Prospect: A Year in the Park

Who ya gonna call? Not these louts.

A local blog, Park Slope Stoop, reports on a new activity for the bored, boozy young: a "Brooklyn Paranormal Society" whose waggish stated mission is "finding ghosts while inebriated." Their recent eveing in Prospect Park apparently attracted a big crowd of Bluto-meets-Venkman wanna-bes, who headed off with some paraphernalia and a "psychic" to laff it up. Here's a shot of the merry-makers on a previous trip to Fort Greene Park last month.

 

Not to go all Sam the Eagle here, but behind these tippling ignorami is the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, which marks the site of a crypt containing just some of the mortal remains of more than 11,500 patriots who died hideously of overcrowding, starvation, and disease after the Battle of Brooklyn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband is a big fan of "ghost tours," a staple of cute historic towns; I find them hokey and tedious, occasionally brightened by a talented out-of-work actor. Either way, they're a harmless diversion; I've even thought of leading one myself, to recount some of the haunting tales of the park's lost souls as I recounted here. But am I alone in finding the jokey pretext-for-drinking thing here a bit more off-putting? On their Prospect Park ramble, the tour-goers gamboled at the sites of five modern-day murders, some quite fresh in memory. I'm sure the victims' families would be thrilled to know their loved ones live on as post-frat fun fodder. Let's acknowledge them here with respect, so that their deaths in our beautiful park, this month of the dead, may be marked by something other than snickering and getting loaded:

Patricia Shea, a 40-year-old physician's assistant from Rockaway, found strangled in the park in 1982.

 

 

 

Allyn Winslow, a 42-year-old drama teacher from Brooklyn, shot to death while resisting a group of teen-agers trying to steal his bicycle on Quaker Hill in June, 1993

 

 

 

 

William Oliver, 61, a "peaceful soul" and avid walker stabbed to death while walking in the Vale of Cashmere in April, 2006

 

 

 

 

Mohammad Afzaf (photo unavailable), 41, reportedly suffering from mental illness and possibly homeless, beaten and left for dead in a wooded area near a jogging path in July, 2008

 

 

Julio Locarno, 23, shot near the Parade Grounds in 2011 while himself facing a homicide charge

 

 

Of course, this douchebaggery has drawn a little burst of media coverage, and the next outing--to Green-Wood Cemetery--will undoubtedly be a hit. (The trip, not listed on Green-Wood's official events calendar, promises, "We’ll stroll through the cemetery, visiting points of interest, while swiggin’, gigglin’ and taking pictures...pack a flask." Perhaps the cemetery's caretakers could follow the gang with a portable urinal.) Count me out.  

For Jeffrey, who did not want to die

It's happened again. A young man has died violently a few blocks from our house, in a place where children play.

It happened near the Dillon Stewart Playground, a leafy corner of the Parade Grounds section of Prospect Park, on the day before yesterday, a sunny Sunday morning. The story made no headlines, just got tucked into round-up articles about the city's weekend of heat-wave carnage. According to the Daily News:

 

 

Another fatality Sunday occurred in broad daylight on a basketball court in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, when Jeffrey Jeune, 19, of Brooklyn, died after being stabbed three times about 11:50 a.m., officials said.

 

“I gave my life to raise him,” said Jeune’s sobbing mother Marie Talleyrand, 47. “He was a good son, my only child.”

 

Jeune collapsed on Parkside Ave. and Parade Place after climbing a fence from inside the Prospect Park Parade Ground, witnesses said.

 

“He had a big hole near his heart,” said witness Jean Brunel Julot, 58. “I tried to hold the bleeding until the ambulance came.”

 

“He said, ‘Somebody help me. I don’t want to die,’ ” Julot added.

No media ran any pictures of Jeffrey. (Perhaps this surveillance camera, installed after last year's community outcry, may have captured some.) I don't know if he and his mother lived nearby. But every time this happens, I feel like the lawyer in the gospel who, "desiring to justify himself," asked Christ, when told to love his neighbor: "And who is my neighbor?"

When a neighbor dies within our realm of "Victorian Flatbush" homes, we e-mail one another, send condolences, reminisce together, attend the wake. If the unthinkable happened and a young person were to perish as Jeffrey did, we would have no need of e-mail; it would be headline news. (In fact, it was, in 2005, when a young man from outside the neighborhood was killed within the historic district of Prospect Park South.)

But Jeffrey Jeune vanishes into an ambulance two blocks from my front door.  The crime scene tape flutters and is gone; a few extra cruisers patrol the Parade Grounds for awhile.

I walked the area yesterday, uncertain of the precise location of the stabbing, and didn't even find a makeshift shrine.

Except for his mother and, I presume, his other family and friends, no one will remember Jeffrey's name.

Unlike the preppy young victims who populate the morning news narratives (especially the pantheon of "slain blonde co-eds"), he won't become a symbol of random mayhem to haunt the anxious and privileged.

And unlike poor young Trayvon, he won't become a symbol of injustice to stoke the rage of the underprivileged. The Reverend Al Sharpton is not expected to demand justice in his name.

But if you would like to try to remember Jeffrey's name, here is a helpful hint. His last name, Jeune, is French.  It means "young."

The bloody nexus of Prospect Park

Crooke Avenue and Parade Place, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, three blocks from my home. These don't look like the Gates of Death, do they? They lead from a phalanx of handsome apartment buildings into a beautifully renovated playground in the historic Parade Grounds section of Prospect Park. Come, let's take a walk on a chilly day at sunset in late March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, we must cross the soccer fields, where play never ceases. We're headed for that little house in the distance. It's a comfort station with a cute decorative relief of squirrels on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we are. It's quiet now, this broad passage between the playing fields. They're green again, after this morning's spring snow melted away. The picnic benches would be inviting if it weren't so cold...oh, and if people didn't keep getting shot to death here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look behind the tree. Candles flicker in a beer box. It must be a shrine for Julio Locarno, a 23-year-old who fell here the previous night, shot multiple times. He was allegedly no saint: released just recently on bail from Riker's, and a suspected accomplice in the shooting of a man named Jason Green outside a Soho nightclub last summer. Green, an EMT, had in turn been accused, with his partner, of allowing a pregnant woman to expire of an asthma attack in a downtown Brooklyn lunch spot; his shooting, however, seemed to arise from an unrelated fracas over a parking space, according to news reports.

 

I keep getting the police-blotter reports, the chain of violence, mixed up. A line from the Prince of Verona jangles in my head:

     
Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;

Who n ow the price of his dear blood doth owe?

Perhaps Aslan will know. Did this young man who seemed to have lived and died in a web of violence have a soft spot for C.S. Lewis' tale of glorious redemption? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look down, what are we standing in? It's sticky and candy-red; I doubt blood would look like this after almost 24 hours, but I wonder what it is, then.

Step back; it looks as if someone has tried to wash away the night's carnage, doesn't it? The storm drain must have come in handy.

 

 

Otherwise, the only traces of homicide are a few bits of crime-scene tape fluttering on the fence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know, you're asking: "But Brenda from Flatbush, why don't you do guys do something?" Flashback: Last August, after another murder, and a stabbing, and another shooting, all took place right here, at Crooke Avenue and Parade Place in or just outside the Parade Grounds, I joined a group of deeply concerned neighbors on a walk-through with local officials. They included State Senator Rhoda Jacobs, some executive from the MTA (we were also worried about the desolate nearby subway entrance), and assorted minor political types. We begged, not just for a stepped-up police presence, but for security cameras and extra lights.

We got vague promises, but no security cameras or other changes. Two foot patrolmen and one Park security vehicle went past as I stood there, but it hadn't been 24 hours yet. The blood, or whatever, will dry, and so will the interest. After all, this was Julio, not one of the little middle-class schoolchildren who play soccer a few feet (and a vast gulf) away under their parents' watchful eyes every Saturday. People like Julio, and the livery car driver who also died here, are invisible once the blood dries. I guess they will bury Julio, and I will go back to living in that weird urban denial, three blocks from the bloody nexus and the gates of hell.

Or maybe now somebody will pay attention. Would you like some bleach for your shoes?

Note: Comments are welcome, but must adhere to the standards of civility and charity I expect from conversations at my family dinner table, or else they will be deleted. If you have dined with me, you will know that gives you a wide but not infinite latitude.

I swear I didn't do it...

...although astute readers who know my feelings towards the Gluttonous Waterfowl might suspect otherwise. I haven't been over to Prospect Park this morning, but according to this post in the New York Times, there's a full Media Panic in progress, as rangers attempt to lure this bad-assed Brooklyn goose into their care.

So far, the apparently oblivious creature has resisted the bait of corn (although countless other Canada Poop Factories have scarfed it down greedily). Oh, alright, even I don't want one of these pests to suffer (I even refuse to use glue traps for mice), but given our growing understanding that sadists who target animals tend to move on to humans, how about if the rangers look instead for some moronic punk with a crossbow? He's the one I'm worried about.

And I while I firmly believe we should cull these park-befouling, airplane-crashing flocks and feed their flesh to prison inmates (a win/win proposition for economy and sustainability), clearly this is not the way to proceed. Better aim is required, for starters.

The would-be rescuers have named the hapless bird "Sticky" after what they first thought was a stick in his neck. Instead, I suggest "Chuck Norris," or better yet, "Sebastian."

I confess that I bear him some grudging admiration.

A real Good Friday

In Prospect Park, Good Friday on the beautiful second day of April was marked by botanical death and resurrection along the West Drive...

...and by violent death on the playground three blocks from our house. Rest in peace, Roldan Alonzo-Castro; apparently you were 18 years old and my neighbor, and apparently you were fatally stabbed after being "confronted and chased by half a dozen young men" while talking to a girl.

While this was happening, we were at church, remembering Another, from long ago and far away, who was surrounded by a pack of evildoers, beaten and stabbed, and left to die in broad daylight. I believe that the story of this other bloodied man, through some unfathomable mystery, is the instrument of healing a broken world, not once, but throughout all time. But it was not a mystery I expected to encounter again quite so soon, or so near.

 

First contact

Today, please welcome another fine guest photographer to have documented the Snowicane in Prospect Park: William Woerner, whose gorgeous images (like this one of the Meadowport Arch) seem suffused by ambient alien landing lights. In these shots of the wintry park, solitude reigns but We Are Not Alone.

 

Near the arch, the iconic Camperdown Elm was cloaked in snow.

 

I would have shot the elm if I'd braved the snow that night, but I never would have seen this one. 

On his website (along with more great images), Woerner makes this fascinating allegation:

"The crack dealers take over this section of woods at night. At all times of the year, even in snowstorms, there were a couple of crackheads scurrying in and out of the path."

Whose woods these are...I did not know!

Stabbing near Prospect Park

We hear a lot of ruckus, living by the Parade Grounds' edge of Prospect Park, and tonight was no different; around 12:30 a.m., as I sat puzzling over an error message at my computer, I heard some hollering and the sound of breaking glass. It didn't even sound intense enough to bother getting up and going to the window, but now I wish I had: When Spouse took out the garbage minutes later, a police officer asked him if we'd heard or seen anything, because a man had just been stabbed in the street. Sure enough, the intersection of Marlborough Road and Caton Avenue was cordoned off with crime-scene tape.

I spoke to the officer, offering my paltry bit of information about the sound of breaking glass. From our porch, I saw what looked like blood in the crosswalk (where the two cops are standing in the picture, above). The officer said the victim was "cut up pretty bad, we didn't think he'd make it, but now the hospital says he will." He made no mention of having found a weapon, and seemed to think it might have been whatever I heard shatter. Two suspects were apparently seen by a passing driver, disappearing into the Parade Grounds just after the crime, and as we spoke, a chopper roared overhead, raking the soccer fields with its floodlight.

This isn't the first time we've had blood shed outside our windows, but it's the first time in many years. A disturbing flashback to the bad old days of the crack '80s, in fact, when we'd hear zombie-like addicts screeching in the street (and, once, watched as the cops organized a surreal impromptu line-up under a streetlamp for a beating victim swaddled on a gurney outside a waiting ambulance). We have just returned from a week of deep and blessed peace in a tiny hamlet in the verdant Berkshires. Right now, I miss it more than ever.

Update, 2:13 a.m.: Three NYPD detectives just rang the doorbell; they're going door-to-door hoping somebody heard or saw something. They were nice, jokey guys in crisp white shirts and colorful ties; they reported that the victim is young and will indeed survive, and that "our guys are all over the park" looking for the perp. One of them gazed up at the house and cracked, "This whole thing yours?" We replied that not only was it all ours, but that they followed in the footsteps of their fictional counterparts on Law & Order, which has filmed here twice (both times using our house as the residence of a scruffy perpetrator). They proclaimed their superiority to Dennis Farina and company, thanked us for our (paltry) help, and went on their way.

It's the middle of the night, the wee hours of the morning; right now, with my adrenaline jolted by the doorbell, it feels like "the city that never sleeps." I wonder who he is, that young man, trussed up in tubes and gauze right now in the brightly-lit ER or ICU. Is he alone, or is his mother or girlfriend with him? Could he guess that a bunch of smart-alecky, hard-boiled guys in ties are pounding the pavement, trying to get whoever got him? And where are the guys who did it? From the reported severity of the injuries, it must have been a messy altercation. Have they washed off the blood yet, and if so, where?

It may be hard to get to sleep tonight.

Update, next morning: There is still blood on the street. Meanwhile, the maunderings of a passing white supremacist (of all the strange creatures!) have been deleted, because this particular cyberpark enforces the rules against verbal littering; thanks to supportive commenters. (And for the record, "Conrad" in your spiked helmet and jackboots, the only thing we missed in the Berkshires was the diversity of Brooklyn...)

Dogfights

It's Guest Artist Monday! Since I didn't make it over to the park on Mother's Day, I was especially delighted by these glimpses of what I missed from gifted  photographer William Woerner. He showcases his stuff on his blog Lens; here are a few great shots of Sunday's dog action.





Dogs were on my mind after Brownstoner sparked some flame wars over this article in the New York Post, featuring a cranky video vigilante named Orrin Tilevitz whose mission in life seems to be getting irresponsible dog owners busted for their pooches' park misbehavior. I chatted with the young reporter, Sarah Ryley, on the Long Meadow last week (and honored her request to "embargo" the story); given the thin gruel that is Post house style, I thought she did a decent job.


In the movies, Orrin would be a quivering fall guy (played by Richard Dreyfuss) for an out-of-bounds Disney dog (perhaps like this rascal, "Zeus," at left). But in reality, this guy walks around with pepper spray and seems to dedicate every waking hour to chronicling miscreant dog/owner duos. Apparently, he's been attacked in the past; my own relaxed attitude toward the off-leash crowd in the Long Meadow (both during and outside of permitted hours) is shaped by my own, more positive experience. The dogs and owners I've met (typified by the folks at the advocacy group FIDO) create a safe, vibrant community out of this greensward. The worst behavior I've seen is dog-on-dog bullying (no worse than what I used to witness when I worked in an office). Tilevitz fumes that dogs ruin birdwatching, but I'm such a lousy birdwatcher that it's not an issue for me.

Dogwatching is more fun, anyway; no warbler has ever offered me a big sloppy kiss or let me give it a belly rub.

All dog photos: William Woerner; Tilevitz photo, JC Rice for New York Post

Nightwatch

Monday night, 8 p.m., in Prospect Park, at the base of Lookout Hill along Wellhouse Drive. Somewhere up there, about a week ago, a man was killed. A few days ago, the Daily News ran a brief item identifying him:

A man beaten to death in Prospect Park has been identified, but his killer and the motive for his death remain a mystery.

Mohammed Afzaf, 41, was found with a massive head wound in a wooded area near a jogging path on Wednesday, police said.

The medical examiner said Thursday that his death was a homicide.

Afzaf suffered from mental illness and had spent time in a hospital being treated, said his imam, Abdul Rashid. He had been homeless for six months, a former employer said.

This sketchy report raises more questions than it answers. For one thing, the man's name may be wrong; "Afzaf" is virtually a "Googlenope" (writer Gene Weingarten's neologism for a search term that comes up empty), whereas "Afzal" is apparently a common name, particularly in connection with Pakistanis. I suspect that this sign, freshly stapled to a lamppost, was prompted by Mr. A's fate.

Nearby, the swans were unruffled.  Poor Mr. A, no wonder they took no notice. Homeless, mentally ill, and Muslim: victim-wise, that's hitting the trifecta for media apathy. Imagine if it had been a young, blonde female Episcopalian—an out-of-work actress, perhaps—whose body lay up on the hill for two days. Even the swans would have wept and demanded big headlines, heart-rending sidebars, and frequent updates on the hunt for the killer.

Along the lakeside, we listened to the bullfrogs groaning in the reeds.  A police cruiser zipped past along the Drive. As dusk deepened and the fireflies came out, the family and I ate a pizza at the picnic area near the Vanderbilt Playground. Night had fallen by the time we left, but a few parents were still pushing kids on the swings in the dark.

Police Presence Update: Apparently a chopper landed in the park yesterday; check out Gowanus Lounge for a report.

Bodies

A week after our last arts-in-the-park outing, the family struggled over to the bandshell on a sticky evening for the Mark Morris Dance Group at Celebrate Brooklyn. We were late and they are very popular, so the place was SRO: standing (and sitting-on-distant-grass) room only. No programs were left, but according to their website, this was "Excursions," set to Samuel Barber. I'm not as big a Morris fan as my dance-critic friend Terry Teachout, but these dancers are always a pleasure to watch. The Excursions, a lot of playful runs and rolls, didn't seem to go anywhere in particular, however. (Admittedly, it's tough to engage with dance from a distance, outdoors before the "lights" are fully "down," and with an audience still settling down to a dull roar.)

In "New Love Song Waltzes," the next work on the bill, this pose brought to mind a quote from an epidemiologist on why scientists are drawn to hard data like mortality statistics: "Toes up are easy to count." It was impossible, even in this protected campfire-circle of elegant artistry, to ignore the fact that a man's body had been found in Prospect Park just the day before, near Lookout Hill, a ten-minute walk away. (Louise Crawford, on Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, offered a stinging description of the cretinous media pack near the crime-scene tape; I'm glad I wasn't there.) No, in answer to the Dumb Reporter's Question, it does not make me "afraid to be in the park"; I faced that one down contemplating the fate of Prospect Park's last murder victim in the Vale of Cashmere. Even in the park's most isolated areas, my statistical chances of being attacked are infinitesimal; I take a greater risk of going "toes up" when I ride my bike across the street to the Parade Grounds.

No, it was the man himself (variously described as Hispanic, Indian, and homeless in various brief local news items) to whom my thoughts turned as the strains of Brahms floated over the night air. "New...Waltzes" is a collage of tender frolics and gender-neutral partnering that glows with the interconnectedness and interdependence of friends and strangers. Bodies collapse onto one another, scoop one another up, spring towards and away from each other; Morris weaves the rapturous music into a tapestry of love and trust.

To die from a blow to the head and then lay forgotten and alone in the leaves on a secluded hillside, surrounded for two nights by the lights and sounds of a city that didn't know you were gone: sad, more than "scary." We don't know the victim's name yet (I wonder if we ever will), but spare him a prayer as you go through the dance of your day. Here is one of ours; and here is Kaddish, along with a moving legend about praying for those unmourned.