A transcript of two state Supreme Court hearings that placed serial rapist James McKinney in the Midtown Inn, a short walk from Niagara Street School, reveals that the state Attorney General's office knowingly violated the terms of McKinney's parole by insisting on the Midtown as his place of residence.
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As many as 24 deviant sexual predators have been sent to the Midtown, which sits in the middle of a busy commercial strip surrounded by a residential neighborhood on the city's East Side.
So why would the Attorney General's office demand that he be sent there, when one of the conditions of his parole is that he must "refrain from contact with any other sexual offender, except during treatment sessions," a regulation further strengthened in McKinney's case by state Supreme Court Justice Richard Kloch, who ordered that he "not fraternize with anyone who has a criminal record"?
Kloch has been the target of much criticism for sending McKinney to Niagara Falls, but the transcript clearly shows that his intention was to send the man who raped and sodomized four underage girls in North Tonawanda back to stay in his mother's home there, where he lived prior to serving a seven-year prison sentence for his crimes.
When Assistant Attorney General Wendy Whiting objected, saying that McKinney's mother's Pioneer Drive home represented a danger for parole officers who would have to visit him there, Kloch suggested Hennigan House in Buffalo. Whiting objected again, this time on the grounds that arrangements for McKinney's treatment had already been made in Niagara County.
Under the terms of the state's 2007 civil confinement law, dangerous sexual predators who have what is called an incurable "mental abnormality" that causes their deviant behavior, are permitted to re-enter society rather than spending the rest of their lives in mental institutions.
The legislation was proposed by then-governor Eliot Spitzer and backed enthusiastically by Democrats in the state Legislature, including our own state Rep. Francine Del Monte, who co-sponsored the bill along with her leader, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The controversial law has already resulted in a number of cases in which sexual predators have struck again, the "confinement" to which they are subjected being no barrier to their uncontrolled desire to have sex with children.
It was only after the state Attorney General's office shot down McKinney's mother's house and Hennigan House that the prospect of housing him at the Midtown sprang up, and even then Whiting couldn't remember the name of the place.
Until she was corrected by a parole officer seated in the gallery, she repeatedly referred to the Niagara Street flophouse as Mid-City.
There is no evidence in any of the transcripts that the Attorney General's office, the judge or anyone else -- aside from the parole officer -- had any idea where the Midtown is, much less that it is in close proximity to an elementary school, a youth wrestling center, a Dairy Queen restaurant and a Wilson Farms store where school kids buying snacks must now wait in line with convicted sexual predators.
At a meeting hastily arranged by Del Monte at the Niagara Street School two weeks ago, lip service was paid to the concerns of neighborhood residents, who paid good money for their houses and are burdened by some of the highest property taxes in the nation to live in a place both the city and state governments apparently feel is fit for a gang of degenerate sex perverts and predators to call home.
Concerned citizens like former city councilwoman Candra Thomason, PTA President Dorothy West and Manuela Miller, a housewife and mother who organized the sporadic picketing in front of both the Midtown and the Niagara Street School, were permitted to attend following an effort to keep them out, under the condition that they not say anything at the "public" meeting.
While Del Monte all but taped the mouths of the Niagara Falls women outraged by the situation, she eagerly welcomed reporters and photographers from the Buffalo News and the Niagara Gazette.
"We were told that these offenders were under strict supervision," Thomason told the Reporter. "I stood there myself and watched prostitutes coming from 19th Street and going in and out of there all afternoon. What kind of supervision is that?"
With the twin specters of drugs and violence always present, it is difficult enough to raise a child in the city without making things worse by opening our doors to those who have already been convicted of victimizing children, and who mental health professionals say are likely to do so again.
"It's crazy," Thomason said. "You try to do for your kids and keep them safe, and then your own government throws something like this at you."
While members of the Niagara Falls School Board, led by President Robert Kazeangin, have been vocal in their outrage over the situation, city officials have kept quiet. Mayor Paul Dyster seems far more interested in harassing local business people than in making sure that the children of the city he was elected to govern are safe walking to and from school.
Judging by his public statements on the Midtown fiasco thus far, voters here might just as well have elected a mute to speak for them.
Where is "City Planner" Tom DeSantis in all this? While he seems preoccupied with the height of buildings that may never be built, or how the owner of private property should landscape his garden, did he approve the placement of dangerous deviants in a building that is clearly violating city, county and now state law? Was this use even reviewed by his Planning Commission or the city's Zoning Board of Review?
And where are the city police and the Inspections Department? The Midtown is clearly operating illegally, and yet nothing has been done. Have they been ordered by Dyster and DeSantis to look the other way?
This much is clear: State Rep. Francine Del Monte sponsored the bill that allowed the Midtown fiasco to occur, Mayor Paul Dyster -- for whatever reason -- is doing nothing to remedy the outrage, and the state Attorney General's office, under the direction of gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo, is acting illegally in making the problem worse.
The human waste that has been permitted to take up residence in the heart of the city's old Polish neighborhood represents a ticking time bomb, one that can only be defused by the political opportunists who put it there in the first place.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 14 2009 |