Update: According to the precinct commander, it does not appear the man will make it. The shooters were apparently extremely intoxicated, had stopped into LPT for a "nightcap" and had just robbed the bodega of next-to-nothing and were attempting to rob the man they shot. (Do I need to say that a cop stationed in the area might have prevented this murder?) So they did intend to shoot him, not each other, though they were so drunk it's hard to say. The cops think they'll be able to apprehend them fairly easily. Talk about hangovers. This is just a horrible, horrible, horrible mess. The family of the man must be devastated. By the way, the helicopters overhead earlier in the evening were not related. That was about the ongoing fracas over the shooting of Kimani Gray.
In the wee wee hours, several shots rang out in front of Lincoln Park Tavern, according to a reliable witness whom cops interviewed this morning. Commuters were treated to still coagulating pools and streams of blood on the sidewalk as they made their way to the Prospect Park Q/B/S trains this Friday am. Apparently, an off-duty MTA employee was caught in the cross-fire of a thug dispute. The man, around 60, was rushed to Kings County Hospital. We pray he lives.
The Q came by the above information by a reliable source and I feel confident it is accurate. I'm not going to use another tragedy to hammer home all the points I'm always making on the subject of crime, and thugs and drugs and lighting and police. It's just a crying shame. The story tells itself.
By the way, in the course of the conversation about the incident, the subject of that damn candy store came up again. And the subject of the dismal lighting in front of the train station and along Lincoln Road. Let's use this as a rallying cry folks.
35 comments:
Oy.
Oh dear, hope they weren't patrons of LPT Bar. There is a history of occasional fights breaking out there but never anything as serious as a shooting. Gun control...bring it on!
Hopefully the cameras in front of the Tavern caught something...if they are functional.
And I seem to remember a time when there was an extremely bright light directly across the street from the Tavern, as I remember it shining in my face while in there. I don't recall when I last saw it on, so I assume it's no longer there.
I agree, it's a damn shame.
Agree that the lighting there is a problem. Walking home from the Prospect Park train stop towards Flatbush after dark (whether 7 PM or 2 AM) can be an eerie experience. I have always wondered who or how to follow up to see if it is possible to put an additional street light in?
If this is accurate, it probably explains the helicopters overhead just before midnight. We got new street lights installed on the whole block maybe two years ago. And both 40 & 50 have reasonable lighting outside their entrances, though I'll check tonight to be sure there aren't bulbs out. The business side of the block really suffers from the 2 vacant commercial spaces and vacant light. It was wonderful to have Papa & Sons as a brightly lit, 24 hour presence on that corner. We flagged the vacancies for the 71st when Papa & Sons left & they do patrol the block by car. And hopefully the store that comes in will also be 24 hours and shed light on that corner. The candy store is extremely problematic & has been target of efforts on the block from every conceivable angle (commercial licenses, crime, etc.) Like Ray's, it's a complicated problem. Prayers for this victim.
In my comment above, "vacant light" should have read "vacant lot."
btw, the Q isn't ignoring the ongoing issue story happening deeper into Flatbush involving the shooting of 16 year old boy. It's a complex and fast-moving narrative that requires the sort of sensitive and intelligent reporting that so far no one I've read is capable of delivering. And I'm certainly not the one for the job. Needless to say, if the kid had a gun, he made a terrible terrible choice that night. And if he didn't, the cops made a terrible terrible choice that night. The bigger issues are the ones that are being discussed right now, fairly intelligently, on the Brian Lehrer show. Wish he'd change that theme music though...
Does anybody know if the MTA officer worked at our station?
Paul G.
Thank you for reporting what no one else has. I was trying to find out what happened. Does anyone know what time this went down?
That portion of Lincoln Rd definitely has some safety challenges. I've noticed many times how poor the lighting is, and the lack of tenants is a risk for not only the lighting, but also upkeep of the sidewalks in winter (no one shovels), and the general sense of community and safety that comes from having neighbors and knowing who they neighbors are.
Very unfortunate for the MTA employee being in the wrong place. It could have easily been anyone...
This is really really devastating and scary.
Could the horrible event on lincoln have anything to do with the robbing and looting that has occured since the Kimani Gray shooting? Where is that going on? I can't make any sense of it
Not likely related to anything but ignorance. The Kimani Gray situation is happening around Church Ave and East 47. East Flatbush.
Urg. I'm breaking my own rule already, and talking about the Flatbush situation before all the facts are in. First, the two incidents at hand are totally unrelated. Second, some lazy members of the press have used the word "riot" to describe what happened in East Flatbush when some angry kids knocked over some stuff and stole some stuff in response to a friend getting shot, and to police clamping down in the aftermath. Let's be clear to, that the kid was no saint, and that there has been no credible claim that he was unarmed. What's really disturbing though, in the short and longrun, is the the leadership vacuum. Parents and grandparents are afraid of their own kids and grandkids. Seems only a few preachers and councilman Jumaane Williams have the gravitas to defuse tension when it rises. Let me give you an example of how little leadership is happening out there...
I just got an email press release from the other councilman in the area for an event at Erasmus hall just a few blocks away from the flash point for the tension...good timing! Bring people together. Talk things over. Right? Wrong. The flyer is for an event honoring the football team on a brilliant season.
If there's one thing I've learned, kinda first-hand in a way I never really got it before, is how young boys around here, just as they need it the most, get thrown under the bus. No male guidance or role models. If they showed any promise early on, maybe someone pushed them in the right direction and they broke the cycle.
I know it sounds dramatic, but I kinda picture that kid, Kiki, grabbing his gun, turning to the cops, as if on a dare, saying shoot me now, shoot me later, what's the difference?
Does your objection to Lehrer's theme song stem from your unfathomable distaste for the entirety of jazz music?
I'm thinking this happened between 2 and 3am...I was trying to get to sleep (live down the block) and then heard the shots. There were 2.
I haven't heard of any problems with the candy store since about three years ago when they were closed temporarily for numbers games.
Anon at 12:50. Love that you took that seriously. I wouldn't classify that Brian Lehrer theme as jazz, a funny word that. Look, I grew up playing trombone, work at a place called Bang on a Can, wrote a song about Miles Davis' one-time wife called "Betty Davis," play improvised music on guitar, claim not to like the saxophone or clarinet but have been known to lose my mind grooving heavily to well-played solos on each, and campaigned heavily for the inclusion of the Sun Ra Arkestra on the Philly and NYC Marathons. So...it's complicated.
I heard the shots and looked at the time..It was 2.45am....cops started to show up at 2.51am....
So sad..
I heard two shots in succession at about 2:45 and the police came wailing down Lincoln Road at about 2:52.
The shots sounded like they were fired from the same gun.
I heard two shoots while on my couch at Beekman Place at around 2:40, thought it was nothing but someone firing in the air, until my walk to the subway, saw the blood on pavement this morning.
Clarkson:
Seems only a few preachers and councilman Jumaane Williams have the gravitas to defuse tension when it rises.
Are you serious? Williams is demanding the police end the Stop & Frisk practice that Ray Kelly says is a key factor in the steady reduction of gun crimes in the city.
Williams would turn the police department into Boy Scouts working for merit badges. In his mind, in his public statements, it's the presence of the police that CAUSES crime.
He's already said as much to Ray Kelly in a public forum. No doubt his supporters love that kind of talk.
And for whatever little it's worth, only criminals use guns to commit crimes. Shootings like the one in front of the tavern are already illegal, which means NEW laws won't change anything.
Believing it's possible or beneficial to make all guns illegal is folly.
Wow man. You were ready to pounce. I don't think you have any idea what I was talking about. When the tensions started to rise after the shooting, and police in riot gear showed up, and it looked like it could really get out of hand, Jumaane was one of the the few people that the kids would listen to to back down. That's all I'm saying. He has their trust.
What you think about stop and frisk has nothing to do with stopping a deteriorating situation in progress. You want to make this about something it's not. Williams has been accused of being a grandstander. I can't speak to that. I'm just glad he was there the other night, that's all.
By the way, I like a lot of cops too. And I'm neither a conspiracy theorist, nor someone to doubt everything my mayor or president says. But the way you just accepted what one man, Ray Kelly said, to be gospel truth? Do you always just accept what's spoonfed you, or do you ever question the government's story?
In this whole S&F thing I've encountered lots of otherwise intelligent people parroting back to me government statistics who otherwise would be highly suspicious of such sources. Why exactly is that?
Clarkson:
Williams has been accused of being a grandstander.
It's worse than that. Chuck Schumer is the consummate grandstander, but he usually steers clear of real danger.
Williams may have helped to calm the crowd a little. Maybe. Hard to say. But he's outspoken about ending the Stop & Frisk program.
If that were to happen, then there'd be an increase in the number of shootings for the obvious reason that if the punks know the cops can't frisk them, more punks would carry guns on the streets. Then bullets would fly, cops would be called and more mayhem would follow.
As for the statistics on Stop & Frisk, none of the critics have disputed the NYPD's numbers showing several hundred thousand stops, a smaller number of frisks and the obvious fact that murders dropped to 419 in 2012.
It's like flying. There's been no hijackings for the last 12 years because everyone is Stopped & Frisked before boarding a commercial airliner.
The security check is a powerful deterrent.
"pen", you depress me.
and no, it is not like flying.
I'm starting to think a lot of people are really not understanding this stop and frisk issue at all. Like they think it's a matter of taking away the lion tamer's whips, and we'll all be eaten alive.
The police will not be emasculated, by the way. They will be asked to conform to basic standards of civil liberties, that's all, and that a reasonable standard of suspicion be adhered to. It's not so much to ask. I would remind "pen" that the good Councilman from Flatbush himself was detained by suspicious cops during a parade in honor of the culture of his own heritage. The point isn't to stop cops from doing their job - it's to try to get them to be smarter about how they do it, and to gain the trust of those around them by using more than harassment and intimidation.
There are plenty of people who believe a) that a lot of stop and frisks are unconstitutional and b) involve undue racial profiling and c) are not actually good use of police man-hours for crime fighting.
Look, let them do some serious studies, like they're proposing. Fear mongers are telling us a drop in stop-and-frisk numbers will be catastrophic for shootings. Let's do a targeted analysis, and maybe the ACLU and NAACP and countless reports will have to eat their words. But let's not keep forcing people to live in fear just because Ray Kelly told them to.
So instead of a mere 5 million stops, maybe we should double the number by stopping white people of all ages and genders. That would only be fair, right?
It is interesting that the media has hardly covered this incident at all. Q and Gothamist are the exceptions.
I was talking about Stop and Frisk in the Park with some members of our community, one of whom was stopped in error by the police.
The consensus was that stop and frisk is not uniformly enforced. There's no guidelines for exactly what situations require it to be used. So much latitude is given to individual officers.
Hope the victim pulls through. We're so sorry for him and his family. Do people realize how bad a crime this is? This is the second innocent bystander killed in this neighborhood in the period of a year. Both were out at about 9pm. Not 3am. It could be anybody. It's horrifying. Sorry but I'm not going to engage in a conversation that only distracts from that. The other incident is in a whole other neighborhood with a different precinct. I want to know when the 71st is going to start patrolling our neighborhood and not just Crown Heights or wherever they are going instead of here. Criminals with guns are WAY too comfortable hanging out here in PLG. They shot somebody on a busy commercial stretch when people are still out - they plainly do not fear getting caught at all. And yes it's ridiculous how dark that stretch of Lincoln Rd is.
I saw a foot patrol hanging out on Flatbush a few weeks ago. I guess I should be happy, it's better than nothing. They just looked so young and inexperienced and more concerned with their phones. We live in different times. In 2002 before there were IPhones I remember having quite a few foot patrols walking up and down the bush and they all seemed to be paying attention to what was going on around them. So many of us just do not know how to talk to one another any longer.
A character played by Robert Duvall in the movie "Colors" gets to know everyone on his beat instead of running around busting people for every small infraction. He knows he is up against something far larger than a few arrests are going to solve. He tells a story of father and son bulls overlooking a valley. If interested YouTube it, some people on here might find it offensive, but it reiterates the point.
Josh
video of shooters posted on DNAinfo.com http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130316/prospect-lefferts-gardens/police-hunt-for-supsects-as-man-shot-head-clings-life
Recently heard an update that he's still alive and also was told recently that there are some news vans in the area where it happened. Hopefully some attention to the matter will help to get these folks to justice.
The suspects the police are searching for are seen pretty clearly on the video on DNAinfo. Everybody take a look at it. Hope NYPD makes a flyer and posts it all over the neighborhood. The more details that emerge the worse this crime becomes. The way this shooter behaved it really seems he was out to kill somebody that night. Shooting into the bodega window, going away then coming back and randomly shooting somebody just standing there. And you don't take aim at somebody's head without intending for it to be fatal.
Josh at 3:32 brings up a useful point -- I too, have been glad to see more unis up and down the Flabenue, but disappointed when nany of them seem to not pay any attention at all to their surroundings, and instead are texting away, just like so many people do these days. I would get busted for being on my phone like that all day at my job -- are cops allowed to be playing with their phones when on the beat?
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