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What happened when a Brooklyn neighborhood policed ​​itself for five days – UnlistedNews

It had been a quiet April afternoon until a dozen teenagers began running down Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville, yelling and swearing. They were chasing a girl of about 14 years old and it was clear that they wanted a fight.

Five plainclothes policemen looked askance. On Pitkin’s other side were half a dozen men, civilians in purple and gray jeans and sweatshirts.

“They got it,” an officer said.

The teens slowed down when they saw the men, workers for an organization called Brownsville In Violence Outside, who calmly waved them in different directions. They scattered when the girl fled down a side street.

The brief meeting encapsulated a simple but unorthodox concept that is at the heart of a bold experiment that organizers believe could redefine New York law enforcement: letting neighbors, not police, respond to street crime in low level.

Several times a year, Brownsville In Violence Out workers stand guard on two blocks for five days. Police route all 911 calls from that area to civilians. Unless there is a major incident or a victim demands an arrest, the officers, always in civilian clothes, keep an eye on the workers.

Civilians do not have arrest powers. But they persuaded people to turn in illegal guns, they stopped shoplifting, they stopped a man from robbing a bodega, and they stopped a pregnant woman from beating up her boyfriend who hadn’t bought a car seat and stroller like he had. fiance.

They are part of the Brownsville Safety Alliance, a group of neighborhood and city groups, police officers and members of the Kings County District Attorney’s office that is trying to ensure that fewer people are arrested and entangled in the criminal justice system. .

As the men and women of Brownsville In Violence Out look for trouble, agencies offering services like free child care and addiction recovery sit at folding tables, hand out flyers and lure passers-by with games, stress balls and pens.

Over the next three years, the City will provide $2.1 million to help link the local organizations that most frequently participate in the Safety Alliance so they can work together year-round.

The effort mirrors others that emerged after demonstrations that swept New York and much of the country to protest the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They are intended to modulate the officially sanctioned use of force, using a neighborhood’s innate desire for order as a tool.

Residents have embraced the concept, said Nyron Campbell, 37, an assistant program manager at Brownsville In Violence Out.

“They say: ‘We feel safer. We can walk around without feeling anxious,’” she said. “While they know we need police, we may be able to police ourselves.”

The idea came from Terrell Anderson, who in 2020 took over as commander of the area’s 73rd precinct. Raised in Brownsville, he vowed to rebuild the police station’s relationship with a wary community.

The neighbors had complained that the officers had become aggressive, grabbing men off the street to arrest them for petty crimes. The neighborhood was reeling from the 2019 shooting of Kwesi Ashun, a T-shirt salesman with paranoid schizophrenia, killed while hitting an officer with a chair in a nail salon.

Inspector Anderson asked residents what the department could do to build trust.

Inspector Terrell Anderson set about rebuilding relationships in the neighborhood where he grew up.Credit…New York City Police Department

Among them was Dushoun Almond, a humorous and self-deprecating man who calls himself Bigga.

Mr. Almond, who runs Brownsville In Violence Out, said Inspector Anderson realized that sometimes all it takes to keep the peace is a credible person, not necessarily a badge, telling Someone: “Get out of here. You are disturbing.

“Community members see themselves in Bigga,” said Jeffrey Coots, director of the From Punishment to Public Health initiative at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The group works closely with the Brownsville Safety Alliance, conducting surveys on the initiative and tracking its progress.

“This is someone who is like me, who understands me and is calling out to me that I am a bit out of pocket,” Mr Coots said.

Deputy Inspector Mark A. Vazquez, who also grew up in Brownsville, took over last year after Inspector Anderson was transferred and said he continued with the project because public safety is a “shared responsibility.”

Inspector Vázquez said that he was 4 years old when his father was shot and that many relatives have been imprisoned.

“I know how it is,” Inspector Vázquez said.

Not everyone is convinced. Lise Perez, owner of Clara’s Beauty Salon on Pitkin Avenue, has 26 cameras around her shop and works behind a counter protected by a thick plastic partition. No one can get in or out without you pressing a button.

“In this area, no one feels too safe,” he said. “We are all here surviving.”

The thought of five days in which the police forward calls to 911 unsettles her.

“It is as if we have been left without protection,” he said. “It doesn’t give me peace.”

But Minerva Vitale, 66, who lives on the avenue, said the effort was “incredibly important.”

“We call them and, poof, they come right away,” he said. “You think they’re not ready for this? Yes they are.”

Tiffany Burgess, 42, one of the community workers for Brownsville In Violence Out, said she was baffled by skeptics.

“If we can calm them down and make them go away, what’s the problem?” she said. “You should want that.”

More people across the country are doing it. The Brownsville initiative is part of a movement called the “community response model,” which aims to reduce the use of armed officers to handle many calls.

Similar programs are underway in Eugene, Oregon; denver; and Rochester, New York, among other places, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. The group has estimated that nearly 40 percent of calls to the police could be handled by community responders.

In Brownsville, the effort not only gives residents more of a say in what public safety looks like, but it can also deter crime if people know more eyes are watching, Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez said.

“A lot of people are concerned that if the police systems are not fully active, crime will increase,” he said.

But the Safety Alliance has been thriving amid a positive trend in the 73rd Precinct, Gonzalez said. In the first half of 2023, homicides are down 50 percent, shootings are down 25 percent and the rate of grand theft autos is also down but rising in other neighborhoods, he said.

A pair of watchful eyes belongs to Mr. Almond, 47, a former gang member who spent more than 13 years in prison for a bank robbery. He returned to Brownsville in 2014 and got a smoking gun tattoo behind his right ear to hide a small scar from a gunshot wound.

His past, along with his calm and direct approach, helps him navigate conflicts. During a Safety Alliance week, he convinced a man walking into a warehouse with a gun to give him his gun and go home. The next day, that same man returned, but this time as a volunteer.

He spent the day “crushing meats,” Almond said. “It broke up like three fights.”

Just as she told the story, she received a 911 call about a fight at a deli on the corner of Watkins and Pitkin. Mr. Almond slowly approached to assess the dispute between two men, one of whom had obtained a restraining order against the other, a person named Lala.

Lala had disappeared, but the other man remained outside the delicatessen.

“From now on, so there is never a problem like this in our community, give me a call,” Mr. Almond told the man, who nodded. “Go into the store. Don’t antagonize each other.”

Mr. Almond then told one of the community workers to find Lala and order her to stay away.

Mr. Almond walked up to the sergeant. Jared Delaney and Officer Nickita Beckford.

“Everything is fine,” he said. “I took care of it.”

Workers shoulder a heavy load, handling cases that fall into the huge gap between law enforcement and social services.

On the penultimate day of the Safety Alliance week, a cold and cloudy Friday, a car pulled up. The driver pushed a woman into the street and then drove away. Her crying, screaming and intoxicated, she had no money or identification and she didn’t seem to know where she was.

Mr. Almond’s team surrounded her. Mrs. Burgess, the social worker, learned that her name was Alicia and that she was her 23rd birthday.She told Mrs. Burgess that she had paranoid schizophrenia and kept insisting on going to Rite-Aid. Mrs. Burgess was concerned that she was planning to steal something.

Dana Rachlin, Executive Director of we build the block, a Brooklyn-based public safety organization that helps run the alliance, bought Alicia Chinese food to calm her down. While she ate, Ms. Rachlin called the city’s mental health hotline.

He waited while on hold for 10 minutes before someone told him it would be 24 hours before a team arrived and he could call the police.

Mrs. Rachlin rolled her eyes and hung up.

It was colder. Mrs. Rachlin sat on the bench at the bus stop and Alicia sat next to her, rested her head on her shoulder and fell asleep.

Finally, Mrs. Rachlin and Mr. Almond and an executive from a social services group took Alicia to an intake center for a shelter. She couldn’t get a bed until Monday, but she could stay at the center for the weekend.

When Mrs. Rachlin called the center the next morning to check on her, Alicia was gone.

“We’ve been looking for her,” Rachlin said. “We have our eyes open.”

She said the ultimate goal was to close that gap and create a system where someone like Alicia, who might have been arrested for fighting or shoplifting, could immediately get shelter, cash and an ID card.

On at least that Friday, Rachlin said, the alliance “provided a moment of safety.”

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Sara Marcus
Sara Marcushttps://unlistednews.com
Meet Sara Marcus, our newest addition to the Unlisted News team! Sara is a talented author and cultural critic, whose work has appeared in a variety of publications. Sara's writing style is characterized by its incisiveness and thought-provoking nature, and her insightful commentary on music, politics, and social justice is sure to captivate our readers. We are thrilled to have her join our team and look forward to sharing her work with our readers.
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