New way to police is tried in Brooklyn

Civilians respond to certain crimes

NEW YORK — It had been a quiet April afternoon until about a dozen teenagers began running up Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville, yelling and cursing. They were chasing a girl of about 14, and it was clear they wanted a fight.

Five plainclothes police officers watched warily. Across Pitkin stood about a half-dozen men, civilians in jeans and purple-and-gray sweatshirts.

“They got it,” an officer said.

The teenagers slowed as they spotted the men, workers from an organization called Brownsville In Violence Out, who calmly waved them in different directions. They scattered as the girl fled down a side street.

The brief encounter encapsulated a simple yet unorthodox concept that is at the heart of a bold experiment organizers believe could redefine law-enforcement in New York: letting neighbors, not the police, respond to low-level street crime.

Several times a year, workers from Brownsville In Violence Out stand sentry on two blocks for five days. Police channel all 911 calls from that area to the civilians. Unless there is a major incident or a victim demands an arrest, officers, always in plainclothes, shadow the workers.

The civilians have no arrest powers. But they have persuaded people to turn in illegal guns, prevented shoplifting, kept a man from robbing a bodega, and stopped a pregnant woman from hitting a boyfriend who had not bought a car seat and a stroller as he had promised.

They are part of the Brownsville Safety Alliance, a group of neighborhood and city groups, police officers, and members of the Kings County district attorney’s office that is trying to ensure that fewer people are arrested and entangled in the criminal justice system.

As the men and women from Brownsville In Violence Out watch for mayhem, agencies offering services such as free child care and addiction recovery sit at tables, distributing pamphlets and luring passersby with games, stress balls, and pens.

Over the next three years, the city will provide $2.1 million to help link the local organizations that participate most frequently in the Safety Alliance so that they can work cohesively throughout the year.

The effort mirrors others that have sprung up after demonstrations swept New York and much of the country to protest the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They are meant to modulate the use of officially sanctioned force, using a neighborhood’s innate desire for order as a tool. Residents have embraced the concept, said Nyron Campbell, 37, an assistant program manager at Brownsville In Violence Out.

Not everyone is convinced. Lise Perez, owner of Clara’s Beauty Salon on Pitkin Avenue, has 26 cameras around her store and works behind a counter protected by a thick plastic partition.

“In this area, nobody feels too safe,” she said. “We’re all here surviving.”

The idea of five days in which police refer 911 calls unsettles her.

Tiffany Burgess, 42, one of the Brownsville In Violence Out outreach workers, said she was mystified by the skeptics.

“If we can calm them down and get them to walk away, what’s the problem?” she said. “You should want that.”

More people around the country do. The Brownsville initiative is part of a movement called the “community responder model,” which aims to reduce the use of armed officers to handle many calls.

Similar programs are underway in Eugene, Ore.; Denver; Rochester, N.Y.; and other places, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.