An empty Mike and Ike Fruit Chews box dropped on a Brooklyn sidewalk triggered a police confrontation that ended with Manuel Morales’ face shoved to the sidewalk and covered in bruises — a living example for his Brownsville neighbors of overaggressive policing in a neighborhood that has also seen a sharp reduction in crime.
Morales, 21, was on Mother Gaston Blvd. and Belmont Ave. on April 22 when he tossed the empty candy container at a trash can and missed. A carload of cops circling the block took Morales to task for littering.
Morales showed his ID and asked the officers if he was going to get a ticket.
Without warning, video obtained by the Us.Mistertruth shows, the cops threw him to the ground and pushed his face into a pipe, a brick wall and the sidewalk. When a crowd started filming with their phones, a sergeant showered them with pepper spray.
“This happens all the time. It makes you angry,” Morales said.
The numbers tell how often it happens in Brownsville — where crime is down so far this year, but neighborhood frustration with cops is up.
Across the city, more aggressive policing has been linked to a high number of sidewalk stops that don’t comply with the law and largely target Black and Latino New Yorkers, according to a recent federal monitor’s report filed in the landmark NYPD stop-and-frisk case.
Michael Sisitzky of the New York Civil Liberties Union says the NYPD is underreporting its stops. “There’s a consistent problem with officers not reporting and the NYPD not holding them accountable,” Sisitzky said.
What’s happening in Brownsville comes against the backdrop of escalating crime across the city during the pandemic. Eric Adams campaigned on a promise to bring crime down, and weeks after taking office in 2022, Mayor Adams laid out an aggressive anti-crime plan that he said would put “boots on the ground.”
In Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct, data shows shows aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses — which often includes a policing technique often referred to as “stop and frisk” — has increased.
Every category of low-level police enforcement is up in the precinct. Criminal court summonses were up 382% in 2023 through May 28. Cops issued 1,431 such summonses in the precinct as of May 28, up from 297 in the same period of 2022.
The cops in Public Service Area 2, which covers public housing developments in Brownsville, issued 362 criminal court summonses from Jan. 1 through April 30 this year, compared to just 17 in the same period last year — a spike of more than 2,000%.
Both counts are far ahead of the citywide pace, which show criminal court summonses this year are up by 95%.
As aggressive low-level enforcement has risen, crime in the mile-square 73rd Precinct has dropped.
From Jan. 1 to June 18, police counted 767 major crimes in the precinct — which the NYPD defines as murder, rape, robbery, felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto. That is down 10% from the 854 major crime reported in the same period of 2022.
Police counted three homicides in the precinct in 2023 through June 18, down from seven homicides in the same period of 2022. The number of gunshot victims in the precinct is down 40% so far this year. Cops counted 18 gun victims in 2023 through June 18, down from 30 in the same period of 2022.
But at the same time, public complaints about 73rd Precinct officers are up, according to Civilian Complaint Review Board data.
As of June 22, the CCRB had recorded 74 complaints about 73rd Precinct officers in 2023 — just short of the 76 complaints reported in the precinct in all of 2022, and on a pace to meet or exceed the 148 complaints reported in 2019.
The confrontation over the Mike and Ike candy box left Morales bloodied, his eyes stinging from pepper spray. He struck his head as he was put in a patrol car. He sat in a cell for seven hours charged, sources said, with disorderly conduct and obstructing the police.
“It often happens just because he’s with a group of young men, which are generally who the NYPD likes to harass,” said Morales’ lawyer, MK Kaishian.
The Brooklyn DA’s office refused to prosecute Morales in the incident. The NYPD took Morales to summons court on a charge of “showing a knife in public.” When no police officer appeared at an administrative law court hearing to prosecute the case, it was dismissed by a judge.
“When they approached Manuel, they weren’t enforcing cleanliness in the Brownsville streets,” said Victor Dempsey, a community organizer and brother of Delrawn Small, who was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer in 2016. The officer accused in the case was found not guilty at trial.
“They are using these instances just to find a reason to harass them,” Dempsey said. “And that’s a problem I’m hearing around the city.”
Morales recently graduated from the Brooklyn Community Justice Center and is looking for work. He estimated he’s been stopped 25 times in the last month. He also has two open narcotics cases.
“There’s nothing you can do, really,” he said of being stopped. “You know it’s going to happen.”
In some respects, the NYPD’s campaign is reminiscent of the stop-and-frisk era during Raymond Kelly’s 12 years as police commissioner, from January 2002 to December 2013 — with the twist that it is possibleonly a small fraction of police stops are being reported.
Officially, the NYPD recorded just 47 police stops in the 73rd Precinct in the first quarter of 2023. Those following the situation one the ground say the actual numbers are higher.
“We know they are putting a cap on it because of the awareness it will bring to what they have going on,” said Bilal Jacks, a Brownsville resident. Police did not respond to a News question about the number of reported stops.
Cops in five different commands told The News they are being pushed to issue low level summonses. The euphemism for the program is “engagement” or “participation,” where it used to be called “activity,” or “productivity,” the officers said.
Cops jokingly call the plainclothes units pushing these encounters “khaki cowboys” or “Chell’s Angels,” a reference to Chief of Patrol John Chell, once a precinct commander in Brooklyn North.
“They escalate tensions and disappear,” said a sergeant who requested his name not be used. “The department isn’t learning from its past mistakes.”
Robert Gangi, a longtime police critic, former executive director of the Correctional Association of New York and founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project, says there’s no evidence low level enforcement is effective.
“What the numbers do show is that it’s starkly racist,” Gangi said. “Randomly stopping people when there’s no cause to be suspicious unnecessarily criminalizes them. Even if you could prove it was effective, it’s illegal and it alienates the public.”
But the NYPD stands behind its approach to the problem.
In a statement, the NYPD noted that Brownsville residents by mid-June this year had called 311 with 5,122 quality of life complaints — an increase of 10% since 2022. More people “suffer in silence” and don’t file complaints, the statement said.
“Quality of life complaints, which are often a precursor to violence, remain a real concern to residents in all city neighborhoods,” the NYPD statement said. “Officers who respond to these calls have enforcement options which include civil and criminal summonses.
“There’s still work to be done, but our officers are more engaged and focused than ever. The NYPD will continue to address these conditions as the public demands and expects we should.”
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant who spent three years assigned to the 73rd Precinct, believes crime data shows police are succeeding in reducing violence in the historically high crime area.
“There were no shootings there last week [the week ending June 11], which is unbelievable. It’s good police work. It’s quality of life,” said Giacalone, a professor at the John Jay College for Criminal Justice.
Young Brownsville men see themselves as targets in the anti-crime campaign.
Antoine Utsey, 31, was with friends about 9 p.m. May 27 at concrete chess tables in the Howard Houses, when cops showed up, claiming they had a noise complaint. One officer demanded to look inside Utsey’s fanny pack.
Dozens of other officers soon arrived, video shows.
The father of two said he showed his ID and — though he believes the cops’ request was unjustified — opened the fanny pack.
“They continued to mess with me,” he recalled as his baby son cooed next to him in a stroller. “I showed them I didn’t have any weapons, but I felt he wanted to take me in anyway.
“That day I wouldn’t let that happen.”
Utsey ran off into a laundromat. Three officers caught him there and pinned him to the floor.
“There were three on my back punching me, choking me,” Utsey said. “I got scrapes on elbows, knees, my neck still hurts. I couldn’t breathe. I finally gave up.”
Utsey’s case for misdemeanor drug possession is pending.
Utsey was convicted of second-degree attempted murder for a 2013 shooting in the 73rd Precinct, a crime that under New York law carries a maximum five-year sentence. Utsey went to prison in 2015 and was released in 2018, state records show.
Mark Holloway, 30, said cops aggressively stopped him in May as he walked to a corner store. One officer “proceeded to search me while I’m telling him he can’t do that, and he doesn’t have his body cam on,” Holloway said.
Officers are supposed to turn on their body cameras for almost all interactions.
Holloway and other neighborhood residents spoke to The News at the Howard Houses, which during the height of the pandemic in 2020 was hard-hit by a spike in gun violence and murder.
As they talked, an NYPD patrol car with two officers rolled up nearby. Its emergency lights flashed on, and the two officers inside sat eyeing the group.
“Sometimes, we feel we’re in a prison camp because we’re watched all the time,” Holloway said.
Utsey, Holloway and their friends, most of them 29 or older, admit they got into trouble in their younger days. They say they’ve matured — but the police view of them has not.
“The cop who arrested me 10 years ago thinks I’m the same guy. But people do change, bro,” said a 31-year-old friend of Utsey who goes by the name LA. “We pay taxes now. We got kids. So we deserve a little bit of respect.”
Added Utsey, “Even if you are changing they make fun of it — like ‘Oh yeah. We’ll see how long that lasts.’”