Cass to be a park police facility

RENSSELAERVILLE — Camp Cass, until recently, a detention center for juvenile offenders, is slated to become a training academy for recruits in the State Park Police.

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation announced Monday that plans are underway to convert the state’s Office of Children and Family Services’ training facility at the former Cass Residential Center in Rensselaerville into a new state park police academy in the fall of 2008.

Currently, no state workers are being trained at Cass, and 12 employees are removing OCFS equipment and getting the building ready, Pat Cantiello, a spokeperson for OCFS, said this week.

The center had once housed male youths, remanded to the facility by family courts. Cass riled the community a year ago after a 15-year-old boy escaped and broke into a nearby home, stealing money and a vehicle. Nearly two years before, another inmate raped and abducted a woman who worked at the center.

Last spring, OCFS announced that it would close the Cass Residential Center on May 21 of this year.

The parks office says locating its training academy at the Camp Cass facility is a smart move for financial and practical reasons.

The plan allows the State Park Police to establish a permanent location for its academy, which annually trains about 60 recruits during a 26-week residential session in Utica.

For the past nine years, the parks office has rented space at the State University of New York Institute of Technology in Utica. The agency estimates it will save $382,000 annually by making its home in Rensselaerville, and that the relocation plan, which includes $500,000 in capital improvements, will pay for itself in three years.

A Rensselaerville-based training facility will be beneficial, according to the agency, because it will: be closer to its main office in Albany and to Albany-area water and safety and emergency training operations; provide access to state-of-the-art training facilities; and allow greater efficiencies in staff time, transportation, and planning.
"It just seemed like a natural fit," said Eileen Larrabee, spokeswoman for the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
The Cass Residential Center — known by some locals as "Camp Cass" — had, for decades, served as one of OCFS’s many all-male juvenile detention centers. Last year, in late February, Cass was changed from a youth detention center for males to a training facility for state employees, and the state later announced it would close the facility.

The Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation says it will save annually on lodging and space rental. It plans to have permanent classroom training, lodging, and dining at Cass.
"We had to pay for all of that separately in Utica," said Larrabee.

The parks office administers 178 parks, 35 state historic sites, and 19 heritage areas in the state. Its local parks include John Boyd Thacher State Park, Thompson’s Lake State Park, and Mine Kill State Park. State Park Police help people using the parks, make arrests, conduct criminal and non-criminal investigations, and provide emergency services. Its force consists of about 280 men and women who patrol in marked police cars, on foot, in four-wheel-drive vehicles and all-terrain vehicles, on bicycles, in boats and personal water crafts, and on horseback.

According to the office’s plans, the Rensselaerville site, in addition to serving as a training academy, will be a year-round home for its park police internal affairs unit and will also store records. Cass will also be used for employee meetings and training during the months the academy is not in session.

Jurisdiction and management responsibility will be transferred to the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. After the transfer, the parks office says, a half-million dollars will be spent on improvements in the classrooms, dormitory, and administrative areas.
"I know we’re working closely with [the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation]," said Cantiello, OCFS spokesperson. "A direct date has not been determined yet for transfer."

Cantiello said OCFS will be out of the building in May.

History and future

Cass is located in the southwestern corner of Albany County, a rural area.

A year ago, nearly 500 residents signed a petition circulated by the rape survivor and her friends calling for Cass to close and be held accountable. The petition was presented to the Rensselaerville Town Board in January of last year.

Cass, which had been classified as a non-secure site, was intended to house non-violent male offenders between the ages of 14 and 18. However, locals speculated about the boys — their prior records and nature — after the kitchen worker was raped and multiple escapes followed. Some residents questioned the center’s programs and said Cass employees and the boys no longer interacted with the community as they had in years past. Some asserted that the boys at Cass had become increasingly violent.

As a new state agency plans to move into Rensselaerville, the town’s supervisor, Jost Nickelsberg, sees an opportunity for a trail system connecting the town’s hamlets and natural attractions. He has encouraged such a system since he first ran for office in 2005.
He said this week, "It’s obviously quite an area and they’ve got a full gym there and lots of facilities in addition to, obviously, being able to take care of the Park Police."

Nickelsberg said that, about a year ago, the Rensselaerville Trails Association started looking into building parallel trails, one for bicycles and another for horses, to connect the Huyck nature preserve, the Rensselaerville Institute, the Partridge Run State Wildlife Management Area in Berne, and the state lands where Cass is located. On most nights, the Rensselaerville Institute’s beds are empty, he said.
"We’re starting to do more at the institute — concert-wise, and party-wise, and with the restaurant. And this would be an extension of that. It’s a very logical one because we don’t have industry"so one of the soft ways we have of creating jobs and helping the local economy would be to make something, and leverage what we already have in place, which is natural beauty and open space.
"What we would love to do is to try and get interest in our beauty — try to have people come for the weekends and be able to walk and ride on the weekend, and then, after three days, go back to their homes," Nickelsberg said.

In March of last year, many residents grew increasingly adamant about closing Cass. The state agency that ran Cass had announced it would use the site to train state employees, but, within weeks, the state, with a new governor, was unclear about its short-term and long-term intentions for the facility.
Alexander "Sandy" Gordon, who has represented Rensselaerville and the surrounding Hilltowns in the Albany County Legislature since 1996, took an unpopular stance in March when he was in favor of inmates being placed at Cass "in some form."
He said this week, "Hopefully, there isn’t going to be an untreated population out there that’s just going to become more problematic as they age."
In April, some of Cass’s 32 workers presented a petition to the Rensselaerville Town Board saying, "We want to keep our jobs working with kids, but not at the expense of our own safety or yours."
The following month, OCFS announced it would close Cass and "begin discussions with employees regarding options for the continuation for their employment at other OCFS sites," said a May 21 letter from OCFS to Kenneth Brynien, president of the Public Employees Federation, a union which staffed Cass.
"Our intention is to find a place for all of them," Pat Cantiello, OCFS spokesperson, said this week.
Asked if he knows about Cass workers being placed elsewhere, Gordon said, "Not specifics. I do know that people were offered the opportunity to work at the Tryon site, I believe, as of last year. But, now, I don’t know what this is going to translate into for potential employment offerings for those dislocated employees."

Two Cass employees have retired, Cantiello said.
"I think we’re very fortunate that the commissioner of Parks and Recreation is a person who has a concern for the Rensselaerville community," Gordon said, "and helped make use of this important asset."
Nickelsberg said, "This is a real plus and a real departure from what it was and everything I’ve heard from everybody I’ve talked to — people are happy that this kind of use is being contemplated. And I think that they have a lot of respect the state government has given us the opportunity to do this."