At a rally in honor of nine-year-old Lucian Merryweather near Fort Greene Park, residents demanded safer traffic conditions in Brooklyn. Photo: Dmitry Gudkov
A crowd gathered near Fort Greene Park Tuesday night to protest what residents say are unsafe traffic conditions that led to the death of a neighborhood child. Assembling before a local police precinct meeting, protestors held candles and signs that read “Stop Driver Violence” and “People Before Cars.” Other signs listed the names of 17 young pedestrians and cyclists killed by motor vehicles in New York City over the last year.
Nine-year-old Lucian Merryweather was walking down DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene earlier this month when an SUV spun out of control, jumping the curb and pinning the boy underneath it. Paramedics could not revive him and Lucian was declared dead at the scene. Also injured were his mother, younger brother, and another bystander.
A few blocks away, Jamie Yates, 43, and her family were biking down DeKalb Avenue. The chaos of the accident prevented them from getting through. “I have a ten-year-old and my first thought was, ‘Oh God, that could have been us,’” says Yates, who lives in the area and helped organize Tuesday’s rally. “This is not something that should happen here. This is not something that should happen anywhere.”
Mean Streets
In response to Lucian’s death, a community group called Make Brooklyn Safer has helped organize residents to raise awareness about traffic safety. Hilda Cohen, who founded the group in 2011 and lives in Fort Greene, says she sees cars speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians all the time, especially during rush hour. “We have schools, we have churches, we have parks, we have seniors that live here,” explains Cohen. “This is where we live. And our streets should reflect that.”
Cohen believes Fort Greene has become a funnel for commuters looking to take advantage of Brooklyn’s free bridges, thereby avoiding tolls at the Midtown Tunnel. The busy workers, she says, don’t always respect the fact that they’re in a residential neighborhood. Partnering with a nonprofit called OpenPlans, Make Brooklyn Safer has launched an online interactive map where residents can report unsafe traffic conditions. So far, users have flagged over 100 spots as dangerous.
Complaints range from motorists routinely running a red light on Myrtle and Vanderbilt avenues to police cars parked in a bike lane on DeKalb Avenue forcing cyclists out into the main road. At an intersection near P.S. 56, one user writes that cars “practically never stop at this crosswalk . . . many children pass this spot on their way to preschools. A stop sign is urgently needed here.”
Police Presence
Cohen and Yates both say that while the NYPD has done a good job of cracking down on drivers who use their cell phones or don’t buckle up, police officers don’t devote much energy to catching drivers who speed or fail to yield to pedestrians in the street. Data from the 88th Precinct, which includes Fort Greene, show that officers had given out five tickets this year to drivers for not yielding the right of way to pedestrians and cited a further 62 for speeding. “You know that there’s been more people speeding than that,” argues Yates. “But clearly it’s not a priority for them.” (Officers ticketed 2,048 drivers for talking on their cell phones and 1,302 for not wearing seatbelts, according to precinct data.)
Robert Perris has served as the District Manager for Community Board 2 for ten years. He agrees that traffic safety hasn’t been at the top of the police department’s agenda, but also points out the city has cut the number of officers by 15 percent since 2001. (A community affairs officer for the 88th Precinct declined to comment). “When you have limited resources, you make decisions about how to deploy them,” Perris says. “But what we do know is that the slower vehicles move, the less damage they do. Any strategy for safe streets is managing vehicle speed.”
Legislation currently before the City Council would lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour in residential neighborhoods, though the move would require state approval. Community Board 2 hasn’t taken a position yet on the bill, though Make Brooklyn Safer has united behind it. Under state law, the city could also unilaterally lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour on all streets within a quarter-mile of a school. WNYC has calculated that would include two-thirds of city streets.
Change Ahead?
The driver who struck Lucian, Anthony Byrd, 59, stayed at the scene after the accident. Prosecutors have charged him with negligent homicide. Hilda Cohen says she hopes it’s a sign the city is taking these incidents more seriously. “We want elected officials and the NYPD to make this a priority,” she insisted.
At an NYU panel earlier this week, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton pointed out that the 203 traffic fatalities in New York this year almost equaled the city’s 242 homicides. Bratton, a leading candidate to serve as incoming mayor Bill de Blasio’s top cop, believes the city needs to address traffic safety. “It’s just a matter of directing resources onto the issue,” he said.
With a new mayor coming in, Yates is hopeful the city will take concrete steps to improve traffic safety, but she acknowledges it’s an uphill battle. “If the speed limit were lower, and people actually felt like ‘if I speed an officer or a camera will catch me,’ then maybe we’d make some progress,” she says. “But right now it feels like people who drive cars can get away with murder.”
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