by P.D. Lesko
THE DIRECTOR OF the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) has a heroin problem. It’s not only her heroin problem, exactly, except that it is. On March 17, AADL Executive Director Josie Parker went before City Council to tell them that there have been multiple heroin overdoses in the main branch of the Ann Arbor District Library over the past 36 months. This is why, Parker argued, there should not be a small park built on the Library Lot parcel next to the downtown library. Open space, she argued, could lead to heroin use. Don’t ask.
It was a shocking confession. First of all, Parker said the problem with heroin overdoses by people patronizing the downtown branch of the library goes back several years. She told the City Council members, “There have been five heroin overdoses in the last three years.” It costs the AADL $250,000 for security. Parker subsequently told a reporter that the downtown library branch had been used as a cocaine drop location. Cocaine and heroin are Class A drugs. Possession and/or sale of Class A drugs is a felony.
Members of the AADL Board, including current president Prue Rosenthal, as well as Parker, met with City Council members prior to Council’s vote on March 17 concerning the creation of a proposed park. Ward 3 Council member Kunselman took offense at the trustees’ attempts to exert influence over a decision concerning public-owned property.
At one point during the March 17 City Council meeting, Kunselman said, “there’s politics involved, and fear mongering by the library board about the problems that could result from having a public park.”
This prompted Ward 3 Council member Christopher Taylor to demand that Kunselman apologize to the AADL trustees. Taylor called Kunselman’s comment a “shocking insult for which an apology is due.”
Hardly. The AADL trustees’ anti-park resolution, passed the evening of the Council meeting and shortly before Parker spoke, was politically motivated and any suggestion that a downtown park could lead to increased heroin use is fear-mongering.
The substance and implications of Josie Parker’s confession were shocking. Heroin use is connected to any number of factors, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control. According to the CDC: “There is no cookie cutter heroin user. In fact, many of heroin’s newest addicts are in their teens or early 20s; many also come from middle- or upper-middle-class suburban families.”
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t overdose on heroin because his New York apartment was near a library or Central Park.
Based on documents released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, it is clear that three of the Library Board’s trustees effectively control the seven-member Board. Together with Josie Parker, a small group of trustees shapes policy and routinely leaves other trustees out of important discussions.
Why AADL Executive Director Josie Parker waited 36 months and put tens of thousands of children at risk before going public with her library’s drug, alcohol and other crime problems is a betrayal of the people who put their trust in both her and the AADL’s trustees. The trustees owe the community an explanation for keeping the truth from the public that such serious crimes are being committed regularly in their main library. In addition, it’s not at all clear why Josie Parker is being lauded for “finally” speaking out. Finally? She had an ethical obligation to do so well before she did.
What Ms. Parker did was to stand in public and “confess” that she’d kept mum about frequent, serious drug crimes taking place in one branch of her library system, as well as the need for heightened security at the main library.
The Clery Act, requires all universities which participate in federal financial aid programs to track and make public crimes committed on their campuses. It was the result of a 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman being raped and murdered in her campus residence hall in 1986. In 2008, Eastern Michigan University paid a $350,000 fine as a result of Clery Act violations. In 2011, the University of Michigan’s police Department was selected for a Clery Act review and cited for errors in its crime reporting.
Do we need to have a 6-year-old stabbed with a heroin needle or to find bags of smack in the teen section of the main branch in order to be informed about crime in our public library? How can the trustees of the Ann Arbor District Library meet with the members of the Ann Arbor City Council to object to the creation of a 16,000 square foot park and not meet with City Council members about serious crimes being committed regularly in their library? How is it that the trustees of the AADL managed to keep from the public as well as the press drug overdoses in their facility over the past 36 months?
When it was suggested to Josie Parker that felony drug possession and drug sales at her library might be curbed by more downtown police, incredibly she dismissed the idea. After all, she has a $250,000 security force. However, what she didn’t explain is why neither she nor her $250,000 security force has been unable to stem the rampant drug crime at the downtown library.
The downtown library should not be used by elected officials as a homeless day shelter. Why haven’t the Library’s trustees or its executive director come before Council to protest this problem? Politics. Library trustees endorsed John Hieftje failed public art millage in 2012, and city council members backed the library trustees’ failed bond proposal in 2012.
While community members have praised Josie Parker for speaking out about the AADL’s drug crime problem, I am left wondering what other serious crimes have been committed at the main library over the past 36 months. Chief Seto added police officials work closely with AADL officials, and have met on several occasions. Has the close collaboration lessened crime? The public deserves to know.
