Labor Day violence in Brooklyn complicates community peacemaking efforts

Spirited steel drums, colorful costumes and joyous revelry with family and friends are all part of the West Indian American Day Parade that many residents of the New York City borough of Brooklyn look forward to all summer. But that anticipation comes with anxiety, as gun violence has struck somewhere in the crowd for many years. 

As the boisterous Labor Day weekend event marked its 48th year on Monday, a barrage of gunfire in the street killed 43-year-old bystander Carey Gabay, a top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the New York Post reported. Gabay was the one fatality among 23 people shot during J’Ouvert, which is the dawn celebration that precedes the parade in a largely Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn. Gabay's public profile ensured more headlines than meted out to many of the past victims of the parade’s perennial gun violence. 

Knives also pose a danger. Just before this year’s J'Ouvert, a fatal stabbing occured along the parade route. Police cordoned off the scene — a big blotch of fresh blood on the sidewalk — and the party went on around it, undisturbed. 

This year’s J’Ouvert and the following street carnival were more peaceful than in many previous years, according to statistics provided by the New York Police Department. In 2011, there were 14 murders and 46 shootings over the weekend; in 2012, 4 murders and 22 shootings; in 2013, 5 murders and 28 shootings; in 2014, 6 murders and 25 shootings. This year there were 4 murders out of 23 shootings, or about the same as the relatively placid weekend of 2012. 

More than 1 million people attend the celebration of Caribbean culture, organizers estimate, and the numbers have created situations where bloodshed can break out without warning. Organizers of community-led approaches to combating gun violence find the event to be a source of frustration every year. Local politicians argue that federal and state lawmakers must pass more legislation to control access to guns. 

But despite the 24-hour party’s troubling record and this year’s death, there’s no indication that authorities are anywhere near ready to consider shutting down the beloved cultural institution.

“It’s something that this community wants to have, and it wants to have it in a safe manner,” the New York Post quoted Police Commissioner William Bratton, as saying Monday, adding that there is “no reason to not go forward with the events.”

The parade has long been a time when “broken windows” policing — the vigorous enforcement of minor infractions such as public drinking or marijuana smoking — pauses, and the borough can let loose.

Amid the more relaxed atmosphere, the return of gunfire every year presents a concern for community groups dedicated to reducing the toll guns take on Brooklyn.

“The Labor Day parade events are a particular challenge to us,” Amy Ellenbogen, director of Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, said Tuesday. The center serves as a hub for Save Our Streets (SOS), the New York branch of a nationwide anti-violence non-profit called Cureviolence. The group tries to treat shootings as a public health issue that requires intervention by trained "interrupters" — many of whom come from the community itself. 

SOS, one of fifteen new community-based anti-violence programs across New York City, has former gang members who have turned their lives around reaching out to youth who are at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators. The mediators discourage them from joining gangs, carrying guns or taking revenge on rivals.

“There are a lot of people moving through the neighborhood” during the parade, Ellenbogen said. “And a lot of times the violence is unrelated to neighborhood disputes, and those are what we really focus on.”

City Councilmember Jumaane Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat who represents the area the parade passes through, said that community-based approaches to violence prevention have to be active all year to make a difference over the parade weekend.

“We have people at these events who are infected with violent thoughts,” Williams told reporters in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. He praised the efforts made by SOS to look at gun violence as a public health problem.

Williams also cautioned against specifically linking the West Indian American Day Parade with violence. Other ordinary weekends this summer saw more killings, he noted.

“This [parade] was the safest maybe in a decade,” he said. 

He also said the solution was not for police to crack down harder on pot smoking or public drinking — street vendors sell "nutcrackers" a blend of grain alcohol, fruit juice and fruit from shopping carts — but rather to keep using their own discretion instead of trying to chase down every ticketable offense.

"I don’t think people should be allowed to get out of control, but anytime we start zero tolerance it leads to things happening that we don't want to see," he told Al Jazeera. "That type of policing often gets repressive." 

Joe Giacalone, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and a former New York City police officer, said there are limits to what police can do to deter or stop violence at such massive gatherings.

On New Year’s Eve, revelers who flock to Times Square have to pass through security checkpoints into special pens for watching the ball drop at midnight. Because the West Indian American Day Parade lasts so long and covers a relatively long route through Brooklyn, Giacalone said security efforts like those made on New Year's Eve would be a “logistical nightmare.”

He said many police officers dread parade duty on that Labor Day weekend Monday, which is often long, hot and hectic, but some sign up because of the amount of overtime pay they can earn.

“They call it ‘blood money.’ Your check is great, but you’re wasted for days. You’re miserable, you’re hot, your feet hurt,” Giacalone said. “It’s a nice amount of money, but you’re really earning it.”