The Freedom Tower

The STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE says “Sept. 11, 2001, is a date that lives in infamy.
Nowhere, of course, more so than on Staten Island, where the impact of the World Trade Center tragedy remains a fact of daily life for many people. Though it’s at least 5 miles from us, what goes on at Ground Zero is still close to our heart.
This is why we deplore the public hawking there of death and destruction: Illicit mementos being sold by street vendors in a circus-like way.
There ought to be a law, as the saying goes.
In fact, there is — but it doesn’t work.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the department’s Peddler Task Force and 1st Precinct officers have repeatedly arrested illegal vendors at the site of the World Trade Center, only to have them come back over and over.
“Peddlers treat the relatively small fines as a cost of doing business and return to their illegal activity immediately,” Mr. Kelly pointed out.
Not only 9/11 hats and T-shirts are for sale. Illegal profits are being made on photos of flames and exploding debris from the deadly jetliner attacks by terrorists on the Twin Towers.
Over 2,700 innocent people were killed there on Sept. 11, including more than 200 Staten Islanders.”