NYPD praised its handling of the West Indian Day Parade — so did community members

Police and community members say this year's West Indian Day festivities were notably safer than in years past.

Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade, which is known for its vibrant colors and cultural significance, is a highlight of the summer for thousands of New York City residents.

But the spectacle and its surrounding festivities are also known for episodes of violence that break out among the throngs of revelers – like a shooting that injured five people, including a 6-year-old boy, in 2020.

There were a series of stabbings and shooting incidents surrounding this year's parade, including a fatal shooting that took place after festivities concluded. But this year, NYPD officials and community members alike touted the event and security measures as overwhelmingly successful, crediting both the police deployment and the NYPD’s collaboration with local groups.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s getting better,” resident Wade Bernal, 67, told Gothamist in Crown Heights on Tuesday. Bernal said he has been attending the festival for decades. “We need more of that,” he said. “Control. Because if it’s not in control, it’s out of control.”

The parade's traditional route along Eastern Parkway showed few signs of the previous day’s excitement and clamor – just stacks of police barricades and occasional littered remnants of jerk chicken and rum drinks.

Tamauri Exum, 20, said he enjoyed dancing along the parade route this year, and the cops allowed revelers a safe space to do so: “They weren’t harassing nobody. They was just doing what they had to do. So as long as they chilling, we chilling.”

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban praised the department’s handling of the event during a Wednesday press conference.

“J’Ouvert alone was an incredible success,” he said, referring to the carnival’s official kickoff celebration that starts with costumes, paint and steel drums in the wee hours of the morning.

While that part of the event has been tainted by gun violence in the past, zero incidents were reported this year.

NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said the success was due to “city agencies, elected officials, community leaders, violence interrupters and event organizers” working together.

Instead of writing summonses for loud music, Chell said officials just spoke with the DJs and asked them to turn the volume down.

“We got the music to acceptable levels, no summonses, no incidents, the party continued. That is why we actually pulled off a better J’Ouvert than last year,” Chell said.

“I was a J’Ouvert sergeant back in 2001. To compare J’Ouverts of the past to what we’re talking about now? Night and day,” he added.

Chell said 1,000 officers were deployed on and around Eastern Parkway for the parade itself, where several incidents erupted in the afternoon heat.

From about 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., as the streets around the main route swelled with costumed participants and spectators, police responded to a total of three stabbings, five slashings and four shootings — one of them fatal. Most of them occurred along Eastern Parkway.

Blood was still splattered on the sidewalk in front of 1014 Eastern Parkway, where a 33-year-old male was slashed in the left forearm, according to the NYPD. A police officer applied a tourniquet and the victim was transported to Kings County Hospital in stable condition.

A few blocks away on Sterling Place, breathing equipment, rubber gloves and other medical devices were strewn on the sidewalk where first responders had tried to save the life of 51-year-old Muhammad Malik.

Malik, of Queens, was shot and killed around 8:49 p.m., long after the official festivities were over. Police arrested Crown Heights resident Sergio Codrington, 39, on Tuesday, charging him with murder and criminal weapons possession. The motive for the shooting is still unclear.

“That type of violence makes no sense in our community. We don’t accept it and we don’t condone it,” said neighborhood resident Shaundus Thomas, who was down the street from the scene on Wednesday.

Thomas said he saw the shooting's aftermath and blamed police for being slow to react even though they were nearby at the time.

“If you’re really doing your job and you’re walking around, situations like this wouldn’t have happened. You can’t tell me you’re active in the community when you’re just standing there,” he said.

But police officials said they were actively monitoring events with drones and boots on the ground, making 34 arrests and removing 30 guns across four precincts. Chell said officers reacted to each event “instantly,” and the drones helped clear thousands of people from the area after one of the shootings.

Chell had previously said that precinct commanders issued ceasefire warnings to local gang and crew leaders, asking them to keep the peace over the weekend.

Shelley Worrell, the CEO of CaribBeing, an organization that seeks to amplify and encourage the growth of Caribbean culture in East Flatbush said she felt overwhelmingly safe at this year’s event as she participated in the parade as part of a traditional costumed Mas group.

“I felt our police presence was just right,” Worrell said, though she said the event tends to be overpoliced relative to what the community actually needs.

Her only criticism, which was echoed by some other attendees interviewed by Gothamist, was that this year's crowd was smaller.

“In certain pockets of the parade, I felt like the crowd was less dense,” she said. "I definitely spent some time reflecting on that, and how gentrification is definitely displacing our culture and also our community.”

Worrell and other attendees interviewed by Gothamist couldn’t name a single cause for the violence that has often accompanied the events, but said it has more to do with the large, boisterous gathering than with anything else.

“Whenever it’s a lot of people in one spot, something’s always gonna happen,” said Exum. “Even if it’s a church gathering, as long as it’s a lot of people … someone’s gonna bump into someone, people are drinking, there’s liquor involved, so stuff is gonna happen.”

Bahar Ostadan contributed reporting