Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade, which is known for its vibrant colors and cultural significance, is a highlight of the summer for thousands of New York City residents.
But the spectacle and its surrounding festivities are also known for episodes of violence that break out among the throngs of revelers – like a shooting that injured five people, including a 6-year-old boy, in 2020.
There were a series of stabbings and shooting incidents surrounding this year’s parade, including a fatal shooting that took place after festivities concluded. But this year, NYPD officials and community members alike touted the event and security measures as overwhelmingly successful, crediting both the police deployment and the NYPD’s collaboration with local groups.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s getting better,” resident Wade Bernal, 67, told Gothamist in Crown Heights on Tuesday. Bernal said he has been attending the festival for decades. “We need more of that,” he said. “Control. Because if it’s not in control, it’s out of control.”
The parade’s traditional route along Eastern Parkway showed few signs of the previous day’s excitement and clamor – just stacks of police barricades and occasional littered remnants of jerk chicken and rum drinks.
Tamauri Exum, 20, said he enjoyed dancing along the parade route this year, and the cops allowed revelers a safe space to do so: “They weren’t harassing nobody. They was just doing what they had to do. So as long as they chilling, we chilling.”
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban praised the department’s handling of the event during a Wednesday press conference.
“J’Ouvert alone was an incredible success,” he said, referring to the carnival’s official kickoff celebration that starts with costumes, paint and steel drums in the wee hours of the morning.
While that part of the event has been tainted by gun violence in the past, zero incidents were reported this year.
NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said the…
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