MIDTOWN — The city will consider changing the hours of J'Ouvert, the predawn festival before the West Indian Day Parade, and requiring screening for participants in the procession, following four shootings, two of them fatal, at this year's event, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.
"We’re going to have all options on the table. People have suggested, for example, community members have said, 'could we move the J’Ouvert event to daytime hours?' That’s a possibility. 'Could we change how people actually get into the parade and they have to go through some kind of checkpoint?' that’s a possibility," de Blasio said Friday on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.
"We’re going to work with community leaders, we’re going to work with NYPD to figure out what will keep us safe. But we will not accept violence at this event, that’s the bottom line," the mayor added.
In spite of de Blasio's promise that J'Ouvert would be "safer than ever" and a beefed up police presence, four people were shot this year, including the fatal shootings of 17-year-old Tyreke Borel and 22-year-old Tiarah Poyau.
This year's fatal shootings follow last year's death of Carey Gabay, 43, an attorney for the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was killed by a stray bullet during a gang shooting outside a Crown Heights apartment complex during J’Ouvert.
Some officials, such as Brooklyn Assemblyman Walter Mosley, have called for a suspension of J'Ouvert because it has “become synonymous with gun violence.”
De Blasio said cancelling the event is impossible because it is an organic neighborhood creation with hundreds of people hosting barbecues and parties.
"You cannot make all that go away — that’s just not how the real world works, and the NYPD will be the first to tell you that," he said. "If hundreds of thousands of people are doing something in their neighborhood, that’s not going to disappear overnight."
But that does not mean the event cannot be made safer, he added.
"I can’t tell you how many situations were considered unbelievably difficult to fix. Remember, Fort Apache, the Bronx they used to call it, and all the other things where you couldn’t go into Central Park, you couldn’t go into Union Square Park," de Blasio said.
"There were so many things in this city that were considered taboo because violence had overtaken them, and, one by one, the NYPD eliminated the threat, and we’ll do it here as well."
