Whodunnit!?
Someone shopped down a “no standing” sign outside of an E. 14th Street private school in Midwood on July 27 — a neighbor says the school did it so it can park school buses there, and administrators deny that. But city officials are at a loss over who did it?, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.
“We don’t know how the hell it happened,” she said. “Absolutely have no clue how it even happened.”
A tipster who lives on the block claims the Hebrew Institute for the Deaf & Exceptional Children between Avenues H and I snipped the sign so it could park its buses there without incurring the wrath of the police department — and it’s a sin, she said.
“A school has taken the law into their own hands and cut through the ‘no standing’ sign. They chose to endanger the public for their own convenience,” the woman said on condition of anonymity. “No way it’s an accident because those poles are really, really strong. It was a clean cut.”
The sign has gone missing before, according to the tipster, and images on Google show it was there in 2011 and then disappeared in 2013. A 2014 image shows a bus parked in the very spot where the “no standing” sign should have been.
But school officials denied any involvement.
“We are a school. We don’t put the signs up and we don’t take them down,” said one Hebrew Institute worker who refused to give her name.
And the Chaim Berlin yeshiva across the street didn’t do it either, according to a building manager who said his school’s security camera footage shows the sign there on July 27 and then missing on July 28.
But it’s necessary that the sign stay put, because E. 14th Street has one of the only bridges connecting Avenues H and I over the Long Island Rail Road, so it’s a busy intersection with cars constantly turning onto the street from Avenue I, said the tipster, who lobbied the city to get the sign back the last time it went missing.
“It is really a busy corner. I’ve been trying for two years to get this sign back up,” she said. “Because it’s truly the width of a one-way street, so even when a small vehicle is there, the others cannot turn in and turn blindly into the other lane.”
Department of Transportation workers replaced the sign on Aug. 8 after this paper’s inquiry.
