WHSAD students Reggie Huggins and Chamonte Greenfield with Chief Maddrey and Chief McEvoy
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Design (WHSAD) in partnership with Patrol Borough Brooklyn North (PBBN) and NYC Together (NYCT) launched a unique, impactful literacy project: #FreetoReadandLead will focus on education, service-learning, community safety, and community building. 
Students and officers, with instructions from WHSAD teachers, Mr. Codio and Mr. O’Brien, built thirteen Little Free Libraries that will be housed inside each of the ten commands in Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, at Chief Maddrey’s headquarters, and at the two police service areas located in Brooklyn North.
Commands will work with community members and partners to promote use of the Little Free Libraries and host community events that support literacy while building trust and positive relations with the community.
“Recognizing the correlation between illiteracy and criminal justice involvement, the #FreetoReadandLead project is an innovative solution that will improve literacy rates in our community, build trust between our officers and the communities we serve, and increase community safety in the short and long term,” explained PBBN Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey. “These libraries are another tool for us to create a dialogue with far reaching implications and will serve the community beyond the project’s implementation.” 
In the coming weeks students and officers will design the exterior of the libraries to make them unique to the precinct in which they will be placed.
WHSAD and NYC Together would like to thank local businesses for providing funding to purchase supplies for this project. A special thanks to Broadway Stages for funding all the materials that will be used to decorate the exterior of the libraries.
For more information on NYC Together please visit https://nyctogether.org/
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