Additional reporting by TANDY LAU Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member
The West Indian American Day J’Ouvert and Carnival parade in New York City has been a fixture on New Yorkers’ social calendar going all the way back to the 1920s, honoring the vibrant culture of the Caribbean and its omnipresence across the boroughs. The city has thrived on what has become the “biggest festival in North America,” attracting millions of people and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
According to West Indian American Day Carnival Association (WIADCA) Board Chairman Andrew Maloney, a lot of “thought, energy, enthusiasm” goes into the parade, but the planning starts with discussing safety.
Among the small army of community members, volunteers, organizers, electeds, police, and precinct council members, as well as local artisans, dancers, musicians, costume makers, choreographers, bands, and youth bands, this central theme of how to keep one another and parade goers safe is crucial. However, since the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, the Brooklyn parade has come to be associated with instances of shootings, violence, and unfortunate deaths, an issue that’s overshadowed the jubilation of the event.
Countless lives have been lost over the years.
Among them, 22-year-old Tiarah Poyau, who was shot after denying a man a dance at a J’Ouvert event in 2016; 17-year-old Tyreke Borel, who was shot in the chest in 2016; and 43-year-old Carey Gabay, a first deputy counsel for the Empire State Development Corporation and a former assistant counsel to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Gabay was walking on Bedford Avenue with his brother and a couple of friends after attending J’ouvert when he was shot in the head reportedly after being caught in the crossfire between two rival gangs in 2015.
As a result, dedicated organizers and police leadership implemented increasing levels of security every year, including putting up towering flood lights; shortening J’Ouvert hours and adding barricades and police checks at J’Ouvert; organizing proactive gun removals; implementing the use of drones, helicopters; and flooding the streets with police officers on foot, crisis management teams (CMS), and local clergy leaders. All of which has certainly helped to make people feel safe, but has failed to completely eliminate gun violence and gang-related shootings from occurring during the festivities off Eastern Parkway and in nearby neighborhoods.
This year’s Labor Day weekend marked the 57th year for the West Indian Day parade, not including the cancellations of the parade events in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A shooting occurred during the parade that injured four people and left one dead. The victim was later identified as Denzel A. Chan, a 25-year-old man who was visiting from Spring, Texas. The NYPD suspected the shooting was gang-related, although it was later confirmed that Chan was not the intended target and was unaffiliated.
Mayor Eric Adams, who’s staked his reputation as a former NYPD officer on making the city safer while in office, expressed frustration towards the shooting that marred the otherwise “peaceful” event. He maintained that the city had been “proactive” with a “well-executed” safety plan that removed 25 guns off the streets prior to J’ouvert.
“Let’s be clear. One nut shot five people — one,” Adams said at the press conference on Sept. 3. “And so when you look at that one person who we’re going to find that shot five people, you remove [him] from the equation, you got hundreds of thousands of people that were out this weekend and really heard the call of a peaceful J’Ouvert and a peaceful West Indian Day parade.”
Days after the parade, another shooting occurred that injured two more people in the neighborhood, according to the NYPD.
A department spokesperson pointed to a recent crime stats press conference where the event’s safety was discussed. Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard maintained that “one shooting did not mar this parade.”
“We had hundreds of thousands of people out there,” said Sheppard. “It’s our job to keep them safe, and for the most part that was done. For those who know the history, tremendous effort by the cops out there, not just on Monday [and] Sunday but Thursday all the way to Tuesday morning.”
Chief Jeffrey Maddrey says shutting down the parade crossed his mind after responding to the shooting. But he recounted attendees pleading with him not to.
A.T. Mitchell-Mann, New York City’s gun-violence prevention czar, told the AmNews there is little more that gun violence interrupters in the crisis management system can do outside of deploying larger numbers. Organizations like his Man Up! Inc. in Brownsville and East New York are credited for reducing gun violence in Brooklyn without police.
“This year was the best devised plan that I’ve ever seen in the year since the crisis management system has become a part of the J’Ouvert and West Indian Day festival,” Mitchell-Mann said. “We had literally [a] five day in advance deployment plan that led up to the day of J’ouvert and Labor Day which we call the ‘24 hours of peace.’ We deployed upward to about 200 community members that were trained in de-escalation and community engagement, and we had covered from Sunday midnight to Monday midnight.
“We covered as much of the hot spots as we [could] along the J’ouvert route and the Labor Day parade route. And there’s nothing more I think that could be done outside of adding more troops to our plan to make it so that we can cover a lot more ground and maybe talk to more people.”
In response to the shootings, Save Our Streets (S.O.S) gun violence interrupters and other peace officers gathered in Crown Heights to rally and call for peace on Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway on Friday, Sept. 6.
“This is again a somber occasion for us to gather together,” said Councilmember Crystal Hudson, who walked in the parade and attended the peace rally. The following week, she went to the funeral services held for Chan. “It’s always these types of occasions that we all find ourselves here together on these corners. There have been so many shootings, not just in this past week but in the past several months along this Franklin Avenue corridor. I know the NYPD is doing all that they can to investigate these incidents, but I will continue to advocate for and to talk about the investments in our communities that we need. The resources that we need. We know that safe communities are well-resourced communities.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is of Grenadian descent, and like many city electeds and residents, is very proud of his Caribbean roots. He echoed Hudson’s sentiment at the peace rally, adding it’s important to not conflate the celebration of Caribbean heritage with the existing gun violence in surrounding Black and Brown communities. “As if that celebration hadn’t occurred, this community would not know gun violence,” said Williams, “We have to be honest about that. It’s very likely and unfortunately that in this community there, a parade, celebration or not, someone would be shot.”
At the community precinct council meeting in Crown Heights, the week after the shootings, Deputy Inspector of the 77th Precinct Omar M. Birchwood gave a few updates and discussed ideas about security measures that could be implemented for next year’s parade with attendees.
Birchwood said that overall crime is down, but shootings have increased in the precinct area near Lincoln Place, Saint Marks playground, Brower Park, and P.S. 316 Elementary school over the summer. Since June there have been nine shooting incidents related to youth gangs, drug disputes, gambling, and domestic violence, he said. A shooter hasn’t been arrested in the Labor Day shooting as of this Monday, but at least two people involved were from local gangs — one from Crown Heights and the other from the East Flatbush area.
“This is historical. This is nothing new, if anybody grew up in the neighborhood, you know,” said Birchwood at the meeting. “But we have the younger crew coming up, which is a problem for the police department. It’s hard to identify these kids at 13, 14 years old and unfortunately, they think that gun play is fun. They don’t know the seriousness that when you pull the trigger, that’s it.”
The police department is working with community groups; credible messengers like S.O.S., Greater Direction, Elite Learners Inc, and Switching Lifestyles, and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to figure out how to proactively reach students while they’re in school. The 77th has school calls every Monday with principals in the district, he said. Last year, NYPD officers also preemptively went to at least 40 different known gang members to ask for a stop to the violence for the parade events as part of the NYC Ceasefire Initiative, which encourages community-based and collaborative policing.
“I would just advocate for things like mental health, more youth activities, more family planning, more family resources for single parents. That’s men and women. All those things feed into unstable families, and unstable families feed into youth who have all the energy and they’re the one going out there creating what we are calling mayhem,” said one attendee. “I’m really tired of this stuff.”
“It takes a village. Everyone in this room and everyone in this community. It takes all of us to make sure we are focusing on public safety,” said another attendee.
Other community members suggested that parade goers shouldn’t be allowed to jump the barricades and they should be screened for weapons to get into the route. One suggested there be more cameras installed to monitor gang hot spots in the neighborhood.
The meeting briefly touched on the idea of moving the parade to 5th Avenue near downtown Brooklyn or canceling the parade, but the celebration is so strongly tied to the community that many don’t see those as viable options.
During the 1920s in Harlem, Jesse Waddle, who was from Trinidad, began organizing carnival celebrations in February or March indoors at places like the Savoy, the Renaissance, and the Audubon Ballroom. In the 1940s, Waddle shifted the celebrations to a warmer time of year and applied for the first street parade permit, said WIADCA. The Harlem permit was revoked in 1964 due to a violent riot. Carlos Lezama revived the parade in 1969 and moved it to Brooklyn. The celebration has been held there ever since, beginning at Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue and ending at Grand Army Plaza.
Brooklyn had become home to a large influx of immigrants from the Caribbean that settled in the Crown Heights, Canarsie, and Flatbush neighborhoods, mostly due to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that lifted “restrictive and discriminatory immigration policies that favored people from western Europe.” The law allowed for family reunification and employment opportunities for many Caribbean immigrants determined to maintain and protect their heritage while building lives in a new country.
“It’s freedom of expression,” said Director of Community Affairs for the New York State Assembly District 57 Justin Freeman. He said the parade is too culturally significant and shouldn’t be moved or canceled, but given resources to be made safer.