Drug Raid on Lincoln and Washington Last Night

King without a crown wrote: Actually what had happened was that the girl ran into the side of the car and when the people saw it was a Hasidic Jew driving, they tried to rip him out of the car. The block did not hold him for the Police, they tried to attack him causing him to flee from being beaten.Following the incident they rioted like animals throwing bottles off the rooftops at the responding Police.

Police Defend Conduct During Borough Park Arrest and Protest
By KAREEM FAHIM AND ANDY NEWMAN; PATRICK HEALY AND ANN FARMER CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FOR THIS ARTICLE.
Published: April 6, 2006

A day after a protest by hundreds of Hasidic Jews over a 75-year-old man's arrest, in which, the authorities said, two officers were assaulted, two police cars were damaged and two dozen bonfires were set, the police commissioner said yesterday that his department's conduct had been appropriate.

City officials were facing questions not only about how the police treated the elderly man, but also about why only three people were arrested in the confrontation, which took place in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and lasted several hours. They said the priority on Tuesday was to defuse a volatile situation in a neighborhood whose largely Hasidic residents and the authorities have a history of tension.

''The police have to use their judgment,'' Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a breakfast meeting with Orthodox Jewish leaders from Borough Park. ''I'm satisfied with the response.''
The leaders called the demonstration in their neighborhood a misunderstanding that had been aggravated by the presence of hundreds of high school students who had misbehaved, and said the protesters' conduct was inexcusable.
Responding to a reporter's question about whether his officers had trod too lightly, Mr. Kelly again said that the response had been appropriate.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg also defended the reaction by officers. ''Their job is to enforce the law and to calm the community and give the community a sense that they're being protected,'' he told reporters. The leaders who met with Mr. Kelly praised the Police Department's restraint, saying that it had prevented the protest from escalating.

The disturbance on Tuesday night was the first major flare-up between the police and residents since 1999, when hundreds of people protested the shooting by the police of Gidone Busch, a mentally disturbed Orthodox Jew who was shot by the police while holding a hammer.
The demonstration Tuesday was stoked, residents said, by complaints that the 75-year-old man, Arthur Schick, had been mistreated by officers after he was pulled over during a traffic stop.

For his part, Mr. Schick, an Orthodox Jewish caterer who lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn, criticized both the police and the protesters yesterday in an interview at his home. He said the officers had handled him roughly when they stopped him for speaking on his cellphone while driving and for not pulling over when the officers turned on their roof light.
After giving one of the officers his license and registration, Mr. Schick, said he got out of his car and walked toward the police car asking for the officers' names. One of the officers ordered him to get back in his car. When he instead asked one officer again for his partner's name, the officer handcuffed him, Mr. Schick said.

The two officers, whom Mr. Schick and a law enforcement official later identified as Sgt. Angelo Russo and Officer Joseph Wright from the 66th Precinct, then moved Mr. Schick toward a police van that arrived on the scene.
''It was a high step,'' Mr. Schick said, describing his attempt to get into the van. ''I asked for help getting in. They wouldn't help me. Instead, they pushed me into the seat of the van face down.''
Mr. Schick said an officer in plainclothes in the van, using a racial epithet, told him he was being treated the way officers treat black people.
Mr. Kelly, however, said that Mr. Schick left his car and started berating officers and tried to involve the crowd that had gathered. The two other men arrested were Chaim Gillig, 18, who was charged with disorderly conduct, and Chaim Appel, 37, who Mr. Kelly said kicked an officer responding to the demonstration.

No one has yet been arrested for smashing one police car's windows, setting a fire inside another one or for grabbing Sergeant Russo soon after he arrested Mr. Schick, the police said.
Of the demonstration after his arrest, Mr. Schick said: ''The riots were 100 percent wrong. Protest is good, but it has to be done in a legal, proper and civil manner.''

During a news conference yesterday in front of the 66th Precinct station house, City Councilman Simcha Felder, whose district includes Borough Park, said he had been at the demonstration and had heard Joseph J. Esposito, the chief of department, the highest-ranking uniformed police officer, make derogatory comments about Jews.

In a statement, the Police Department said that Chief Esposito acknowledged that while trying to bring the crowd under control, he had used an expletive, but quotes of his comments in the statement did not make any reference to Jews.
Mr. Kelly said he had total confidence in Chief Esposito, and added, ''The appropriate tactics were used, the appropriate number of arrests were made.''
Large crowds in the streets are not unusual in Hasidic neighborhoods, where people gather en masse for holiday celebrations, funerals, rallies and many other occasions. And on a weekday evening a few days before Passover, the streets of Borough Park are crowded with shoppers.

A few times in recent decades, crowds in the neighborhood have gathered in anger.
In December 1978, hundreds of residents took to the streets to protest the fatal stabbing of an elderly Jewish man, sparking riots that left at least 70 people injured, most of them police officers. Demonstrators stormed the 66th Precinct station house, fighting with officers and damaging property in the worst unrest the city had seen since riots in the 1960's.
In August 1999, residents took to the streets again, after four police officers fatally shot Mr. Busch.
Rabbi Edgar Gluck, who was struck on the head by a police club during the 1978 riots, said he arrived at Tuesday's protest 10 minutes after Mr. Schick's arrest. ''When something like this happens, it puts relations back for who knows how long, on both sides,'' he said of Hasidic residents and the Police Department.

''Some people feel that the community has a large influence on the policies in the 66th Precinct,'' he said.
''We are different than other communities. In our dress, our worship, our school system,'' he said. ''We have to have a close relationship with the police.''

Correction: April 17, 2006, Monday An article on April 6 about the New York police commissioner's defense of his officers' conduct during a protest by Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, Brooklyn, referred incorrectly to the riots of December 1978 there, in which at least 70 people were injured after hundreds stormed a station house. The clashes were among the worst between civilians and the police since the 1960's, but not the worst unrest in the city since then. A blackout in 1977 led to a citywide spree of violence and looting, hundreds of injuries and mass arrests.

lnclnplcgentrifier wrote: back to the original topic for a sec, with the return of warm weather last night, there was an especially heavy trail of empty dime bags running from the bodega, past the lot, and in front of #375 (bldg w glass front elevator.) skinny guy w locks and company still around the lot. PD employee, any chance of revisiting us in person? we've got 12 kids living in our bldg alone now, not to mention all the kids playing up & down the block. they really don't need to be walking through all the dealing to get chips from the bodega.