The New York Police Department's 120th Precinct on Staten Island.
Complaints of misconduct by officers in the 120th Precinct on the North Shore rival those in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
Fatal Confrontation Heightens Tensions in Staten Island Police Precinct
Photo
Park Hill Avenue on Staten Island. The 120th Precinct draws a high number of civilian complaints about police conduct.Credit
Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
In
a corner of Staten Island, on a sidewalk across from a tiny triangular
park, a fatal police confrontation last month has drawn focus to an area
plagued by disorder, and rife with simmering tensions over policing and
poverty.
Eric Garner’s death in police custody on July 17 has been a lightning rod for protests over police brutality, including a major demonstration here planned for Saturday, and a grand jury investigation
into possible criminal charges against the officers whose chokehold and
takedown of Mr. Garner, the New York City medical examiner ruled, caused his death.
It has also invited scrutiny on the 120th Precinct, where distrust of police officers splits along racial lines.
Complaints
of police misconduct here rival those in the Bronx and Brooklyn;
stop-and-frisk encounters were among the highest in the city, and have
declined more slowly. In the first half of 2014, the precinct recorded
1,354 stops, a citywide high, even as its coverage area shrank
significantly last year.
Photo
The borough commander for
Staten Island, Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre, dismissed criticism of
the precinct, saying he had not heard any.Credit
Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
Murders
in the precinct’s historical boundaries have nearly doubled this year
to nine, more than the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville or East New
York. Gangs are so prevalent that the New York Police Department moved
to test an ambitious, community-based intervention program here last
year, before the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio decided it would
be better in Brooklyn.
Among
the city’s busiest police precincts — the “A” houses in the
department’s old jargon — the 120th Precinct, covering Staten Island’s
northeast, is often overlooked, blending into an errant vision of
homogeneity that many outsiders have of the borough. “It’s an island
amongst islands,” said the Rev. Demetrius S. Carolina, of the First
Central Baptist Church in the Stapleton section.
Long an afterthought amid the gunfire of Brooklyn and the Bronx, the precinct now frames, in microcosm, the debate
over the “broken windows” style of policing associated with the police
commissioner, William J. Bratton, in which heavy enforcement of small
crimes — like selling cigarettes for 75 cents apiece on the street, as
Mr. Garner was suspected of doing — is seen as preventing serious
felonies.
In
the aftermath, videos emerged of violent arrests in the precinct, where
neon stickers mark shuttered drug spots and a troubled Jersey Street
deli has its own police command post parked out front. Stories of
unpleasant, racially tinged interactions surfaced.
Mr.
Bratton traveled to the precinct after Mr. Garner’s death and commended
its hard-working officers, who have said they now face taunts from
residents and resistance from suspects. The borough commander for Staten
Island, Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre, dismissed criticism of the
precinct, saying he had not heard any.
“You’re
assuming I’m hearing the precinct beat up,” Chief Delatorre said in a
recent interview at the borough headquarters on Hylan Boulevard, south
of the 120th. “What I’m hearing out there are cops getting accolades.
I’m getting letters, very positive letters.”
Photo
Residents described a chaotic
scene on a recent night when two 14-year-olds were briefly detained by
the police clearing a park at dusk.Credit
Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
Most
of the officers who work in the 120th Precinct also live on Staten
Island, an arrangement not seen in other boroughs, but unsurprising in a
department where 3,000 uniformed members live in the middle-class
borough of 470,000. That proximity to work means that off-duty officers
frequently alert their colleagues about crimes or tips, in the manner of
a small town, Chief Delatorre said.
“They
study who the known recidivists are, the known criminals who are
wanted, and they get to know them,” he said. “They have a real vested
interest in the quality of life and the level of crime on this island.”
Such
attention is often welcome. But it also leads to repeated encounters
with small-time offenders that, residents said, can turn ugly. Residents
object to the increased attention that living in a high-crime
neighborhood brings to everyday activities.
The
police twice arrested Lenny Bishop, 21, of Park Hill, in cases that
were later dismissed. The first time, officers mistook Mr. Bishop, who
is black, for a robbery suspect; he spent several days in jail. In July,
he was roughed up by officers after riding a bicycle on the sidewalk.
Surveillance video shows a verbal back and forth and a search of his
basketball shorts before a pair of officers lifted Mr. Bishop off his
feet and slammed him to the ground. He is suing the department.
“A
lot of the officers who are policing on the North Shore are Staten
Island residents but not North Shore residents,” said Deborah Rose, who
represents the area on the City Council. “They haven’t been exposed to
the level of diversity that we have in the North Shore communities.”
Mr.
Garner, 43, was among those familiar to officers, the sort whose face
and name are studied as a “known recidivist” by those on patrol. A March
complaint to 311 named “Eric” alongside others said to be selling loose
cigarettes and marijuana on Bay Street. The next day, Mr. Garner was
arrested there for illegal cigarette sales.
Photo
The New York Police Department's 120th Precinct on Staten Island.Credit
Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
Mr.
Garner would have known the officers who approached him too, if not by
name, then by type: plainclothes police ordered to treat small crimes as
pressing concerns.
When
a plainclothes anticrime team confronted him last month, he refused to
go. Officers wrestled him to the ground as one officer, Daniel Pantaleo,
wrapped an arm around Mr. Garner’s neck; he died soon afterward.
Officer
Pantaleo, a resident of Staten Island’s South Shore, had his badge and
gun removed pending results of a district attorney’s investigation.
Another officer, Justin Damico, also of southern Staten Island, was
reassigned to desk duty.
Long
before, the area had become a priority for the police. Fourteen of the
15 Staten Island gangs tracked by the department can be found north of
the Staten Island Expressway.
Along Park Hill Avenue, the police are a regular presence. In a nearby city park, young men and teenagers congregate.
“It
was a lot of killing; I understand why the cops would be out here,”
said Mohamed Jenkins, 24, who was waiting near an overflowing water
fountain for his turn on the basketball court on a recent Thursday
afternoon. “But this is where I had my first fight, my first kiss. They
stop me in my own home, it’s outrageous. To them, everyone is a
gangbanger.”
Photo
Kyshief Campbell, 14, says he
was punched in the face during an altercation with police officers. He
was cuffed and put in the police car, but then let go. No charges were
filed.Credit
Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
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