A revived Lower West Side pocket park cleared of its drug dealers by police and neighbors will be a memorial to Buffalo Police Officer Patricia Parete.The park is near the beginning of Whitney, where it starts at Chippewa. That's only yards from where Parete and her partner Officer Carl Andolina were shot the night of December 5, 2006.
Andolina recovered from his wounds and recently retired from the department. Parete was paralyzed by the bullets, living with those injuries until she died early last month.
Now, City Hall has decided to name the cleaned-up park for her. Councilmember David Franczyk says the renaming reflects the dangers of being a First Responder.
"It's an example of how the men and women in the Police Department are what they, for many years, would call the Thin Red Line. Society would be in a complete state of criminal degeneracy were it not for police officers that protect us, those first responders," Franczyk said.
The park plan calls for a memorial for Parete and her police service and facilities for the kids in the community.
Neighbors like Marilyn Rogers who worked with police to clean up the park said they wanted it named for Parete.
"One of the things that we would like to do with this park, besides having it named after Patty, is to make it a place for children and for our neighbors to recognize the fact that police officers are our friends," Rogers told the Council last week.
Activist Nancy Standish says supporters would like to a three-tiered black marble wall with a synopsis of Parete's life and police department history, an image of a female officer reaching out to a small child, and a written saying reading "Officers aren't heroes for the way they died, but how they lived."
