NYPD to bring ‘strong footprint’ to Queens park after teen’s shooting
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The NYPD will increase presence around Queens’ Roy Wilkins Park following the murder of a 15-year-old there in April. Wikimedia Common photo by Tdorante10
By Ryan Schwach
The NYPD is beefing up its presence around a Queens park where a teenager was shot and killed in April.
During a meeting of the Queens Borough Board on Monday night, NYPD officials said they will bring a “strong footprint” to Roy Wilkins Park, where 15-year-old Jaden Pierre was killed by another teen in a shooting that shook the Southeast Queens community earlier this year.
NYPD Assistant Chief Christopher McIntosh, the new commanding officer of Patrol Borough Queens South, said the wave of police officers will last at least throughout the summer.
“We still want the kids to enjoy the park, but it's a balance,” McIntosh said. “We have to have a presence.”
The increase in officers comes in response to the April shooting of 15-year-old Pierre in the well-known St. Albans park, which rocked the community and caused widespread outrage over gun violence in Southeast Queens.
Pierre was at a large gathering of teens when a fight – which is believed to be gang related – broke out. Pierre had reportedly been feuding with a member of the gang since the start of the year.
Video of the shooting showed a large group surrounding Pierre in the moments before he was killed. The crowd of teens cheered on the attackers each time Pierre, who didn’t appear to fight back, was struck.
Multiple videos of the shooting, presumably uploaded by teenage bystanders who failed to intervene, circulated online long before any of the perpetrators had been identified, adding to locals’ outrage.
Two teens have since been charged with the shooting, including 18-year-old Zahir Davis, who is accused of firing the shot that killed Pierre.
Davis initially fled to Jamaica, but was arrested and brought back to Queens to face charges and up to 25 years to life in prison.
At an emotional vigil at Roy Wilkins in the days following the shooting, Pierre’s family members recalled the boy’s love of basketball, and the hopes he might play professionally one day, as well as his love of the video game Fortnite and dancing.
“He was the best,” said a young family member who did not give reporters his name.
His great-grandmother, Nellie Washington, described the pain she felt seeing the video of her great-grandson’s murder.
“I saw it on the video, and that pain went into my heart, it went into my heart, I felt it,” she said. “I felt my great-grandson in pain, because I felt the pain. This should not happen to no mother.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said on Tuesday that while he welcomes the increase in police officers in the park, the city needs to take additional steps to drive down violence in the area.
"I appreciate the NYPD's efforts in the wake of Jaden Pierre's senseless murder to make sure Roy Wilkins Park continues to be a safe place for our kids to gather and our families to enjoy, but we cannot enforce our way out of this gun violence crisis,” he said. “We must make meaningful investments in our children and give them the safe, productive spaces they deserve. The new Roy Wilkins Park Community Center, which I'm proud to have secured and believe must be named after Jaden, will be that space for Southeast Queens youth. I look forward to breaking ground on this life-saving facility in the near future."
James Johnson, a local community advocate who helped coordinate the vigil for Pierre in April, said he was fine with the boost in beat cops, as long as they know the people they’ll be policing.
“We welcome officers, but we also would like officers that understand our community and that understand the makeup of our neighborhood,” he said. “We just don't want any incidents happening with a rookie officer that doesn't know how our community communicates with each other.”
Johnson also wants the NYPD and others living in Southeast Queens to do more outreach to young men to prevent gatherings like the one that led to the Pierre shooting.
“I'm more concerned about police managing or looking at these social media events, these takeovers” he said. “We still have to hold ourselves accountable and talk to each other and in our community.”
There have been four murders, including Pierre’s, so far in the local 113th Precinct where Roy Wilkins resides. There were three murders in the area at the same point last year.
Six of the seven major crimes are up in the 113th, leading to an overall 21.9 percent increase in crime in the Southeast Queens precinct this year.
