After violence mars West Indian Day Parade, NYC leaders tout some safety wins

Violence marred celebrations around the West Indian Day Parade on Monday despite intense NYPD preparations that included the deployment of 1,000 officers and eight high-tech drones, police said Tuesday.

The mayhem during post-parade partying in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, included a deadly shooting, a fight that erupted in gunfire and stabbings and an incident in which a man apparently shot himself in the foot — all along or near the parade route — according to cops.

Still, Mayor Adams and NYPD officials noted Brooklyn’s J’Ouvert celebration — the night of revelry that takes place before the Monday parade — was the “safest in history.”

NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said there were five total violent incidents along the parade route, one more than last year. There were also four violent clashes on the streets surrounding the parade route, three more than in 2022.

Those incidents included the killing of a 51-year-old Queens man who was repeatedly shot on Sterling Place near Schenectady Ave. around 8:50 p.m. Monday, cops said.

“There were lots of shots,” a witness, who would only give his name as Roman, told the Daily News at the time. “They gave him everything. They made sure he was dead.”

The victim was shot on a block full of impromptu parties by a gunman who ran off and was still being sought by police.

Earlier in the day along the parade route, a 19-year-old man was shot in the chest and thumb on Eastern Parkway near Utica Ave. when two groups began arguing with each other.

One of the brawlers pulled a gun and opened fire into the crowd as the two groups clashed at 5:20 p.m., NYPD Assistant Chief Joseph Kenny said.

Two other teens suffered slash wounds and an FDNY fire truck at the scene was hit with a stray bullet, according to police.

A retaliation shooting would have certainly occurred on Utica Ave. if cops, with the help of a drone monitoring from above, didn’t swoop in “instantaneously,” Chell observed.

“Post-shooting we all saw kids coming out of some buildings with masks and school bags and we knew something was going to go down,” he said. “Calling in all our resources and seeing that there were thousands (of people) there, we called down our (Strategic Response Group) to take back that corner.

“We definitely stopped some sort of retaliation last night on that corner,” Chell added, calling the holiday weekend an overall success for public safety.

“We tried to mimic last year’s success, and we did,” he said.

The gunman in the Monday afternoon shooting near Utica Ave. tossed his weapon away as he ran.

That firearm and 29 others were recovered within the four precincts where J’Ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade took place, cops said. More than 70 weapons were recovered by police over the weekend throughout the city.

About an hour before the shooting near Utica, a man suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a fight outside a five-story residential building along Eastern Parkway at the corner of Franklin Ave., according to cops.

While J’Ouvert is historically plagued with shootings there were “zero acts of violence throughout the evening,” Police Commissioner Edward Caban asserted.

Seven people were arrested for firearm possession during the night-long party, cops said.

“This was one of the safest J’Ouvert celebrations and Labor Day weekends we have seen in recent memories and probably the safest J’Ouvert celebration in history,” Adams said.

There were three shootings across Flatbush and Crown Heights during last year’s J’Ouvert celebrations, which the mayor called a “benchmark for safety.”

“We’re seeing the continuation on how we are crafting and fine-tuning our craft with new tools to make things even safer,” he said.

The Police Department took special precautions this year to prevent shootings along the crowded parade route, including contacting 40 known gang members as part of the NYC Ceasefire Initiative requesting a peaceful holiday.

The NYPD used eight drones to monitor the parade, but they were only used to help deploy police resources when something happened, said NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry.

While the drones were expected to handle 311 complaints, the need never arose, said Daughtry. Any noise complaints were handled by the NYPD’s crisis management teams and other city agencies.