Chelsea kids and cops continue dialogue

Jose Ramos, activities coordinator for the Hudson Guild’s Beacon Program, in the group’s office at 333 W. 17th St. on Thursday

By Chris Lombardi

Jose Ramos, a 20-year-old young man in a light-blue shirt, stood facing 10th Precinct Captain Michael Patrillo. At six-foot-two, Ramos towered over the five-foot-seven officer.

“Sir, can you get on the wall?” asked Patrillo.

“No.”

“Please get on the wall.”

“No.”

Ramos slapped Patrillo’s arm away, and Patrillo stepped back.

Patrillo then turned to face the group of 40 or so young men and women facing them. “Now, I step back, get on the radio first and call for backup,” he said. “And then, if he takes a step toward me, that gun’s coming out.”

The ‘confrontation’ above occurred last Thursday in a small classroom at the Chelsea Recreation Center. The young people crowded at school desks, including Ramos, were participating in a discussion entitled “Question, Stop or Arrest? The Laws Governing Police Action.” At the front of the classroom, besides Patrillo, were Miguel Acevedo, director of Fulton Youth for the Future, Assistant District Attorney David Casanova, and other police and legal representatives.

Thursday’s meeting at the center was the third in a series. On Feb. 27, at a police-community forum held at the McBurney YMCA in the wake of the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell, Acevedo and others from Fulton Houses confronted police officials about continuing distrust between police and youth at Fulton and Elliott Chelsea Houses, including a perceived increase in youth being targeted by stop-and-frisk operations. And on March 15, parents met with Patrillo, Acevedo, Captain Edward Britton of Police Service Area (PSA) 4 and Maria de la Rosa, community affairs liaison for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, to discuss what could be done.

Last Thursday’s presentation, characterized as the “next step in the dialogue” by both Patrillo and Acevedo, highlighted both the legal limitations on police actions and the rationale for police efforts in stopping and questioning suspects. As the police and legal experts took them through a section of the Legal Bound curriculum from the flagship youth training program of the Manhattan DA’s office, the young men were at first quiet, muttering to one another in the back of the room. After a few demonstrations made them all laugh, some stopped muttering and started participating; afterward, more than 20 decided to take up Patrillo’s invitation to join the Explorers, the NYPD’s youth program.

The current set of meetings began with a push by City Council Speaker Quinn’s office, as well as that of Mayor Bloomberg, to reach out to communities outraged by the Nov. 23, 2006, shooting of Bell. At the McBurney Y forum, both Acevedo, whose Fulton Youth for the Future organization serves low-income youth citywide, and Jimmy Pelsey, president of the Fulton House Tenants Association, said they had noticed an increase in youth being “jacked up against the wall.” And Oscar Pagaoda, who had just won an award from the Hudson Guild’s Beacon program, asked for the problem to be looked at. Acevedo then began to convene these gatherings, reaching out to Patrillo and de la Rosa, in an effort to mitigate these tensions and perhaps lessen the events that bring them on.

“What I’m trying to do,” Acevedo told Chelsea Now on Monday, “is form a bond between the youth and the police, the community and the police.” To Acevedo, who recently joined the 10th Precinct’s Community Council, this bond is crucial to prevent young people from automatically assuming that the police are the enemy and sliding into a subculture of drugs, violence and “don’t snitch.” The early teen years, he added, are crucial.

“After 15, those are the years when we lose them,” said Acevedo, citing a May 14 Daily News story about a 16-year-old stabbed to death in an East New York side street. “My thinking is that if we catch them now, and get them involved, we won’t have OUR youth turning up dead.” He was heartened, he said, by the strong youth turnout at Thursday’s meeting, which required the whole gathering to move from the smaller room he had initially reserved.

Using a lesson plan from the Legal Bound curriculum, Patrillo and Casanova began by distinguishing the difference between a frisk, search and arrest, three possible results of a stop by police. After Casanova asked for volunteers to help lead the event, Ramon Castro, a slim 15-year-old with hair in cornrows and a loose basketball shirt, read aloud softly.

“A police officer can ask routine questions as long as an officer has a reason for asking the question. Though the officer must have a reason, the officer does not have to suspect anything criminal,” he said. “In making the inquiry, the officer can ask questions about the person’s name, address and destination.”

The “reason” may be something as simple as a new officer trying to get to know his beat, said Patrillo, and should not by itself be reason for a young person to feel “targeted.” If the officer does have such a suspicion, then the stop becomes a “forcible stop.” But only if the officer believes that his or her life may be in danger can they perform the pat-down known as a “frisk.”

Captain Britton and Acevedo both stood up to demonstrate. They painted a scenario in which Acevedo had an argument with a cab driver and brandished his cell phone, and the cab driver had called 911 saying that “a Hispanic man” had threatened him with a weapon. Britton made Acevedo put his hands against the wall and demonstrated all the places he, as an officer suspecting the presence of a weapon, could or could not put his hands.

To predictable giggles, Britton said, “I look in the waistband, in case they hide the weapon there—which they often do—and check below, too, even if the person is a female.” And if the person being frisked takes his hand off the wall, he added, then there’s a “higher level of concern.” Since the officer’s main goal is getting home to his or her family, he said, “If I feel threatened, I use a higher level of force.”

Almost immediately, the questions began. “Can I say no [to being frisked]?” No. “Can I ask for a female officer to do the frisking?” Yes, but it’s often not possible. “Do they have to tell me why?” Many do, as a courtesy, said Casanova, but they are not required by law to do so. The reasons could include the kids’ presence in an area known for “criminal activity” such as drug dealing, attorneys said, or if they bear some resemblence to perpetrators described by a victim or witness. If police do find a weapon, they seize it.

“I thought if you find a knife, and it’s less than 4 inches, you don’t take it,” said a slim 15-year-old named Elijua.

Patrillo sighed, “If you’re 15 years old,” said Patrillo, “and you have a knife, then I want to talk to your mother.” Getting to know the families, he stressed throughout the evening, is top priority for his division, which is community affairs.

“What can a young person do,” asked Jose Ramos, who is an activities coordinator with the Hudson Guild’s Beacon Program, “if they’re frisked and it’s obvious they don’t have a weapon?”

If a person “feels really violated,” said Casanova, they can file a complaint with the city’s Civilian Complain Review Board. De la Rosa added that her office at the community affairs division will “walk you through the [CCRB] process,” but that people have to remember to take down officers’ names and badge numbers.

A pair of scenarios came next, provoking even more lively responses. In one, two police officers in a squad car see three people in the vicinity of a robbery, one of whom matches the description given by one of the victims; when the cops get out of the squad car, all three begin to run. Casanova and Patrillo then asked the youth a series of questions, such as “What can the officers do if they catch them?” and “What would you do if you were the police officer in this situation?”

Most of the youth at the forum were perhaps surprisingly harsh on the imaginary suspects. “You got guys running; they did something wrong,” one said. But most agreed, or nodded their heads, when Casanova said that only “the blond guy” who had fit the victims’ description down to his “new army boot” could be arrested, while the others could only be stopped and frisked. “But I think you should detain them all!” said Ramon Castro, who had helped narrate before. A second scenario, involving young men in a park who turn out to be carrying drugs and guns, evoked similar responses, with some questioning whether the only one of the group who had neither should also be arrested.

By then, the young people were warmed up, and questions came fast and furious. “When can the officers legally pull their weapons?” asked Melanie La Rocca of Speaker Quinn’s office, on behalf of a soft-spoken boy beside her. “It depends on how much an officer feels threatened,” said Patrillo, to which Ramos said, “I’m six-two. I’ve had female officers find me threatening. What are the rules?” Patrillo then asked Ramos to stand up for the demonstration at the beginning of this article.

Many questions, especially from parents and people like Ramos and Beacon Director Rita Spinola, turned on how to stop things from escalating. One is communication, the police and de la Rosa stressed. “Sometimes kids are nervous, and their attitude is very aggressive,” said de la Rosa.

The other way, said Britton and Patrillo, is for kids to respect their own neighborhood and kick out those who don’t belong. “Who here doesn’t know someone who’s playing the game?” said Patrillo, using common slang for drug dealing. “We know, too. We even know apartments. But it’s your development. You don’t have to put up with them!” He told Spinola that she should educate the youth she’s working with, and tell them to call 911 if something is going on that they know is wrong. “We’ll take care of it from there.”

Acevedo then returned the evening to the theme on which things had begun a few months ago. “Youth feel stereotyped,” he said. “They think because they live in public housing, police think they’re automatically a criminal.”

Patrillo shook his head. “We know who the criminals are,” he said. “These are kids, not criminals…. But there’s been a wall. That’s why we’re here, to break down those walls. I want to walk onto a development and have kids say, ‘Hey Mike! How are you?’”

Asked on Monday if the meeting had lived up to his expectations, Patrillo’s words were measured. “It was nice to see such a turnout,” he said. But of what actually transpired, he would only add, “It’s a work in progress.”

While he was already looking to the next meeting, saying “Nothing is ever finished,” Acevedo was jazzed on the Monday after. “Usually, these kids, they don’t say anything,” he said. “These guys, they actually asked questions.”

In addition, said Acevedo, the 20 youth from Fulton he brought to the event now all want to sign up for the NYPD’s youth development program Britton and Patrillo had promoted, the Law Enforcement Explorers,

“And if one or two of them ends up becoming a cop,” Acevedo said, “then we’ll really have finally broken down that wall.”