Flores later dubbed them the Sunset Park 19. Grainy black and white footage shows a throng of cops tangling with a group of kids, then driving them back with steady streams of mace. Relations between the police and the community have never been particularly good in Sunset Park, but in 2004 the cops arrested 19 kids at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. “What’s your badge number?” Flores shouted as the van drove off, the officers laughing inside. Minutes later, when a police van drove by and Flores started reading aloud the numbers on the side, one of the officers leaned out the window to mock him, repeating the numbers himself, louder. He keeps a private log of every police car, badge number and officer working in the precinct, so that if anything transpires he can identify the cop responsible. For Flores, cop watching is as much preemptive as prescriptive. Still, he occasionally visits a recruiting office on Flatbush Avenue to prepare for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the multiple-choice test required for entry.Īs a police car drove down the street in front of them, Flores instructed the group: “Cameras out!” Each cop watcher pointed his lens toward the vehicle, capturing the plate number. His father has given him permission to sign up but he’s reluctant to tell his mother, pregnant with her ninth child. Maybe the Marines could be part of his future, he concluded. The streets were mostly quiet as the group walked deeper into Sunset Park and then over to Sixth Avenue, making a large loop through the neighborhood.įrom Galluzo’s experiences, he believes the cops target unarmed citizens and the military fights true injustices abroad. The group’s members paused, ears perked, and peered down a darkened side street, but a siren turned out to be only a passing ambulance. In New York City several cop watch groups are organized under the Communities United for Police Reform coalition, and independent efforts like El Grito de Sunset Park have also emerged. This month the NYPD will begin wearing body cameras, which many hope will bring greater transparency to policing.īut more and more communities across the country are responding by creating groups to monitor police behavior, hoping to spark reform. Continued demonstrations culminated in Saturday's Millions March New York City when tens of thousands of frustrated participants marched through Manhattan to the New York Police Department headquarters. Demonstrations erupted in New York City two weeks later when a grand jury in Staten Island declined to indict an officer for the death of Eric Garner, who suffered a fatal heart attack after an officer put him in a chokehold. Since a grand jury decided in November not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, protests against excessive police force have flared up across the country. These events unfolded as the issue of police brutality - particularly in communities of color - has gripped the nation’s attention. A week later, a different video showed 44-year-old Sandra Amezquita, six months pregnant, thrown belly first on the ground when she intervened as cops arrested her 17-year-old son. In mid-September, footage emerged of cops wrestling 22-year-old fruit vendor Jonathan Daza to the ground and kicking him in the back at a street fair. Since the parade, several other incidents of alleged aggression by local police have been caught on camera. The annual Puerto Rican Day Parade habitually ends in clashes between residents and police, and it is where Galluzo and his family had a run-in with the cops in June. “We just decided we wanted nothing to do with the 72nd Precinct anymore,” he said.Ī predominantly immigrant community that has seen an influx of Hispanic and Chinese residents over the last three decades, Sunset Park is rife with tension between the police and the community. The Puerto Rican and Italian teen is now wary of police and teaches his seven younger siblings to just ignore them. Galluzo, a senior and varsity running back at New Utrecht High School, once wanted to be a cop. “Aw man, sounds like all of the cops are in Prospect Park,” he said. Dennis Flores, who started the group a decade ago, listened to a police scanner. Some of the members walked with hoodies tied tightly around their faces and GoPro cameras strapped to their chests. David Galluzo, 17, shivered in his thin varsity jacket as he made his way to 46th Street to meet the other members of El Grito de Sunset Park, a neighborhood group that monitors police aggression in their community. The strip of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn lit up by taquerias and Mexican bakeries was just beginning to shutter for the night, as a shopkeeper dragged the last of the display mannequins from the sidewalk into a clothing store.
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