One thing we can be sure of is that, no matter who the mayor or police commissioner is when the West Indian Day Parade rolls around each year, they’ll assure us that all laws will be enforced.
And they’ll be lying.
From Koch to Dinkins, Giuliani to Bloomberg and now de Blasio, the same violence has occurred each year, followed by the same lame excuses and promises that it won’t happen again next year. This time, an aide to Gov. Cuomo lies in the intensive-care unit with a bullet wound in his head, on life support. So we’re more focused on this ongoing problem than normal.
But nothing else has changed. And unfortunately, the history of this parade suggests nothing will. That’s a shame, because there are real steps the city can take to secure the parade and its attendant festivities.
The West Indian parade has three components to it. The night before the parade is the street party known as J’Ouvert, which runs from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Three thousand NYPD cops are assigned to the streets of Crown Heights, East Flatbush and Flatbush to patrol the party.
And yet, they’re essentially told to stand down. For two days, New York Penal Law 240.35 gets thrown out of the local NYPD precinct windows.
This law states that it’s illegal to congregate in public with two or more people while each is wearing a mask or any face covering that disguises their identity. There are exceptions for masquerades and Halloween parties.
By dusk on J’Ouvert, large numbers of young men come together around the flag of the island in the West Indies that they identify with. They all wear flag scarves around their necks, then raise them to cover their faces. Their fun will begin at everyone else’s expense as they begin to roll out.
They bump, push and punch their way through the mounting crowds. Fueled by alcohol and pot, they swarm like locusts in a cornfield. At some point, they pull out their guns and start capping shots in the air.
Inevitably, one group meets another in the crowded streets and it’s like a scene out of “West Side Story.” Old scores get settled.
All this takes place with a wink and a nod from the authorities. Their position: better on commercial property than out in the residential areas. Operation Turn Your Head continues until dawn.
The politicians don’t see any of this because the day of the parade, they march down Eastern Parkway starting at 11 a.m. After the parade, they climb into their taxpayer-funded air-conditioned SUVs and head off to their other Labor Day activities.
They don’t see any of what I’ve described because the thugs responsible are still sleeping in at home after an exhausting night of anarchy. By 4 p.m., the thugs are up and out in force along Eastern Parkway, publicly drinking and smoking pot in front of the police. They’re just waiting for their orders on Day 2 to pull their flags up and go another round.
These are two days in which we pay cops overtime in order to look like cops — but not act like them. Some cops suck it up because they’re on “platinum time.” They figure if the mayor and police commissioner want them to be toy cops, at least they’ll be able to bank sufficient overtime pay for their trouble, such as it is.
Here are two ways to fix the annual violence around the West Indian Parade. One is to simply shut J’Ouvert down. They could follow the lead of Hoboken, NJ, which canceled its St. Patrick’s Day Parade due to “the city of Hoboken’s inability to protect our spectators, bands and participants,” as the parade committee explained.
The other is to apply the precedent of the city’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.
In 2000, after a series of sexual assaults in Central Park plagued the Puerto Rican parade, zero tolerance became the NYPD’s new operating instruction. Mandatory bag searches, no booze, no drugs and no gangs. That went both for the day of the parade itself and the preceding night’s festivities.
For years, we’ve been given the excuse that this is “cultural.” How demeaning that stereotype was then for our Puerto Rican community and how demeaning it is now for our West Indian-Caribbean community.
It’s not cultural, Mr. Mayor. Either cancel J’Ouvert or let our cops do their jobs.
Curtis Sliwa, founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels, can be heard on the “Curtis & Kuby” show on 77 WABC radio.
