She came, she saw, she got her name in the papers. And there are still more than a dozen child molesters, rapists and other sexual deviates living at the Midtown Inn, a flophouse just a few blocks away from Niagara Street Elementary School.
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State Rep. Francine Del Monte orchestrated a meeting between the state Division of Parole, members of the Niagara Falls School Board and city officials last week in the wake of negative publicity surrounding the Midtown, which houses the highest concentration of sex offenders anywhere in the county.
By the end of the meeting, Del Monte seemed at least to understand why that's a problem for parents of children attending the school and area residents in general.
"The central issue, obviously, is to find another location," Del Monte said.
Each and every one of the sex offenders at the Midtown is being housed illegally, in violation of city, county and state law. The school is less than 1,500 feet away from the Parole Division's pervert palace, and neighborhood tension is running high.
"It's not the location for that," said Niagara Street Business Association honcho Ron Anderluh. "They should be in an industrial area or someplace else."
School Superintendent Cynthia Bianco agreed.
"It's something that really cannot be tolerated," she said.
The Parole Division's use of the Midtown to house sexual predators came under the spotlight last month, when state Supreme Court Justice Richard Kloch ordered James McKinney, a 51-year-old who was convicted of the rape and sodomy of four North Tonawanda girls, be placed there.
While the attorneys in the case argued that McKinney should be placed in the custody of his mother and live at her North Tonawanda home, Kloch instead sent him to the Midtown. Kloch himself is a North Tonawanda resident.
For School Board member Carm Rotella, that was the breaking point.
"You're not going to ruin a nice neighborhood in North Tonawanda, but you will ruin a nice neighborhood in Niagara Falls," she said.
The 85,000-square-foot Niagara Street Elementary School opened its doors in 2006, with construction costs pegged at $20 million. Its 680 students are required to wear school uniforms, and it is generally thought of as the best public elementary school in the district. The state's placement of so many deviant sexual predators nearby is a slap in the face to Falls taxpayers who footed the bill for the new facility.
After Kloch sent McKinney to the Midtown, neighborhood residents began circulating petitions and picketing the flophouse.
"I do not understand why we are taking so long to move them," said School Board President Bob Kazeangin. "They are violating the law. They should be gone. They should be gone by the end of the week."
But state officials asked for time and patience.
"It's real easy to simplify this and say, 'OK, make them disappear,' but we can't," said Eugenio Russi, regional director of the state's Division of Parole. "They're residents of the community, whether we want it or not."
Residents of the community? Most recently they were residents of one or another of the state's prisons, put there by judges and juries who recognized them as unfit to live in civilized society.
"We will make every effort to start to look at places to relocate these individuals," Russi said. "It's not something that is going to be done overnight. It's going to take a little work."
Russi admitted that the school was closer than 1,500 feet from the Midtown, but claimed an error had been made during initial measuring done by the state. This was a crucial admission, since now there is no question as to whether or not the residents of the Midtown are living there illegally.
"What they've done is against the law. They've said so themselves," said former and future city councilwoman Candra Thomason. "I don't understand how or why the city is letting it continue to operate."
The East Side is a neighborhood on the edge. Police and Inspections Department personnel are doing a fantastic job of making sure the urban blight that characterizes much of Niagara Street west of 19th Street doesn't further encroach on what remains a solid working-class district.
"Nobody wants something like this in their neighborhood," Thomason said. "You've got the block clubs working hard to keep the bad element out, and then the state comes along putting sex offenders next to the school. It's outrageous."
Thomason pointed out that the deviates living at the Midtown are not required to be there at all times, and said area residents have complained to her about encountering them in different locations, particularly at the Wilson Farms store directly across the street from the school.
Mayor Paul Dyster has yet to comment publicly on the situation, and his silence is deafening. As public indignation reaches a boiling point, Dyster's attention seems to be elsewhere.
Ultimately, he has the power to direct the police to enforce the laws of the city he was elected to govern, but for reasons known only to himself has chosen not to do so.
When asked directly by a Buffalo News reporter about the situation, his answer was vague, to say the least.
"We think that there's a need for some coordination and maybe for some clarification of jurisdictions," he said.
That was nearly two weeks ago. And while he may see the problem as one of "coordination" and "clarification," East Side residents -- and especially those with children attending Niagara Street School -- see it as one of a gang of perverts, rapists and sexual predators living a few blocks away from them.
Robert Kazeangin put it succinctly.
"It doesn't matter if it's 1,500 feet or 1,000 feet away, it's in the same neighborhood as a school and that's unacceptable," he said.
For Candra Thomason, the situation reflects the complete dysfunction of city government under the Dyster regime. The mayor's apparent inability to do anything to right an obvious wrong has created a potentially dangerous situation, she said.
"The East Side has always been a good neighborhood, filled with hardworking families, churches and a good school," she said. "There's a law on the books, and the mayor needs to enforce it. Why he's choosing not to do so is something he ought to explain."
Clearly, the state has decided that the East Side of Niagara Falls, the old Polish neighborhood where generations have lived and raised their families, makes a swell dumping ground for the worst sort of vermin humanity has to offer.
Mayor Dyster doesn't seem to have a problem with that, and that's a problem for all of us.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 7 2009 |