A record 2,500 cops will be on foot posts — including in some parks — during J’Ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade this Labor Day weekend, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Friday.
All summer long, foot posts have been used to drive down shootings to record lows, Tisch said during a press conference at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.
The Aug. 6 Police Academy graduation of nearly 1,000 recruits — the biggest in almost a decade — is giving the NYPD a chance to boost its coverage of the Brooklyn parade route down Eastern Parkway and the neighboring streets for the J’Ouvert celebration, which starts at daybreak Monday, five hours before the parade kicks off.
“We are going to have 2,500 officers on foot posts on streets where we know that gang violence has occurred in the past,” Tisch said. “This is a bigger foot post deployment than we’ve ever done in the past.”
A number of those officers will be assigned to parks where violence has also occurred in the past, Tisch said.
Last year, police said, a gunman jumped a barricade during the parade and wildly opened fire, wounding a 16-year-old gang rival and striking four others, killing a 25-year-old man.
That shooting is still unsolved.
Tisch said the parade this year will now have two rows of barricades surrounding the parade, like “a moat.”
”As always, the NYPD, along with our law enforcement partners, remain vigilant,” she said. “We are all on the same page about one thing: There will zero tolerance for violence of any kind. This must remain a celebration — not an occasion marred by guns or disorder.
“This weekend is meant to highlight culture, music and Caribbean pride and it should not be overshadowed by headlines about bloodshed or chaos.”
Celebrants will be scanned for weapons before entering the frozen zone along and surrounding Eastern Parkway. Police will also use more drones than ever. And police will monitor social media in real time for any indication of possible gang violence.
Police recovered 13 guns after the shooting at last year’s parade, on top of the estimated three dozen recovered the entire weekend in the police precincts along and near the parade route.
Native Brooklynite Malik Scherrod said this will actually be the first time he’ll attend the festive parade. He said he supports the beefed-up NYPD deployment, especially in light of recent shooting incidents.
“Things have been changing the past few months,” he said, “shooting in the Bronx, shooting here, shooting there. So you have to step it up as things change.”
“The police presence throws it, throws things off at times,” he said. “You think twice before you want to act silly, you know. I mean, maybe you think three times.”
And Scherrod supports the new, stricter parade rules, like spectators not being able to jump into the parade and march and dance along.
“When my youngest son was in a parade in South Carolina, you couldn’t run up from the street and go give him a high five,” he said. “So why should you be able to do it here?”
Jah Mark, 55, from Jamaica, who was vending on Eastern Parkway, also said he backs the Blue boost for the parade and J’Ouvert.
“I think that’s good,” he said. “Police presence brings the safety.”
But he doesn’t like the ongoing ban on backpacks and booze at J’Ouvert, feeling it’s bad for business.
“I don’t agree with no backpack and no alcohol,” he said. “A lot of people drink, and those who drink, they spend money.”
Fellow vendor Jah Lion King said he was near last year’s chaotic parade shooting. But he said, this year, he’s feeling positive the event will be peaceful.
“I just see people running,” he recalled of last year’s deadly gunfire. “We not think about that, this a new year. I think there’s a goodness this year, and joy and happiness, you know. You know, we don’t go back in the past. We’re not gonna have no shooting this year.”
