
At Monday’s council meeting, Councilor Connie Cosemento (D-First Ward) announced the basketball hoops at Breitbeck Park will be removed as a “result of some unfortunate events.â€ÂÂ
“I guess, in the energy of the game, they have trouble with the alphabet. There’s one letter that repeatedly pops up,” the council vice president said alluding to the constant barrage of “F bombs” that park visitors and neighbors have been subjected to recently.
Cosemento has intervened on the residents’ behalf and the park workers, neighbors and the police have also spoken to the offenders.
“These people are not high school; and, they are not college students. They’re adults that mostly come from outside the city to use the courts,” she said. “Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything else that we can do; we cannot keep a police patrol there all of the time.”
There have been times when people, with children, using the pavilion near the courts have gotten up and left and gone to other parts of the park because of the basketballers’ behavior, Cosemento said, adding the playground is about 100 feet away from the court.
It’s not the young people, it’s an older crowd causing the trouble, she pointed out.
“People across the street can hear this stuff,” the councilor said. “I’ve received numerous complaints from neighbors, employees of the park and park-goers about the behavior of this bunch.”
“We mean business. I would rather take the rims down and maybe these folks will get the message and it won’t impact that much on the season,” she continued. “It’s unfortunate I don’t like to do this to kids because there are good users there. It’s another way of reminding people that they need to take charge of their own neighborhood, their own park, and say (this sort of behavior) is not OK.â€ÂÂ
Breitbeck is a premier park that attracts visitors from all over the region, Cosemento noted.
The hoops will be replaced in the spring.
For those interested in helping improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods and keeping them safe, a citywide neighborhood watch meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.
It will be held from 6-8 p.m. in the Community Room of the Oswego Public Library.
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Put the hoops back up, instead of acting like a child and taking your toys and going home. I have never used that park but a park is for the public whether they reside in Oswego or not. Is profanity excuseable not always but they are adults, so write tickets instead of pulling down the hoops. There again you may not be able to because of the first ammendment and freedom of speech. Did you ever take the local kids into consideration who may need to practice there to get ready for school. Besides its not like most kids havent heard or spoken those same profane words that are showing up on the court. Many Kids are well versed or become so in the use of swear words by the time they enter school. Is it desireable to go to the park with small ones that don’t know them? No, but this is America and regardless of whether it is swear words or not we are all protected under the constitutions first ammendment freedom of speech. Thus you may be violating the rights of others and could be held accountable in a court of law.
On another note if this approach is taken to the next level say, closing parks. Then I hope they start this policy in Fulton because I promise you I along with many other taxpayers will be in every park tomorrow swearing away until they close all the parks so it reduces our taxes since our politicians are incapable of cutting our taxes and budgets any other obvious ways.
Mark,
I agree that 1st amendment rights could be an issue here. But I think the council removing the hoops before approaching the group and asking they curb their offensive language was premature and wrong. After, if there was no satisfaction, then a warning that the hoops would be removed if there was continued offenses would be appropriate.
This also a good example of the frame of mind of the Political structure in our county.
Actions taken based on complaints of a few malcontents or in this case “a few offended” without polling the general population. Saying swear words in public is not against the law unless it is directed at someone or group in a defamatory or discriminatory way.
The actions of the council in this case, without exploring other alternatives, just tells me that they shouldn’t be on the council !
Another clueless “cut our tax” argument. Maybe tax whiners need to learn budgets and accounting to realize everything gets more expensive. If you’d like no services, no fire, no police, no city water, etc., great, we can do away with taxes. That said, 99% of us can’t, and so the choice is run a budget deficit which, someone has to pay for, that’s not funny money, or pay taxes. Maybe it sucks to live in the current world like we do but taxes are needed, don’t like it? Move to another country.
And FYI, the country with the largest deficit, again, real money, money that our future generations will have to somehow figure out because of whiners and the Republicans acting recklessly with the budgets, 300 times more than the nearest country, yep, the US. This is what keeping low taxes has gotten us… as a country, very soon, bankrupt.