Who was here during the riots?

I was in another part of brooklyn.

I was driving night shift in Park Slope for a local car service when it happened. I stepped out to get a snack at the 7th Avenue newsstand and saw ten minutes worth of NYPD & ESU vehicles race down Flatbush Avenue (southbound). About ten minutes later I had a call going to Rockaway Avenue & EP from the base on Union & 7th Ave. I took EP down and as soon as we drove past Nostrand Avenue the east median had black folk on one side, Jews on the other and the NYPD right in the middle. A perfect riot sandwich. Pretty insane stuff.

At the time my office was on Kingston Ave between Lincoln and St. Johns. The riots went on for about a week. I never had any problems. There were more problems at night than there were during the day and I was out of the office by 6pm so I never saw any trouble.

Would love to read more stories! As a teenager, I watched the news reports out of Crown Heights. At the time I would never have imagined I'd be in Brooklyn myself someday.

BKChickie said:

Would love to read more stories! As a teenager, I watched the news reports out of Crown Heights. At the time I would never have imagined I'd be in Brooklyn myself someday.

It was pretty wild stuff. It seemed like beginning with Howard Beach and ending with Timothy McVeigh, the whole country, if not NYC, was ripping apart by the seams, a little at a time. As much as I advocated (to friends) for Dinkins to sic the NYPD on both parties to quell the violence, in retrospect, I don't believe he, or anyone else in office, would have been able to remedy the riots. He and Raymond Kelly wound up looking like inept fools for holding the police back and holding (Dinkins) community meetings wearing "X" hats. The whole thing was just incredibly stupid and lives were needlessly lost on both sides.

I've lived in PLG for 36 years and drove through CH on the way to and from my job in Queens for 24 of them. Seeing the aftermath of the riots reinforced my belief that I entered a different world each time I crossed Empire Blvd.