Tough Crowd

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Houses in Crown Heights. Photo from Brownstoner
Houses in Crown Heights. Photo from Brownstoner

By Jack Mirkinson

Inspector Peter Simonetti, Commanding Officer for the 71st Precinct, had come to the auditorium of Middle School 61 in Crown Heights to tell the audience at the monthly meeting of Community Board 9 to work with the police and watch out for suspicious activity. He wound up besieged on all sides by neighborhood residents, who told him that his officers had wrongfully arrested them, neglected to patrol their area and not given them enough information about who, if anyone, was watching their block. A meeting that had contained the usual ragged but pleasant atmosphere quickly turned into something altogether spikier.

Things had started off innocuously enough. Councilwoman Letitia James was there, making the rounds in her constituency. Most of the crowd seemed to be filled with people who showed up, without fail, to every gathering. The demographics skewed elderly.

The chairman of the board, Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, introduced Simonetti, who he said was going to talk about “guns and murders and drugs and mayhem, etc., etc.” Simonetti, hulking and talking in thick Brooklynese, was a little less flippant, urging the crowd to talk to the police if they saw something on their block.

Then it was time for questions. The first came from a young black man with dreadlocks named Zaki Smith. Three years ago, he said, he and his friend had called the cops, to tell them about a shootout that was happening on the block. But the police had arrested them instead, locking them up at Riker’s for a week for no reason. Simonetti tried to interject. “Let me finish,” Smith kept saying.

“I understand what you’re saying,” Simonetti said.

“No you don’t. Let me finish. The 71st Precinct makes stupid mistakes—”

“I don’t know why you were picked up, but it would have been with probable cause—”

“They didn’t have probable cause!”

Meanwhile, the crowd was rumbling, the low roar of 50 conversations sprouting from every end of the auditorium. Goldstein tried to restore order to the proceedings, saying “Zaki, Zaki, Zaki” to try to get Smith to calm down.

Simonetti said he would be glad to take Smith down to the precinct and look at the arrest record with him so he could explain why he had been arrested. Smith replied that there was nothing to explain, and walked out of the room.

A younger man spoke from his seat next. He said that, despite what Simonetti had been saying, the police only looked out for the area north of Empire Boulevard, and left the southern area neglected. “And there’s not anybody in this room who can say I’m wrong,” he added.

“Well, I can say you’re wrong,” Simonetti replied. The man, whose name was Leon, rose to his feet, challenging Simonetti to come with him and show him where these police were. “I’ll take you for a walk,” he said. “Let’s go.” By this time, the crowd was loudly excited, and Simonetti was looking a little flustered. His face had gotten steadily redder. “Leon, sit down! Sit down!” people in the row behind Leon shouted.

“He wants to take a walk, we’ll take a walk,” Simonetti said, gesturing to a couple of cops sitting in the back of the auditorium. Leon followed the cops outside the room, presumably to show them what he was talking about.

The next speaker was a woman who stood up, trembling slightly. She started speaking but then stopped for a second, saying she was “really nervous.” “It’s okay,” someone said encouragingly.

The woman told Simonetti that she wanted to file a complaint. Her two sons, one 12 and one 18, had been walking on the street one night when a car had pulled up beside them and two people who looked like gang members had gotten out, forced her 12-year-old to the ground and put a gun to his head. It turned out that the two were undercover cops. They had never identified themselves. Her son, she said, had done nothing. “That’s not fair,” she kept saying. An indignant gasp rose from the crowd. People shook their heads.

Simonetti said that he didn’t know what evidence the police may have had on the woman’s son. Maybe there were drugs involved, or some other thing. Usually, he said, undercover cops had badges that identified them. “Not true!” a couple of people in the crowd called out.

Eventually, the questions got a little easier—did the police have a website where they were putting information, that sort of thing. Outside, though, Leon was still talking to the police, each trying to show the other that he was right.

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