Southern Brooklynites Share Diverse Views Of Stop-And-Frisk
By Scott Klocksin
Jacob Hunt was stopped by police and asked for identification as he left a parking lot in Bay Ridge several years ago. He fit the description of a suspect in a crime. But Hunt wasn’t worried.
“Ninety percent of calls you hear on the police scanner are ‘Hispanic, Black, 5-foot-9, 200 pounds. That’s me,” Hunt said.
“But if I’m doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to worry about,” said Hunt, a registered Republican who counts several cops as friends. “I don’t hold no animosity toward them. It’s a scary job.”
Hunt was one of dozens of people interviewed throughout Southern Brooklyn amid the November 5 mayoral election. The interviews revealed a wide breadth of views on policing.
Some expressed strong support for the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy. Others expressed personal bitterness over such tactics. But all agreed on the importance of safety.
Among the pillars of Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s campaign was the reform of policing strategies that many see as invasive and even discriminatory. But in Sheepshead Bay and Bensonhurst, Joe Lhota, whose campaign cautioned against a return to the high crime levels seen several decades ago, fared far better than in many parts of both candidates’ home borough.
Still, in the broad arc of Southern Brooklyn neighborhoods in which Lhota did relatively well, the election results seem to represent neither a repudiation nor a stamp of approval for the policing style of Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Charles Ritter, 46, is happy with the police presence in his Bensonhurst neighborhood. But Ritter was recently stopped by his stoop because a friend he was with fit the description of a burglary suspect.
“I was pissed off because it was in front of my house,” Ritter said.
Hector Luis Santiago, 58, of Canarsie, said he believes police bully people who live in poorer New York neighborhoods, particularly ones that are predominantly black or Latino.
“There’s too many police in one spot,” Santiago said. “In the white neighborhoods, they don’t bother you as much.”
The predominantly white areas covered by the 61st, 62nd and 68th Precincts each ranked in the bottom five percent in the city for the percentage blacks and Latinos among those stopped and frisked, according to a recent New York Civil Liberties Union analysis.
The 61st Precinct covers Sheepshead Bay, where 11.5 percent of residents are black or Latino, according to 2010 Census figures. Bensonhurst, largely covered by the 62nd Precinct, is 14 percent black or Latino, compared to 16 percent for Bay Ridge, which is policed by the 68th Precinct.
The 67th Precinct, which serves East Flatbush’s 94 percent black or Latino population, by contrast, tied for the precinct where those stopped and frisked were most likely to be black or Latino.
Barry Braverman, of Sheepshead Bay, remembers all too well what some have dubbed the “bad old days” of the 1980s and 1990s.
“One of my sons was mugged and one had his bicycle taken at knife point,” said Braverman, a 62-year-old retired customs officer. “A lot of people were getting mugged and every time [it happened] you’d see about 50 people move to New Jersey.”
Times have changed. NYPD data over a 20-year period ending on election day show crime down significantly in the precinct that covers Braverman’s neighborhood: Robbery fell by 73.4 percent; felony assault was down by 31 percent and murder saw a 71.4 percent reduction (the precinct reported three murders in 2012).
Joanne Lugo, another Sheepshead Bay resident, said the crime rates could go down even further if the police were better integrated with the community.
Lugo, 43, said that politicians should look beyond policies like stop-and-frisk in their search for effective community policing strategies.
“When I was a kid, you had neighborhood cops,” Lugo, said. “You knew the officers by name and they ran straight to your parents and let them know if you did something wrong.”
In his acceptance speech, de Blasio suggested the elusive balance between falling crime rates and healthy police-community relations has yet to be fully struck.
“We’re all hungry for an approach that acknowledges we are stronger and safer as a city when police and residents work hand-in-hand,” he said.
Reporting by Allegra Abramo, Natalie Abruzzo, Jaclyn Anglis, Kaara Baptiste, Anugya Chitransh, Rosa Goldensohn, Stefani Kim, Jennifer Lehman, Daniel Lewis, Pearl Macek, Matthew McVey, ChauThiNgoc Ngo, Jacob Passy and Ashley Rodriguez.
This story was produced in partnership with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.