After 67 shootings and three killings in New York City within 72 hours on Labor Day weekend, community and police organized a forum in East Flatbush, Brooklyn on Sept. 20 to reduce local crime. Four of the shootings and one of the fatalities took place in Flatbush and many others were in surrounding areas but community residents seemed more concerned about police behavior than about the violence in their midst.
Senator Adams discusses crime in front of police and Council Member Mathieu Eugene. (Photo: Stephanie Vatz | City Beats)
“They should come around to the blocks and talk to people,” Janet Bagot, a retired school counselor who attended the forum, said the day after in a telephone interview. “There is no serious trust. We don’t trust them because we don’t see them a lot and we don’t know them.”
Council Member Mathieu Eugene organized the meeting at Parkside Academy Middle School’s auditorium and invited panelists including high-ranking police officers, members of the clergy, and one state senator.
Council Member Latitia James was one of the first to speak from the panel. Her message was brief: In order to discourage violence and make more arrests, she said, community members need to “snitch on one another.”
This message, although simple, became complicated when the floor was given to residents who were less concerned with climbing crime rates than with police misconduct and negligence.
Colin Moore, a private attorney and senior editor at the Caribbean American Weekly newspaper, said search and seizure procedures are particularly concerning.
“It’s a site that you see almost on a nightly basis, a police officer conducting a search and seizure on a young black man,” said Moore. “Obviously these encounters must create a lot of tension in the community.”
The same Labor Day weekend that the 67 shootings took place, a well-liked council member, Jumaane Williams, was arrested for crossing a police barrier at the West Indian Day Parade, leading to questions about racial profiling within the central Brooklyn precincts. The Williams arrest was brought up several times throughout the meeting as an example of police misconduct. The police representatives apologized to the crowd and assured them that they had filed an internal investigation.
Bagot, the retired school counselor, said that crime wasn’t the real problem. Lack of programs that keep children off the streets is the real issue, she said.
“I do not know that it’s a serious issue in this community,” Bagot said “I’m not saying that it should not be addressed, but 15 years ago, young people were going around to stores and sticking people up.”
The list of crime statistics given by all three precincts confirmed Bagot’s belief that crime was not a new issue. Deputy Chief Inspector Steve Bonano, who manages all three precincts, said homicide rates this year were three percent lower than last year.
But those numbers made no difference to one woman who told Captain Schiff that when her son was robbed after school, she reported the incident twice but officers refused to file the report. The woman did not identify herself at the meeting, but said that her son, who is in elementary school, no longer goes outside after dark and refuses to take out the trash. In response, Schiff offered to conduct a personal investigation.
Underscoring some of the concerns of the residents, as well as that of the police, three days after the meeting police shot and gravely wounded a 30-year-old man, Jerry Benoit. Police said Benoit shot first.
