The police and community need each other to combat crime and keep our streets safe. It’s a symbiotic relationship that needs nourishing. And the council breakfast helps feed that relationship. It also introduces us to some often overlooked heroism.
Brian Boggan stood nervously in the press box outlined with tape on the side of the St. Nicholas of Tolentine School gym in University Heights. Boggan had come to a rally, organized by the grassroots Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, with an opinion about plans for the long vacant Kingsbridge Armory.
As a physical education teacher with a long history of ice skating, Boggan was ready to defend the Kingsbridge National Ice Centers’s bid to fill the empty armory with nine ice rinks.
The police department’s most controversial crime prevention strategies are coming under increased scrutiny with politicians debating their merit and the court system ruling on their constitutionality.
In the meantime, the question in the Bronx and elsewhere in New York City remains: Are tactics like stop and frisk and Operation Clean Halls “putting a distance between police and communities?”
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