Posted on 07/15/2012 4:55:55 AM PDT by jimbo123
When the McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg reopened last month after 28 years of dormancy, it was hailed as a civic achievement and summer oasis for Brooklynites. But the city’s largest public pool has been plagued by violent brawls that pit teens against lifeguards and even forced the NYPD to shut it down on June 29. Lifeguards are forbidden to talk to the media, but one spoke to the The Post’s Annie Karni about life in the aquatic war zone.
Every morning when I wake up, I pray for rain. Because if it’s sunny and 90 degrees at 11 a.m., when my shift starts, there will be 1,500 people lined up around the block to get in and just 30 lifeguards to watch over them. And a lot of them are coming in drunk and high.
-snip-
We get paid $13.55 an hour, plus overtime. So far, I’m sticking it out, and it’s not bad pay, but it’s a hard job. There’s something going on every day, and it’s not just violence.
One of the lifeguards called me over while I was watching the baby pool the other day. “There’s poop in the pool,” he said. “It’s scattered everywhere.” I saw one kid step on a piece. I tried to tell the parents to get out, but no one listened to me. I had to yell at them that there was feces in the pool.
We cleared out the pool and made everyone stand on the sides. The rule is five minutes for poop and 25 minutes for throw-up. Luckily, there were two new lifeguards, so we made them clean it up.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
So... New Yorkers are stuck with a price tag of fifty million bucks in order to entertain these... characters.
One wonders if the calculations included some sort of equation to the effect that fifty million for a summer pool would mean fifty million less outlay for crime prevention.
Once upon a time, Americans were expected to entertain themselves; and obey the law, too.
Oh, brave new world.
No word on the ethnicity of the punks causing the trouble.
Sounds like enough “wretched refuse” has washed up in New York City, and a lot of it is in this lavish taxpayer-funded pool. Third-worlders generally turn their new residence into the third world they left.
ANIMALS!! DISGUSTING ANIMALS!!
Oh yes, the "Iraq strategy" - they're very cleverly drawing the terrorists in so the cops can fight them in one place.
Why am I not surprised?
I was a lifeguard for the City of Raleigh when I was in college. Great, great job. I got paid to get a tan. Not too much eye candy—most of our clientele was moms who didn’t care anymore and little kids. But, compared to my prior job—sales associate at Best Buy—that job was heaven.
Never saw anything like this, though, thank God.
Just a zoo without cages.
Put a wall around it & keep them in.
We all remember Snake Pliskin.
Here’s the thing...at the rate they are going...some public health official is going to show up next summer and start to shut down the pool every other day. By the end 2014...some city official will admit that customers barely cover five percent of the operating budget of the pool. At the same time...they will admit that the pool is closed almost half of the whole summer because of health issues. By 2017, the pool will be completely shut down. Some idiot will write a book over the whole game...and the title? “Flushing Fifty Million Down the Hudson”.
“I’m not scared of no cop”?
A double negative makes a statement positive.
*Sigh*
Typical.
Unremarked, of course, is just how routine, normal, and good "summer in New York" is for the millions of other residents of the City.
yeah. And we eat spectators.
You can’t pick up a disease from vomit,but you can from feces.
Shouldn’t it take longer to clean the feces,not the other way around?
They’d have to drain the pool,wouldn’t they?
Also, the only pic on the website shows white kids in the pool with cops watching over them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.