Our reporters Anna Hiatt and Daphnée Denis spoke with Brooklyn residents about their reactions following a series of sex assaults.
They laugh as they walk down the street holding hands, their long fake pink nails clattering together. Tenth graders at John Jay High School, Meshari Malcolm, Tasheipha Bartley, Yaneli Santiago and Iawnna Dinkins, say they’ve heard about the sexual assaults in the area. They’ve seen the police sketches at a local pizza shop, but the girls haven’t changed their behavior.
“I can’t be outside at night anyways,” Bartley says.
When they do go out together, they’re always in a group. Mostly with girls, they say, but sometimes boys come along.
The kids don’t talk much about the recent crime spree, but the girls say their teachers at John Jay have expressed concern about their safety.
“The teachers try to scare us, because the girls in school dress a little … “ Malcolm trails off. “So they tell us to be careful.”
The girls’ makeup is perfectly done; their outfits look as though they were picked out the night before. Santiago delicately hands us her umbrella, so we can take a picture of their hands. We ask them what they think about the police advising women not to wear skirts in response to the molestations.
“It’s your body,” Dinkins says, “but you should be careful because they don’t care.”
The girls’ answers are lighthearted, but at the end of our talk Dinkins pauses and says:
“I’m going to get my mom get me pepper spray.”
Down the block, Edna Wackman, a school security officer at John Jay, says she has started “watching her back” when she walks home. The 38-year-old adds she’s stopped getting in elevators with men she doesn’t know since the assaults started.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing pants or a skirt,” she says. “ If they’re going to grope you they’re going to grope you anyways!”
So to keep safe, Edna turns around if she feels that she’s being followed. “I let them know I’m watching them.”
The Häagen Dazs store on Seventh Avenue displays New York Police Department sketches of three suspects in the recent string of sexual assaults in Brooklyn.
“I’m always aware,” says the shift manager, Sitara Seebachan, 50. “I don’t take out my phone, and I don’t wear my headphones in the street. I always look at people.”
She tells us she‘s always careful leaving the store late at night; she sometimes gets a friend to pick her up from work. The shop tries to ensure a male and female are working together on the nightshift until closing time, at 11 p.m. She makes sure to walk in the middle of the street when it’s dark. Though she knows how to stay safe, the police warnings and neighborhood chatter have raised her alarm bells.
“We ladies have to be careful,” she tells us. “I open the store in the morning, but if there’s someone I don’t know in front of it, I don’t get in. The day you let your guard down is when it happens.”
She turns to help a female customer get ice cream for her kids. Teresa Bernard, 38, says she has started picking up her eight-year-old and 12-year-old from school this school year.
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Down the street at the Community Bookstore, where one of the owners, Stephanie Valdez, 27, says that while she hasn’t been to any community sexual assault awareness events or self-defense classes, she has been more alert around the neighborhood and close to her home in Sunset Park.
“It’s difficult because you don’t know how much you need to change your behavior,” she says. She adds that after a sharp increase sexual assaults, police presence “increased for two or three days around Union Street.” But she doesn’t see them as much anymore.
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People in Park Slope told us about a man who waits at the subway stations at night and offers to walk women home. We set off to find him.
A cashier at the pizza shop on the corner of Ninth Street and Seventh Avenue says he has seen men waiting with bikes at night at the F and G station.
“Wait,” he says, “I have a flier.”He rummages around behind the counter and pulls out a piece of paper advertising the Brooklyn Bike Patrol.
A phone number and email address are listed. So we call.
Jay Ruiz, 46, picks up. He says, he was angry when he saw a video of a Brooklyn woman being mugged.
“No woman should have to go through this,” Ruiz says. So he decided to start a patrol group. Since September 14th, Ruiz and a group of 10 volunteers have been stationed at 20 subway stops throughout the borough every night.
They start at 8 p.m. and are available until 12 a.m. from Sunday through Thursday, 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
We ask: Why should women trust them?
Ruiz stumbles for a second: He insists the group is legitimate. The Facebook page posts pictures of each volunteer: Ruiz tells callers who will be meeting them so they can look up their picture beforehand. Each escort must submit his information to the 72nd precinct, and the bike patrol issues them neon yellow shirts, patches and IDs.
And he’s lived in Brooklyn all his life.
“People know me,” he says. “They know I’m a stand-up person.”
Stay tuned on The Brooklyn Ink for more on the Brooklyn Bike Patrol: feature to come.
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