ON THE ‘BARBECUE PATROL’

A summer ritual for New York police

By J. David Goodman

The New York Times
September 6, 2015

After hours of checking on boisterous barbecues and other loud gatherings in the Bronx, making sure none grew out of control, Officers Joseph Helgerson and Edwin Vega stopped alongside their lieutenant’s car to check in. It was 11:07 p.m. on a Saturday.

Then, from an adjacent park where the grills had long gone cold, unmistakable sounds: Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop. Pop.

“That’s shots, that’s shots,” the officers and lieutenant said almost at once to one another, as if confirming that the noise was not another firework false alarm, like the one they had just come from on Laconia Avenue.

The officers raced along the eastern side of Haffen Park. There, a man in a red shirt quickly crossed the street in front of them, appearing to grab at his shorts. “Right here, this guy running with his waistband,” Officer Vega said.

The man ran into a nursing home. The two officers jumped from the car and rushed in after him, guns drawn.

Officers Helgerson and Vega are part of what could be called the New York Police Department’s barbecue patrol. Less than 30 minutes before the gunfire, they had driven through the same park, where daytime cookouts extended into the night. The officers had slowly cruised by a large group of young men and women, some of whom stared hard at the passing uniformed officers.

Patrols like theirs have become a summer ritual in the city owing to an unfortunate fact: On many weekends, a small but notable number of such outdoor celebrations — barbecues and other parties that stretch well into the early morning — devolve into gun violence when the grilling is done. Labor Day weekend is peak time for both the parties and the patrols.

In early August, nine people were wounded after two gunmen opened fire on the crowd outside a home in East New York, Brooklyn, that had been transformed into a pop-up club with an entrance fee. The next weekend, two people were shot on Riverside Drive after a large fight at a barbecue along the Hudson River. Two other people were struck by bullets at a cookout at a Brooklyn playground next to the 88th Precinct station house.

The Police Department tracks social media discussion of so-called jump-up parties and other big gatherings around the city, focusing on those with D.J.s and cover charges that can range from $5 to $50, or where gang members are believed to be in attendance. Some attract hundreds of people. A small percentage end in violent confrontations: stabbings, shootings.

The police commissioner, William J. Bratton, has credited better intelligence on troublesome places and people, as well as the addition of more officers to high-crime precincts over the summer, with keeping shootings down this season. On Wednesday, the Police Department said that the city had recorded its “safest summer” in two decades.

Information about big parties planned each weekend — in warehouses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or in backyards in Jamaica, Queens — is collected by the Intelligence Division and sent to local officers like Mr. Helgerson and Mr. Vega, veterans from the 47th Precinct who were assigned on a recent Saturday night to the barbecue patrol. Officers in the 47th Precinct call it the “Jump-Up Car.”

The scene is repeated in many shooting-prone precincts: checks on known parties and on noise complaints received via 311 that could signal large gatherings.

“Kind of tame,” Officer Helgerson, 34, had said of one barbecue gathering in a corner yard that resulted in a complaint.

“That looks like a family thing,” Officer Vega, 30, had observed of another loud outdoor party, where red and black balloons floated up from white fences and cars double parked along the avenue.

Haffen Park, near Baychester Avenue, had been on their radar from the beginning of the tour, when the only problem there was double-parked cars for a soccer game. Flames jumped from barbecues; children ran around as families shuffled food onto plates under tents on the lawn. It was a summer scene that raised little suspicion in the daylight.

We will come back after dark, the officers said, when the park is officially closed.

They did so around 10:45 p.m., taking their marked squad car down a pedestrian path. “We’re going to drive through the park,” Officer Helgerson said.

The cooking was finished, but hundreds of people remained scattered about in small groups. Women sat in folding chairs, pressing the last of the cake on willing children. A group posed for photos on a makeshift stage.

“Po-po!” a young boy called out to them, smiling. “Where are y’all going?”

Farther along, by the restrooms near the basketball courts, the crowd was younger, the looks more sullen. Several young men, sitting on the semicircular benches, stared hard at the police car.

The officers noted the group. But nothing was happening, and they decided to give the families and others another hour before returning to clear the park.

“We’re not picking fights with the good people,” Officer Helgerson said, noting the cups many held and surmising that most contained alcohol. “Technically, everybody with these cups in their hands could get a summons. But you’ve got to give these people a chance to go home.”

They drove on.

Around 11 p.m., the officers parked alongside the lieutenant, Michael Raso, who took their memo books to inspect as they discussed the relative calm in a precinct that had seen a decline in shootings and homicides compared with the previous, very violent year.

The shooting, moments later, took place near the basketball courts, a spot that Officers Helgerson and Vega had passed by during their drive through the park.

For a chaotic few seconds, it was not clear that Mark Clarke, 20, had been shot in the leg. He crashed into the nursing home at such speed — and seemed to be gripping his pants — that the employees shouted “he’s got a gun” as Officers Helgerson and Vega ran in after him. Several other officers joined, rushing through the sliding glass door.

Inside, Officer Vega said, Mr. Clarke pushed his way through the first-floor hallway and took a left down a few stairs, apparently believing it was a staircase. It was a dead end. The officers, guns drawn, yelled for him to put his hands up and took him to the ground. No shots were fired. Officer Vega said it was then that he realized Mr. Clarke’s shorts were soaked with blood.

“You have the shooting victim running from the scene, and when we ran through the door everyone was yelling that he had a gun on him,” Lieutenant Raso said minutes after. “That could have gone really bad. But it didn’t. Because of the way these cops are here.”

Mr. Clarke was led out of the nursing home and into an arriving ambulance.

Officer Vega went with him to the hospital, where Mr. Clarke declined to provide information to detectives. “You don’t care about me,” he told them, according to Officer Vega. “All you care about is your money.”

After the gunfire, the park was deserted except for a growing number of officers and detectives. Bottles and plastic foam food containers lay strewed about the benches where the young men and women had been sitting.

By the benches, behind an overflowing garbage can and two disposable white foam coolers, a loaded Davis Industries .38-caliber handgun lay on the pavement.

The small silver weapon was one of two firearms recovered in the park. The other was found in a backpack by the bathrooms.

By early Sunday morning, detectives were searching for possibly two gunmen and evidence that would indicate to detectives whether Mr. Clarke, wounded in the right thigh, was simply a victim or a gunman as well.

Later that day, Aug. 16, Mr. Clarke was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and weapons possession. One of the seven gunshots had gone off in his shorts, leaving a bullet hole inside the right pocket, according to court documents, “but no hole on the outside.”