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August 1991 (Part One)
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Crown Heights Riots
Then: The summer of 1991 was long, hot, and filled with racial tensions. David Dinkins was in his second year as mayor of New York City. His term in office had already been characterized by racial strife and widespread criticism of his management style.
Tensions between minority communities were at a high and recent lectures by CUNY Professor Leonard Jeffries were making things worse. On August 19, a car in a small motorcade of Lubavitcher chassidim accidentally hit a seven-year-old Guyanese child named Gavin Cato. A Hatzolah ambulance arrived on the scene and was ordered by the police to remove the driver, as 911 had already dispatched an ambulance.
Unfortunately, the young boy died soon after arriving at the hospital. Within hours, Caribbean-American and African-American residents of Crown Heights took to the streets and embarked on what became a four-day carnival of violence with intensive rioting, destruction of property. Three hours after Cato's death, as crowds ran through the streets shouting "Get the Jew," Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old rabbinical student from Australia, was set upon by a group of teens and stabbed. He was taken to the hospital but died later that night from internal injuries.
The riots continued unchecked for four days. There was a large police presence at all times, but the NYPD was strangely passive through most of the unrest, which led to speculation that officers had been had been instructed to not intervene. Many cops and civilians were injured and there was extensive property damage.
Now: Fifteen years later, there is a remarkable lack of racial tension in Crown Heights. Both African-American and Jewish community leaders have committed themselves to greater community awareness. There is even a group of women, Mothers to Mothers, made up of black and Jewish women who gather to talk. While relations are not perfect, great effort is made to keep things peaceful and to foster understanding among the communities.
Although Yankel Rosenbaum had identified him as his attacker, a jury found 16-year-old Limrick Nelson, Jr. not guilty of murder. In 1997, he was found guilty in Federal Court of having violated Yankel's civil rights and was sentenced to 19 ½ years in prison. In 2002, that conviction was overturned on appeal. While he was found guilty in a new trial, Nelson's time served worked in his favor and in 2004 he was released to a halfway house.
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