The New York Times-20080129-Charges Dropped for 22 Arrested on Way to Wake

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Charges Dropped for 22 Arrested on Way to Wake

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When the police were criticized last spring for arresting 32 young people in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who were on their way to a wake for a friend who had been killed, they said the youths had been threatening public safety -- blocking traffic, climbing on cars, wearing T-shirts and flashing signs in homage to their friend's status as a gang leader.

Now, however, prosecutors and the police are pressing charges against fewer than a third of them.

A prosecutor, Deanna M. Rodriguez, said on Monday that charges were dropped in 10 of the cases because the police officers who were the prosecution's only witnesses were not able to link the defendants to unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor charge.

There was no witness who can say, 'I observed Person X, who was in the group, engaging in stopping traffic and other conduct which was tumultuous,' said Ms. Rodriguez, the chief of the gang bureau in the Brooklyn district attorney's office. They could not apply any specific act as to 10 of those defendants.

The charges against those 10 youths were dropped during pretrial preparations this month, Ms. Rodriguez said.

Six other youths were issued summonses that were dismissed in August, said a lawyer who represented them. And six juveniles were immediately released after being arrested.

The 10 other people arrested still face trials, Ms. Rodriguez said.

After the arrests on May 21, many residents and parents of the mourners who had witnessed the procession said it had not been unruly. They said the police had unfairly rounded up the youths because they were mostly black or Hispanic.

Speaking of the dropped charges, Ronald L. Kuby, a civil rights lawyer, said, It would have been better if it had been done months ago. Mr. Kuby, whose client, Zezza Anderson, had his case dismissed on Jan. 11, added, Unfortunately, District Attorney Hynes vilified these young men and women in public, publicly repeated false allegations against them, and then quietly slunk away from the case. He was referring to Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney.

If the police receive information that a funeral procession is going to be attacked, you don't arrest the mourners, Mr. Kuby said, adding, They would never treat white youth on the Upper East Side in such a fashion.

The youths were arrested after a large group gathered in Putnam Park in Bushwick to walk together to the subway to attend a wake in Coney Island for Donnell McFarland, 18, who had been shot the week before. The police described Mr. McFarland as the leader of the Pretty Boy Family, a subdivision of the Bloods gang, and said they had been warned by community leaders that Mr. McFarland's rivals had threatened to shoot anyone wearing a T-shirt memorializing him.

Less than a block into their journey, the group was surrounded by officers in cars and on foot. The police said that the group had taken over Putnam Avenue, stopping traffic, blocking the sidewalk and hopping onto parked cars. Many witnesses, including some who did not know the teenagers, contradicted the police's account.

Ms. Rodriguez said that while many members of the group undoubtedly committed unlawful assembly -- defined as joining with a group for the purpose of engaging or preparing to engage with them in tumultuous and violent conduct likely to cause public alarm -- sorting out who did what proved challenging. She said that because the situation unfolded so quickly, no police video was made.

You may believe there was probable cause to arrest somebody, she said, but when you look at the evidence you have, you may not have enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Oona Chatterjee, the co-executive director of Make the Road New York, a community rights group in Bushwick, said the dismissals showed that the authorities, including Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, had rushed to judgment.

It's astounding to me that the Brooklyn D.A. and Ray Kelly would come out publicly and condemn these kids and assume that they had a case when they obviously didn't, she said. I think that young people in our city merit more respect than that.