New York City has a rich, storied history of riots and unrest; just friggin' look if yuz don't believe me. Why have I chosen to focus on the Crown Heights Riots? Well, first off, they actually occurred during my lifetime, and the round-the-clock apocalyptic-seeming news coverage devoted to the riots as they were happening definitely contributed to my childhood belief that New York City was nothing but a lawless, cess-ridden jungle of filth and misery (half truths, all!). Also, last month while talking to a friend who had recently moved to Bedford Stuyvesant I was struggling to come up with actual historical reasons that Bed-Stuy has such a terribly dangerous reputation, other than Billy Joel's boast that he "walked through Bedford Stuy alone" from his song "You May Be Right." [Billy Joel = BADASS, obv.] As can be expected, time has conflated my memories of similar events that occurred when I was growing up. Long story short, I somehow managed to confuse the murder of Yusef Hawkins with the events that led up to the riots in Crown Heights, erroneously attributing both of those events to Bed Stuy. (It's what I do.) Here's what actually happened:
Why did the riot start?
In August, 1991, a police motorcade was escorting a prominent Hasidic rabbi/Holocaust survivor through the streets of Brooklyn. A station wagon in the motorcade (not the vehicle carrying said prominent rabbi), fell behind the rest of the other cars, and, in an attempt to catch up, the driver wound up shooting through an intersection in Crown Heights with a traffic light which, depending upon varying eyewitness accounts, was either yellow or red at the time. The station wagon collided with another car that was coming through the intersection, ricocheting onto the sidewalk and pinning a 7 year old boy of Guyanese descent and his 7 year old cousin beneath. (The boy would be pronounced dead shortly after being taken from the scene; his cousin survived with serious injuries.) The Hasidic driver of the station wagon, unharmed in the accident, was dragged from his car and beaten. At the request of the police, the first ambulance on the scene removed the van driver from the scene while the children still lay pinned beneath the car. This didn't sit well with black community members, who were outraged and felt that the Jewish man was receiving preferential treatment. Over the next few hours, an angry mob formed, spurred on by misinformation about the accident itself, and fortified by preexisting tensions between the Blacks and Jews within the Crown Heights community.
The riot itself
Soon, the mob had mobilized (mob-ilized?) and began mobbin' it over towards a predominantly Hasidic area of Crown Heights, ostensibly for revenge, destroying property and chanting anti-Semitic slogans along their merry way. There, they surrounded a 29 year old Hasidic man who was in the US studying for his doctorate, stabbing him to death and crushing his skull.
The next three days were characterized by violence, looting, and property damage. In fact, even non-residents of Crown Heights were getting in on the act, taking the 2/3/4/5 trains into town for some good ol' fashioned car flippin' and mayhem. By the time the carnival ground to a halt, "152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 27 vehicles were destroyed, seven stores were looted or burned, and 225 cases of robbery and burglary were committed. At least 129 arrests were made during the riots, including 122 blacks and seven whites. Property damage was estimated at one million dollars." (Wiki)
The Aftermath
Fortunately, some good came of all of this idiocy. Jewish and Black leaders banded together to attempt to break down stereotypes and to start an open dialogue between the two cultures and provide education.
NYC Mayor David Dinkins was heavily criticized for not deploying sufficient police forces to Crown Heights after the riot was underway, and this failure was one of the principal reasons for his defeat in the 1993 election. Dinkins' opponent harped on his reluctance to use police force in Crown Heights repeatedly on the campaign trail, and, after defeating Dinkins, proceeded to allow the police unprecedented leeway in an attempt to decrease crime in NYC. Dinkins' opponent? Yup, this guy.
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