Bronx blogger captures images that show contrasting social distancing enforcement in NYC

Blogger Ed García Conde, who runs the Instagram page Welcome2TheBronx, captured contrasting park photos on May 2 that show differences in how the NYPD is enforcing social distancing. One photo shows a packed Christopher Street Pier, located on the edge of Greenwich Village, with no police in sight. The other shows a police van patrolling St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx, the borough’s largest park. “I guess in the police force’s eyes, people of color need to be policed,” Conde said.

Video Transcript

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ED GARCIA CONDE: My name is Ed Garcia Conde, and I'm a writer and journalist in the South Bronx covering the Bronx via my blog called "Welcome 2 The Bronx" for the last 10 years. It was a beautiful day on Saturday, and one of the things that I like to do is just get on my bike and go across all of New York City, and I was like, you know, this is the perfect time to document what's going on with social distancing. And I saw people in parks and walking around, kind of dense, but not packed or anything like that. People with masks on mostly practicing social distance as best as you can in a city of almost 9 million people.

But when I got to the Christopher Street Pier in the West Village, it was just packed with people. It was definitely like over 100 people sitting on the grassy area practically on top of each other, groups of three, four, or five, even more all together. People who clearly, you know, don't live together. They're just friends hanging out. No masks on to be seen except for maybe six or seven individuals which I saw that had a mask on. That was about it in the entire crowd. And the interesting part was that there were no police around. You know, in the neighborhoods of color like in my neighborhood, you know, police vans patrolling the largest park in the South Bronx, and there was no one in the park basically. So to me, it was very disturbing.

It was a glaring, just the audacity of the privilege that these people were exhibiting on the pier when we had almost 20,000 people die in New York City from this alone. Like we are the epicenter, but then it doesn't surprise me, because you know, between Manhattan and the Bronx, you know, we know this is a tale of two cities. One of the biggest differences I've seen in policing social distancing in the city is that, especially in the beginning, you, through the neighborhood in the South Bronx, you had the police constantly driving around with sirens. Keep six feet away, keep six feet away. You have police at the supermarket outside, some of them in the pharmacies to make sure that, you know, people are practicing social distancing.

And then when you get to Manhattan, you don't really see, you know, especially into the wealthier more affluent neighborhoods that are less of color, you don't see that happening. I guess in the police forces eyes, you know, people of color need to be policed, and we need to be told what to do. Given the history of the NYPD's police brutality against people of color, they really should not be the ones to be enforcing social distancing. I mean, on one hand, I do get it. They are an intimidating force, so you know, people think that maybe that's going to help. You know, everyone's on edge. You know, so many people are unemployed right now, and adding police presence to people who have no jobs right now, people who can't pay their rents, people who don't know where their food is going to come from, that's not the right picture, because you're criminalizing the poor is what you're doing basically.

But overall when you go on social media, you see the people of color being criticized, the people in low income neighborhoods being criticized for doing the same thing that everybody else is. It's hard in the Bronx for social distancing, because you still have, you know, a lot of the frontline workers, a lot of the essential workers are people of color. We need an end to like this abuse that continues to happen, because how many conversations are we going to have of what we already know to be true? You know, like for example, like how many people I had encountered on social media telling me that my picture was old, you know, how can people be so irresponsible.

And you know what the difference was? Difference was that the people in that photo were all practically white, but no one asked those questions of the house party in Chicago. Nobody had an issue with that. They right away condemned everyone in Chicago, but you didn't see people asking for the receipts of hey, was that really taken now? Can people really be like doing something so irresponsible? No. So, you know, it's like enough with the conversations, we just need action is what we need. We need the elected officials to do what they had to do, and if they're not, move out of the way and let someone else do it.