So What’s the Deal with Toys at Chapin Playground?

The Parks Department has an obligation to the taxpayers to remove any toys that it deems to be even remotely unsafe. Otherwise it exposes the City to lawsuits which ultimately get settled with our property tax money.

Certainly the Playground Committee is not to blame! They are a volunteer group who use private funds in an attempt to make the local playgrounds a better experience for both neighborhood children and visitors. I think their efforts are always to be commended, especially since many of the volunteers and contributors are long past the days of having children who use the playgrounds.

What is happening here is good. It is the Parks Department and the Committee working together to enhance our playgrounds while protecting us from overly litigious parents. I would encourage the BHB to post a link to the Playground Committee’s donations website so that they can help to replace the dangerous toys that the Parks Dept. rightly discarded.

WillowNabe with a damned if you do, damned if you don’t response.

No good deed goes unpunished. Parks Department did the right thing.

If you’re going to discard your belongings in the playground, they’re garbage. If you want to keep your child’s toys, take them home when the kids are done playing.

Hmm. I saw these complaints on local parenting listservs and assumed they were by parents of 2 year olds who aren’t familiar with the regular seasons and customs of the local playgrounds.

It is my memory that the Chapin toys get tossed every winter and new things brought in in the Spring. People I know — like me — always took their old big wheels or 3-wheeled scooters there in the Spring with the full intention that they get a few months of hard playing in before they’re tossed. Things often get tossed before Winter but anything that survives the whole year gets throw out by Parks when it gets cold. And, of course, if a parent sees something that has become dangerous, they need to toss it themselves right there and then.

I’ll put in a word here that anyone using these playgrounds should consider an annual check to the Brooklyn Heights Playground Committee. easily done at BHplaygrounds.org

It’s easy: Don’t consider a public playground as your private space in which to depose of your toys. NYC Parks & Recreation has a responsibility to the public, namely, keep playgrounds safe, especially when every Dick and Harry brings a lawsuit.

@Gerry, incorrect and a little racist. Nicely done. I bring my own children to that playground to play on the toys. My daughter learned to ride a tricycle there. She also loved the swings, slides and everything else. I really don’t understand your objection. And @yoohoo, as I said previously, it’s neither a dumping ground nor a personal storage area. They are donated for public use. There’s really no need to be a dick to people who are being generous. The liability argument is the only that makes any sense, but I find it unlikely that any of these toys are remotely dangerous or that the city could ever be held liable for a skinned knee.

@ J, @ WillowNabe @ Monty – my remarks are the truth and nothing racist had been said these are my clear observations and thats a fact.

i have seen more beautiful children sleep in a $300 stroller as the nannies have a gab fest in their own language – and I have seen more bloody noses, etc, from older children who fall then scream because they had not been supervised properly.

Chances are these nannys are treated poorly and paid minimum wage – my dad used to tell me “you get what you pay for”

Dont shoot the messenger my observations are painfully accurate.

Gerry,
I have watched your posts on here get more and more elitist over the last few months. You really need to check yourself. You are an arrogant racist fool.
Do us all a favor and delete your cookies in your computer so that you can’t find the blog anymore as easily.

Gerry is just envious that he doesnt speak another language and cannot understand what those non-english speakers are talking about him behind his back.

Remember from the other thread today: He doesnt leave the US, travels only to Ocean City in his high end luxury SUV aka Nissan Murano.

@Gerry- I find the fact that you are not interested in my opinion of you pretty ridiculous as you are the first to state your opinion and racist comments to everyone on this blog.

How is it that yourself and your family living over on Montague Terrace are so much better than everyone else that you feel the need to talk about hired help as only wanting to get a green card? That is one of the most racist and elitist comments I have ever seen from you.

Like I stated before you are an arrogant, racist, little man who is so unaware of the effect that his comments have on other people. How do you know that the non english speaking hired help isn’t reading this blog? I am sure you really don’t care anyway.

I am totally fine with meeting up and having a chat about it in person and not on a public forum. But then you won’t have your keyboard for protection form the outside world that is so unsafe.

I’m just sick and tired of reading the crap he spews. He won’t take me up on my offer as he would have to leave the safety of his home.

Ananymouse don’t listen to Gerry, he is the modern day equivalent of the village idiot that goes around ranting and raving at park statues. His comments have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with his racist, elitist, vile, nature.

@Anonymouse,
I have have seen children completely neglected by their nanny/babysitters while they are socializing on every playground I have visited in this city. It is a fact, to say otherwise is just plain ignorant. I, myself, had a nanny who I later discovered not only ignored my kid but hit him…she only lasted 4 weeks bc someone saw her and reported back to me, but I assure you she was paid VERY well and her references were great. After that I made sure I only hired younger sitters from other families I knew had only good things to say. Oh and @Gerry, my nanny who I sacked only spoke English. You are wrong in your description of all these nannies/babysitters. What you stated is partially true, but to profile like that is racist.

Chapin Playground is one block from my front door. This is my third winter taking my child there, and the toys have never been cleaned out in this manner–total removal of any and all toys. Some toys were broken. Most toys were in good working order. Some toys were brand-new, with working electronics and working batteries, and had been donated just prior to Thanksgiving. I took my 2-year-old son to Chapin nearly every single day of the week. We are on Columbia Heights and Cranberry, and this playground is right across Cranberry–a one-minute walk from our front door. I definitely made some mistakes–I think myself, and other parents in the area who took there children there, should have been more pro-active in toys that were broken. I can tell you I spent a lot of time and energy picking up other kinds of trash in the playground: discarded juice boxes, food wrappers, napkins, etc. I never bothered about the toys. I never saw children being injured by the toys. I did see children get injured on the slides and monkey bars and ladders. These are far more dangerous than a plastic toy truck with a missing wheel, but we would not have the NYC Parks department remove the Jungle Gym, would we? The NYC Parks can do whatever they want. It is their land. No one has a right to donate a toy and not have it stolen or destroyed. NYC Parks has the protection of the law, and the righteous cruelty of those who follow the letter of the law to its sometimes idiotic conclusion. Some of the toys should have been removed. Some of the toys should never have been donated (such as the scooters, which the rules clearly state are not to be ridden inside the park). There are some disturbing issues with the decision NYC Parks made to destroy every single toy in the playground. It may serve the City of New York and its residents to consider things beyond the letter of the law. 1. No effort was made by NYC Parks to warn the community that all toys would be destroyed. 2. Most of the toys in the Chapin park were in good working order. Most of the toys in the park were plastic toy cars and trucks, plastic shovels, plastic buckets, and I would testify to this fact in a sworn affidavit and risk perjury. Again: most the toys in Chapin were not only in good working order, but were also harmless. If the toys at Chapin Park were dangerous, then we need to immediately shutdown FAO Schwarz and every Toys R Us in the five boroughs for the safety of our children. 3. Timing. This removal occurred in the week after Thanksgiving and the first month after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of our city, killing men, women, and children, severely damaging whole neighborhoods, and destroying homes. 4. Taxpayer money. Again, see issue #3. Taxpayer money was spent destorying, wholesale, a hundreds of dollars worth of good toys, while thousands of New Yorkers spent Thanksgiving in a Red Cross shelter. 5. Lies spread by the NYC Parks department. The response of the NYC Parks department has been that, “Broken toys that did not meet our safety standards were removed.” This statement is a lie. Probably at least two dozen toys were removed. There was a scooter with a broken brake, which should not have been in the playground to begin with, and which I wish I had removed. There was a bicycle with a loose handlebar. That about the covers the two toys that might have posed a safety risk. I was teaching my son to ride the bicycle on that bike–it worked well, and it had training wheels. I was planning to bring my tools and try to tighten the handlebars. We do not go there any more. The fact that every toy was destroyed one night upset him. We go elsewhere now. Sometimes when you follow the letter of the law to a idiotic and thoughtless conclusion, you damage the community more than you help it.

Matt quite frankly your post is ridiculous. You say the toys were “donated” to the park. Who were the toys brought to in the Parks Department for donation? Was someone tasked with examining the toys to see if they were both appropriate and safe? Or when you say “donate” do you just mean they were left at the park without any screening? If it is the latter, then anyone could drop off whatever they wished on city property for other children to play with? And you don’t see any problem with that? Well I do. The city has a responsibility for keeping park safe and that is not consistent with letting people drop off their used toys of various states of disrepair.

And you know, you are just the type of person that would immediately sue the City if your child got hurt playing with a toy in the park claiming negligence and I would have to pay that nuisance suit through my taxes.

Oh and your bring in the deaths caused by Sandy into the mix is truly special. How dare you?

Sorry that your child was upset for two minutes. I’m sure he/she will recover.