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Maplewood Mayor Offers More Library SecurityShortly after trustees of the Maplewood (N.J.) Memorial Library decided to close the building for more than two hours on weekdays because loud teens from a nearby middle school were disrupting service, Mayor Fred Profeta offered to supply security guards to keep order. The library board voted December 20 to shut down the main and Hilton branch libraries from 2:45 to 5:00 p.m., effective January 16, because the students “are not using library resources but are congregating in the building to socialize with friends,” the trustees wrote in a message on the library’s website. “Having as many as fifty young people with nothing to do creates an untenable situation.”Publicity about the new hours in the January 2 New York Times prompted Profeta to write the board a letter asking them to reconsider. “In this letter, I’m going to tell them we stand ready to provide them with sensitive security guards who know how to handle children to help the staff with the discipline and keeping order,” Profeta said in the January 5 Newark Star-Ledger. Police Chief Robert Cimino said that officers often respond to complaints about juveniles inside the library. “We get reports of fights,” he said in the January 3 Star-Ledger. “Sometimes it’s pushing and shoving. Sometimes it’s punching and the like, [but] I don’t believe it’s rising to the level of criminal action.” The library has done its part to promote young adult programs, including a gallery space for teen art, an anime film festival, a daily homework-help program using instant messaging, and a Teen Advisory Group that held a recent pizza party. In their public message, the trustees blamed working parents who are “using the facilities as a substitute for childcare.” The trustees’ decision has not been a popular one in Maplewood, but residents understand the gravity of the situation and express their concerns on the local internet bulletin board. “Yes, it was an extreme measure to close the library for a few hours, but it also has awakened the community to the severity of the problem,” one wrote. “It is a community problem, not a library staff problem, and community members should be supporting the library in such a way as to help devise effective solutions to the situation.” Posted January 8, 2007. |
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