CLARKSTOWN - A Rockland County Jewish organization has sharply criticized a Clarkstown official's call for residents to report suspected out-of-towners using local parks, calling it discriminatory and potentially dangerous.

The rebuke from Steve Gold, who chairs the Jewish Federation's Community Relations Council, follows a Sept. 28 Facebook post by Councilman Pete Bradley encouraging residents to call or text him if they "suspect that non-residents are using our Town Parks."

"If I don’t personally conduct the security check, I will ensure that the appropriate town employees arrive to perform same," the councilman wrote in the post on the Facebook page Pete Bradley for Preserving Clarkstown.

"Remember: while other municipalities are out to smother all of their open space with abhorrent high-density housing, our goal is to ‘Preserve Clarkstown’ and our beautiful parks!" Bradley's post concludes.

The councilman represents Ward 2, which includes Congers, Valley Cottage, Upper Nyack and parts of New City and West Nyack.

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READ THE COMMUNITY COUNCIL'S LETTER

The offensive against non-residents using Clarkstown's parks isn't new: Then-town Supervisor Alex Gromack announced a more "proactive" enforcement effort by parks officers back in 2015.

But Gold said county leaders' silence about what defines a public park and who can use it "will undoubtedly lead to controversy and more if left unchecked."

In a letter sent to The Journal News/lohud on Wednesday, Gold wrote: "This latest barrage of rhetoric that Rockland is experiencing will lead to increased divisiveness if our elected officials and community representatives don’t denounce it."

Gold questioned how Bradley or anyone else can determine who lives in the community without it being considered profiling or discriminatory.

He said residents taking it upon themselves to question others could lead to a confrontation.

Gold said the council's statement was not specially targeting anti-Semitism,

"We're not saying we wrote this because we're concerned that he's picking on Orthodox Jews per se; We're writing because he's asking people to profile people," Gold said in a followup interview.

The town's decades-old policy allows residents and their guests to use the parks. Signs at the town's major parks and recreation centers inform visitors of the policy, and residents are encouraged to get a town identification card.

Clarkstown has eight security aides, specifically at Congers Memorial Park, from April to November to enforce the residency policy and guard against other violations.

Bradley responds

Bradley called the letter "highly emotional and wrought with factual inaccuracies," and said he made it clear to Gold that he was not advocating ethnic, racial or religious profiling.

He said that although it's impossible to determine all the reasons that would prompt a security check, some circumstances were identifiable such as personally knowing individuals who don’t live in Clarkstown, vans and buses dropping off large numbers of people, or teenagers wearing high school jackets of schools from outside of Clarkstown.

Bradley insisted his post did not request that any resident approach another person for questioning, but merely to call him so that he can notify the proper agency, or, if it's after hours, conduct a security check himself.

Town Supervisor George Hoehmann noted that Bradley's Facebook page did not represent official town policy.

Hoehmann said he does not encourage people to confront anyone in the park about any potential problem, but to contact the Parks Department or, during off hours, the Police Department

The supervisor said he supported reserving the town parks for people who pay taxes for their upkeep.

"We’re going to protect out town facilities so there’s a safe environment," Hoehmann said.

Nanuet criticized

Gold's letter also criticizes the Nanuet school district for sending an email late last month stating that facilities such as the Highview Playground are for the exclusive use of Nanuet students and residents,and directing people to contact the district if they see someone they think is a non-resident on the playground.

Nanuet schools Superintendent Mark McNeill said the district has a longstanding residents-only policy at its playgrounds and Outdoor Education Center.

"This is nothing new for our community, and not unlike similar practices in Clarkstown and other local municipalities and school districts," McNeill said in a statement. "A recent notification to school district parents expressed a continuation of the practice."

Gold noted that nearby Mahwah, New Jersey, had to backpedal on a policy banning outsiders from using its parks.

"We need wiser leaders to speak out and stop this before we wind up repeating the costly experience and negative publicity faced by our neighbors," he said.

County Executive Ed Day said he supported residents-only regulations as long as there were clear policies and procedures that ensure fairness and rule out bias. Enforcement, he said, must be done in a precise, legal manner beyond random residency checks.

Day suggested potentially implementing a system in which towns provide daily color-coded wristbands to residents at the park entrance.

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