Geoffrey Croft's Coverage of performer issue

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FromA Walk In The Park BlogWEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

New Park "Vendor" Rules Won't Affect Performers - City. Commish Lies Over Responsibility For 2011 Crack-Down

"Although those rules are written, you're saying that none of those rules is going to beenforced on us. Excuse me but that's a contradiction and that confuses the entire room."- Joe Mangrum to Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner William Castro.

Colin Huggins playing in the Washington Square Park over the weekend. In 2011 hereceived numerous summonses from Park Enforcement Patrol officers in a crackdown on

performers carried out by the Parks Department. Under new rules adopted by the agency,

the city classifies "entertainers" who solicit donations in parks as "vendors," requiringlicenses and special permits. Yet at a Community Board 2 meeting last week, ManhattanBorough Parks Commissioner William Castro said the new rules won't be enforced,leaving many people scratching their heads in confusion. (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYCPark Adovocates) Click on images to enlarge

Castro blamed the 2011 summons crackdown against performers and musicians on asingle PEP officer, an assertion vehemently denied by those involved. The ticket blitzgenerated a public outcry and considerable media attention.

The revised park rules for performers and musicians go into effect on May 8th. There are

two PEP officers and one supervisor assigned to cover 59th Street to the Battery inManhattan.

Manhattan

By Geoffrey Croft

The Parks Department spent last week backpedaling from its 2011 ticket-blitz onmusicians and performers in Washington Square Park, pinning the blame on oneoverzealous Parks Enforcement Patrol officer – yet it refused to reverse the rule changesthat led to the crackdown, and in fact added more restrictive language.

Confusion and disbelief reigned at a meeting of Manhattan Community Board 2’s ParksCommittee, as a senior Parks official vowed the new rules, which go into effect May 8,won’t stop musicians and other performers from playing in Washington Square Park.

The City is attempting to classify performers and musicians "providing entertainment"who solicit donations in parks as "vendors" under new rules adopted by the agency.





On April 2, the department quietly held a public meeting that finalized the changes.

The new rule is aimed at controlling revenue production in parks, and cracking down onlong-protected rights critics say, and violators face fines of up to $250 for a first offense

and up to $1,000 thereafter.

According to Parks however, the purpose of the new rules is to "clarify the Department’soriginal intent that individuals providing entertainment, such as musical performances,

juggling, dance, or other performance arts in exchange for a fee or for a donation areconsidered vendors.”

§ 2. Section 1-05(b) of Title 56 of the Official Compilation of the Rules of the City of New York has now been amended to read as follows: "No person in or on any propertyunder the jurisdiction of the Department shall sell, offer for sale, hire, lease or letanything whatsoever, including, but not limited to goods, services, or entertainment, or

provide or offer to provide services or items, or entertainment in exchange for a donation(hereinafter ‘vend’), except under and within the terms of a permit, or except as otherwise provided by law.”Steven Goulden, acting corporation counsel in the city's Law Department, signed thisamendment dated December 28, 2012. On January 29, 2013 Hunter Gradie from theMayor’s Office of Operations, analyzed the proposed rule Pursuant to Charter section1043(d).

In 2011, street performers were aggressively targeted by the Bloomberg administrationunder the new rule’s prohibition against collecting donations near landmarks or monuments in parks under the Parks Department's Expressive Matter vending rules. PEPofficers were instructed to ticket performers and musicians for unlawful vending andunlawful assembly. Several performers were threatened with arrest.

Joe Mangrum making one of his signature sand creations in Washington Square Park onFriday. During the initiative in 2011 he received six tickets over several weeks, five inWashington Square Park and one in Union Square Park totaling $4,750 in fines.

On Thursday April 25th, DEP employees accompanied by a captain and plain clothesofficers from the 6th Pct, and Parks Department personnel surveyed the noise conditionscreated by musicians playing in Union Square Park. It was was quiet according to citysources.

"The park is for everyone, for the general public, not for (a performer) whose sole purpose is making money," William Castro told the Daily News in 2011. He was



referring to the street performance group Tic & Tac, who had been doing shows inWashington Square Park for more than 25 years.

Public outcry forced the city to eventually back down. Legal action was threatened butnot before PEP officers wrote dozens of tickets. Within weeks of a December 2011 press

conference held in Washington Square Park to denounce the crackdown, the city agreedto dismiss all summonses. Many of the performers and musicians who attended the newsconference, organized by NYC Park Advocates with attorneys Norman Siegel and RonKuby, spoke of being harassed, some since the spring.

In a highly controversial move earlier that year, the city had attempted to prohibit performing near Central Park's Bethesda fountain as well. A legally blind a cappellasinger was threatened with arrest after the singer received multiple summonses.

However in a 180-degree turn at last week’s meeting Manhattan Borough ParksCommissioner Castro claimed performers would in fact be allowed to do many of the

things they had previously been ticketed for in 2011.Castro insisted nothing will change. This "slight adjustment to the rules," he said, “is notgoing to affect the musicians to come to the park to play."

Most people at Wednesday's meeting understood Mr. Castro's explanation as the city wasnot going to enforce the rules that the Parks Department just passed. And Mr. Castro'sassurances did little to allay the fears of many in the audience.

"It can be confusing, I understand that," he said.

"It's gotten some attention through confusion, which we understand."

"If you come to play music, the guys and gals who sit on the benches who play, they siton the grass, wherever, they stand right by the Garibaldi statue and play – all those

places, the piano – you can play under the arch, you're fine," Castro explained.

"You don’t need a permit. You are not going to be told to leave the park. You're notgoing to get a ticket. You're fine. You can do that – that's not going to change. You don'thave to be x feet away from this or that or any of that jazz – you don't have to do that.

If you're putting the hat out and your case is open and people traditionally put money intoit, you're fine. That's not a problem at all," Castro said.

He also stressed that performers were allowed to sell CDs without a permit, as long asthey didn't have a display stand that people could trip over.

Castro said the rule change had nothing to do with Washington Square Park in mindthough the distance restrictions would effectively put the park off-limits. "It's not becauseWashington Square was a problem, and we wrote this change or something," he said.



On December 19, 2011, Community Board 2 had convened a very well attended meetingwhere not a single person spoke in favor of the Parks Department's crackdown on

performers, except for Castro. At the time he claimed the new rules were not meant to ban performers from soliciting donations.

So why have the new rule then? Community Board members asked Castro to explain whythe 2011 crackdown occurred and who was responsible.

Following the well-worn path created by his ex-boss, former Parks Commissioner AdrianBenepe, Castro would not accept responsibility for the screw-up and instead offered anelaborate explanation that obfuscated the reality.

"I think it would be helpful to clarify what happened then," said former Parks Committeechair – and former Parks Department employee – Tobi Bergman.

"Someone went off basically and enforced the strict letter of the law or whatever – it's noteven clear to me. It's been a few years, and I'd have to go back and take a look at it,"Castro replied.

"Who was this somebody?" another board member asked. "Was it a PEP officer or . . . "

"A PEP officer, a PEP officer, yes, that's right," he said.

Instead of answering the question honestly, Castro portrayed the campaign by several cityagencies against “expressive matter vendors" as the actions of a lone rogue PEP officer.Yet at the time, Parks Department personnel were working with the NYPD's 6th Precinct,according to several Parks employees intimately aware of the operation.

They say the crackdown had been sanctioned by then Parks Commissioner AdrianBenepe with the department’s General Counsel, Alessandro Olivieri, and it wasimplemented by multiple Parks officials, including Castro and senior Park EnforcementPatrol personel Mike Docket and Raymond Brown as well as PEP Inspector RobertReeves, Deputy Inspector Edwin Rodriguez, and others – all of whom personally wentdown to Washington Square Park to supervise and survey the situation at various timesduring the initiative.

"Those orders came from them, not from us," said a PEP officer familiar with the planwho spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. "They tried everythingto get these guys, but nothing would stick. (The tickets) kept getting thrown out in court."

Another option discussed in meetings with the NYPD would use the city’s noiseordinance against performers. "They talked about getting an audio meter to measure thenoise levels, but they never came through with it,” said the PEP officer.

"It's much easier to throw green shifts under the bus than to take responsibly yourself,”



said another officer, referring to the uniform worn by PEP officers.

Other sources point out the crackdown came during Occupy Wall Street, when the citywas operating on heightened security and responded in a knee-jerk reaction.

"Our officers had absolutely nothing to do with initiating this," said Joe Puleo, vice president of DC37's Local 987, which represents PEP officers. "They did what they wereinstructed to do and did so reluctantly. They were uncomfortable. Many felt they wereviolating these people's rights."

Instead of directing resources to prevent crime at a time when PEP head count was atrecord lows and crime in parks was rising Puleo said, the Bloomberg administrationchoose to make stopping performers a priority. "These orders came through managementand the administration," he said. "They thought they were in Giuliani mode."

During the 2011 crackdown, pianist Colin Huggins was issued nine tickets by several

different officers for playing classical music in Washington Square Park. "It felt like hewas trying to cover something up," Huggins said, contesting Castro's version of events."Did he think anyone would believe that this was done by one officer?"

Huggins was one of the musicians threatened with arrest. He was approached near the park's fountain by Ray Brown, whom he described as supervising the initiative.

"He was calling my piano my 'art stand.' He showed me an illustration of a foldout tablefor vending and said the piano was the same thing. It was ridiculous. We went back andforth, and finally he said, 'You know the rules.’ He said, ‘If you don't leave now, we'regoing to arrest you, and no one likes to get arrested.’"

Huggins said that after a while the issuing of summonses was so routine "it got to the point where it was like, ‘Here's your ticket for the day.’ They would slip it under mysheet music so as not to interrupt my playing. The officers giving the tickets themselveswere very nice."

Ray Brown was upset to see Huggins playing under the Washington Square Park arch."He didn't like that," according to a Parks Department source.

Artist Joe Mangrum has been working in the park for years.

"The rules that I saw that were passed on April 2nd include any exchange of money isconsidered vending and that no vending can be done within fifty-feet of a monument, novending can be done within so many feet (5 feet) of a bench, which basically makes itimpossible to do any of what you just said in Washington Square," Mr. Mangrum saidaddressing Castro at the Community Board meeting.

"Then you're confusing the issue because that's what is written, that's what's written in therules, and you just contradicted everything in that in what you just said," he said.



Mangrum, who lugs 60 pounds of sand from Brooklyn to create his brightly coloreddesigns on the ground, said he had been issued six summonses by at least three differentPEP officers over two months in 2011. Five tickets were issued in Washington SquarePark and one in Union Square Park, totaling $4,750 in fines.

"It was an Oscar-worthy performance," Mangrum said afterwards, noting Castro's lack of candor. "He threw PEP under the bus and took no responsibly for who was behind it."

In December, 2011, Kareen Barnes, a member of the group Tic & Tac, said he had beenslapped with nearly $10,000 in summonses in two months -- but an EnvironmentalControl Board judge dismissed all the fines after he argued his Constitutional rights had

been violated. He said they city has given him and his brother dozens of tickets over theyears, and all of the tickets have been thrown out in court.

State Assembly member Deborah Glick's chief of staff, Matt Borden, echoed the feeling

of the crowd when he said that relying on one commissioner’s word wasn't in the bestinterest of the public, when the rules say something very different.

“The next Parks Commissioner, if they don’t have the same ethos as you folks, you mighthave to fight this fight again.”

He said something more binding and concrete should be adopted to reflect what Castrowas representing. Several members of the Community Board recommended the samething.

Read More:

Amidst Confusion, Community and Performers to City’s Parks Department: Commit inWriting — No “Performance Crackdown” at Washington Square, and all NYC ParksWashington Square Blog - May 2, 2013

Geoffrey Croft's Coverage of performer issue

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