The New York Times has published an article about the gunfire in Brooklyn Bridge Park on 4/15 and the park’s racial dynamics:
“On the afternoon of April 15, two shots were fired on Pier 2, at the northern end of the park, near a rising luxury condominium complex, where basketball and handball courts attract a youthful crowd after school in warmer weather. The shots were related to a gang rivalry, according to the police, with members of one crew having posted on Facebook that they were going to show up and another arriving in response. No one was wounded; two men, Legrant Foster, who is 20, and Akeem Reed, who is 17, were arrested on weapons possession charges…
As a result of the shooting, a police car with two officers is now stationed at Pier 2 every day after school, and the 84th Precinct has requested that more officers be assigned to the park this summer. On one level this makes obvious sense; law enforcement is responding to community calls for more vigilance. On the other it seems to ignore the complexities of how the park’s racial dynamics have evolved…
In the early days it was filled with young mothers from nearby, and it seemed as though Brooklyn Heights, already one of the most beautiful and affluent neighborhoods in the city, was unfairly receiving another exclusive prize that had eluded so many other parts of the city, as if a well-dressed woman were getting an Hermès watch when she already had a Rolex at home…
As the park has expanded, Orthodox Jews have come from Williamsburg and Borough Park. When the grills and picnic tables were opened in the middle of the park, they were soon colonized by Hispanic families there on weekend afternoons. When Pier 2 opened last year it quickly became popular with black teenagers and families traveling there from all over Brooklyn. Tourists fill the northern end of the park at Pier 1, and young brownstone Brooklyn families of the sort seen in marketing campaigns fill the southern tip, where playgrounds and wood-oven pizza reign.”
Photo: NY Times
