February 24, 2008

A Precinct’s Hard Road Back

By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Nine blocks from where Sean Bell was shot and a few hours after three detectives
go on trial in his death, the mournful notes of a bagpipe will mark another moment
when a Queens neighborhood was filled with the staccato of gunfire.

On Tuesday morning, an hour after midnight, police officers will gather at Inwood
Street and 107th Avenue to play music, recite prayers and light candles on the
20th anniversary of the murder of a rookie officer named Edward Byrne as he
guarded the house of a witness.

Both shootings, low points for the police in their respective eras, occurred in
the 103rd Precinct, an assortment of south Queens neighborhoods with some of the
most heavily patrolled streets in the city. It is also where the New York Police
Department has fought some of its toughest battles of the last 20 years, from
trying to beat back the raging crack cocaine trade at the time of the Byrne
shooting to extending an olive branch to the community after Mr. Bell was shot.

In interviews this month, political leaders and residents spoke of the Byrne and
Bell killings as marking extremes in the precinct’s history. “They both never
should have happened,” said Leroy Comrie, the New York City councilman who
represents southeast Queens. “But they both deserve to be commemorated.”

The 103rd Precinct has about 100,000 residents and is one of the busiest in
Queens, stretching from the shopping districts of Hollis to the din of the Van
Wyck Expressway to the housing projects of South Jamaica. More than 220 officers
and 114 auxiliary police officers cover some of the city’s most ethnically diverse
neighborhoods, with new immigrants from countries including Bangladesh and Jamaica
mixing with the predominantly black long-term residents in middle- and lower-
income neighborhoods of mostly one- and two-family homes.

There are rich works of architecture and infrastructure. Above soars the steeple
of the All Nations Apostolic Tabernacle, an 1869 neighborhood landmark, while
below are the subway lines that connect with the elevated Long Island Rail Road
hub, the Air Train and numerous bus routes.

At once a commuting hub and an extremity of New York City, the precinct,
particularly the neighborhood of South Jamaica, became a national symbol of the
war on drugs on Feb. 26, 1988.

Officer Byrne, 22, was shot in the head while he sat in a patrol car, guarding a
house at Inwood and 107th. A resident there had complained to the police about
drug gangs, and the house had been firebombed. A drug gang leader, Howard Mason,
was convicted of racketeering charges that included ordering the hit on Officer
Byrne and was sentenced to life in prison. Four men were convicted of carrying out
the murder of Officer Byrne and received sentences of 25 years to life. One of
them, David McClary, was convicted of shooting him several times in the head at
close range.

Officer Byrne’s badge was displayed in the White House by President George H. W.
Bush. The street in front of the 103rd Precinct station house was renamed for
Officer Byrne, a move at first opposed by some community leaders who thought that
others who had died in drug-related violence deserved recognition, too. A park in
nearby South Ozone Park, a middle school in the Bronx and a federal law
enforcement grant program were also named after the officer. The killing, which
Mayor Edward I. Koch declared an “attack on society,” became a catalyst for some
of New York’s most wide-ranging crackdowns on crime, including special narcotics
units that made broad sweeps of South Jamaica areas that had long been terrorized
by drug gangs.

“It is one of the factors that contributed to the turnaround,” said Patrick
Hendry, a former police officer in the 103rd Precinct who is now a union trustee
helping to plan Officer Byrne’s memorial ceremony. “It did change policing in an
aspect as far as specialized units going after drug dealers.”

The results of the crackdown were mixed. There were thousands of arrests and fewer
shootings over turf as drug organizations were broken, but some of the drug trade
was pushed to other neighborhoods or indoors. Homicides in the precinct rose to 51
in 1991, the highest in Queens, from 30 in 1988, the year Officer Byrne was shot.
There were eight murders in the 103rd Precinct last year, Compstat figures show,
and an overall decline of about 75 percent in crime since 1990.

“It is more stable,” said Tony Brown, 73, a neighborhood resident who was walking
down Inwood Street one recent afternoon. “No gang activity, no drugs. People got
wise; it’s not like it used to be."

The interaction between the police and the neighborhoods they patrol is evident on
the street and at the station house. Just inside the precinct house’s double
doors, signs tell residents where to report corruption or file a complaint against
the police, and how to turn in guns for cash, no questions asked.

Pictures of eight of those who have died in the line of duty peer down from a
“Wall of Heroes.” Officer Byrne’s death was a catalyst that “united the Police
Department and the community to work together to find a solution to the drug
problem,” the display read.

The precinct is one of several included in Operation Impact, a Police Department

program that sends waves of rookies, teamed with seasoned officers, into high-
crime areas. As part of their training, the officers are taken to housing projects
and to meet local clergy. “We try to break the barrier,” said Detective Richard
Lowe, with the precinct’s Community Affairs division.

On Jamaica Avenue, a vibrant commercial district that runs the length of the
precinct, officers paused on corners, ambled up sidewalks and down the middle of
side streets, peering through windows of cars waiting at traffic lights.

As nearby high schools let out for the day, the sidewalks filled with raucous
students. Some said the police presence kept fights to a minimum. “They stand
there and watch to see if anything happens,” said Ashley Desrosin, 14.

At one point officers were beckoned into a food court by a security guard who
complained that a group of students was breaking the rules — posted on a large
sign there — by sitting at tables but not ordering food.

“They said ‘get up before you get locked up,’ ” said one of the teenagers, Steven
Maitland. “They asked for our ID.” Mr. Maitland said he had recently been stopped
by the police and told to put his hands against a wall and to empty his pockets.
His name was radioed in, and he was released. He and other students said they had
learned to ask for badge numbers and demand a reason for the stop.

“You can’t walk slow on a public sidewalk,” said Brendan Grigg, 13, sitting at one
of two tables with Mr. Maitland and their friends.

In 2006, the police made 17,059 “stops” or “frisks” of people in the precinct —
about one for every 6 residents, compared with one for every 16 citywide,
according to police statistics.

The Police Department has said officers stop people who act suspiciously or who
match the description of a crime suspect, but civil rights advocates and some
community leaders have described the tactic as racial profiling. Officials at the
Jamaica branch of the N.A.A.C.P. said the group had received complaints about
checkpoints erected outside churches, “curiosity stops” of blacks in fancy cars,
youths getting plucked off bicycles or being used as “filler” in line-ups.

In 2007, the year after Mr. Bell was shot, the number of stops citywide fell
slightly, while the number in the 103rd Precinct dropped sharply, to 8,514.

“We put outreach into the community and listened to some of the things they were
telling us,” including a feeling that a lot of the stops were arbitrary, said the
precinct’s commander, Inspector Michael A. Blake. He said that some of the
outreach programs, like youth councils that brought officers and teenagers
together, had begun two months before the Bell shooting, but that after it
happened, “members of the community were upset.”

Mr. Bell, 23, was shot dead early on the morning of Nov. 25, 2006, after he and
his friends had gone to a strip club for his bachelor party. Officers may have
believed that someone in his party was armed, and after Mr. Bell hit a detective
with his car and then crashed into an unmarked police van, the police fired 50
shots, killing Mr. Bell and wounding two friends. No gun was found in the car.

Even though the detectives on trial this week — two on manslaughter charges and
one on reckless endangerment charges — were part of an undercover unit not
specifically assigned to the 103rd, the precinct’s officers had to deal with
protest marches and frustration that spilled over. The clergy, the police and the
N.A.A.C.P. worked together after the Bell shooting to keep things calm, organizing
youth gatherings and town hall meetings.

“I do appreciate the way the police responded,” said Leroy Gadsden, the Jamaica
N.A.A.C.P.’s police liaison. “This was a powder keg.”

Since the Bell shooting, said Marilyn Y. Wilds-Barnes, the president of the
Jamaica N.A.A.C.P., “when there is a horrific crime, they will notify us to let us
know that the incident has taken place.”

“I think they want to interact better with the community, in all fairness to them
and Inspector Blake,” she said.

Once a month, the precinct holds a community meeting where residents can air
complaints and hear about current safety matters. About a dozen members of the
public attended on Feb. 12, a night of steady snowfall.

The meeting had a small-town atmosphere. There was an announcement about

landmarks, questions about whether a rapist had been caught (he had not), and
awards for the auxiliary police. No one voiced any grievances.

A police officer, Capt. Juanita Holmes, warned people not to warm up cars
unattended with the keys in the ignition, and to watch out for tow trucks that
were whisking cars off to chop shops. She read some crime statistics, and thanked
people for coming in the snow.

“We have to embrace this weather,” she said with a smile. “It keeps crime down a
bit.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company