Mayor Adams, others downplay West Indian Day violence, but some say they won't return

Mayor Eric Adams and other city leaders said Monday’s fatal shooting at the West Indian Day Parade was the work of a lone gunman, and insisted the event was otherwise safe.

But some residents of Crown Heights, where the bulk of the celebration takes place, say they plan to sit out future parades, if they haven’t done so already. As Gothamist reported this week, interest in the event meant to celebrate Caribbean culture had already been waning for economic reasons before Monday's shootings. The shooting marks yet another deadly incident at the boisterous parade, which draws tens of thousands of people to Crown Heights, and which has been tainted by stabbings and shootings in past years.

Four people were injured and a fifth person was killed when a gunman opened fire near Monday’s parade route. Last year there were several stabbings and shootings, and in 2020 five people were shot. In 2015, Carey Gabay, an aide to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was shot and killed when police said gangs opened fire during one celebration. At the same time, the NYPD has been criticized for overpolicing the event.

On Tuesday, Adams praised the police department’s planning around the event, which he said resulted in the removal of 25 guns from Carnival’s pre-dawn party, known as J’Ouvert.

“One person — who we're going to find — that shot five people, you remove him from the equation, you got hundreds of thousands of people that were out this weekend and really heard the call of a peaceful J’Ouvert and a peaceful West Indian Day parade,” Adams said during his weekly question and answer session with reporters.

Collin Dover, the father of Denzel Chan, who died in the shooting, said his son didn’t normally attend the parade.

“I didn't know he was going to the parade, but he don't go to those things,” Dover said in a phone interview, adding that Chan had a girlfriend in Queens who told him not to attend the parade.

He described his son as respectful and said he was working toward getting a job at Amazon.

“He's so quiet that you have to go close to him to hear him talking,” he said.

Paradegoers described the confusing scene that unfolded on Monday, when shots rang out at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway.

“We saw the crowd, they dispersed, we saw the police and the ambulance,” said Eneida Guillette, 63, in an interview near Eastern Parkway and Franklin Avenue.

She said she and her husband Tito initially thought the gunshots were firecrackers.

“After that, everything went back to normal, which I thought was very odd,” she said. “In an instant people got shot and then after it was like nothing ever happened.”

Still, the Guillettes said they have attended the event for nearly 50 years and said they were impressed with the number of police officers they saw this year. Others disagreed and planned to avoid the parade in the future.

“Last year, they made me feel safe because [police] were everywhere out here,” said Marven McGregor, 42, who is a superintendent at a building near the site of the shooting. “To me, next year, I’ll make sure out here is clean and then stay in my house because I don't need to get into no problems.”

Adams said on Tuesday that police deployment for this year's parade was different compared to past parades.

“Every three feet, you'd see a police officer. That was just a waste of manpower and we cut that down,” he said. “You saw a different deployment of police officers. They were able to respond faster.”

In a phone interview with Gothamist, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams agreed that a massive police presence during the parade was counterproductive.

“You can pick any weekend in the summer and you would find gun violence in these communities, with or without a parade,” he said. “Historically, it’s not the most dangerous weekend of the year.”

Williams said that this year's parade was safer than past parades despite Monday’s shooting, and cited antiviolence programs. Organizers declined to comment on the parade’s future following the shooting.

Fewer masquerade bands are participating in the parade due to economic factors.

“It used to be really nice, but not anymore. It changed a whole lot,” Henrietta Lofton said in an interview at the corner where Monday’s shooting happened.

She said she stopped attending the parade years ago because of the violence.

“More young kids without any guidance,” she said. “Because if you could teach your kids right they wouldn't be out here doing the things they do.”

This story has been updated with new information form the mayor and neighbors.