Cpt. DiPaolo: Saw something? Tell us!

By on March 19, 2009 12:50 pm in Brooklyn Heights, crime, News

Captain Mark DiPaolo of the 84th Precinct has increased police presence in the Brooklyn Heights area after two teenage boys were recently assaulted on two separate occasions in the Heights, and asks that anyone with any information please call the precinct at 718-875-6850.

Detectives are investigating the two incidents in which groups of four or five black teens attacked a white 16-year-old boy, but did not take anything, DiPaolo said recently. In one incident, on on Joralemon Street near Court Street at 6 pm, the attackers broke their victim’s jaw. The second incident happened on Montague Street at 3 pm, but more details were not immediately available.
DiPaolo said the five suspects are between ages 13 and 16, and that detectives are still investigating why the assaults took place.

“These are very serious crimes, but there doesn’t seem to be any provocation as to why these events are happening,” DiPaolo told concerned citizens at this week’s 84th precinct community council meeting.

The victims are so far unable to identify their attackers, he added.

“We are sure there are people who saw them, and we need people to come forward,” he said. Any witnesses or anyone with information about the attacks should call the precinct’s community affairs officers, PO Mitchell and PO Ferrante at 718-875-6850.

DiPaolo has stationed more plainclothes and uniformed officers in the area, and the surrounding schools have placed more safety officers on patrols.

On April 1, the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue on Remsen Street will host a community forum where members of their private security company and 85th Precinct officers will offer safety rules and advice to parents and students.

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  • ABC

    montague @ 3pm???

  • yo

    for the first time in my 6 years in the neighborhood, i saw a cop walking the beat last night around 11PM….on sidney place…

    my first reaction was that something happened and he was looking for someone, but it turns out that he was just patrolling on foot…i hope this is a sign of things to come….nice to see the police being a bit proactive and patrolling on foot rather than waiting for something to happen before increasing manpower

  • Cranberry Beret

    Last night around midnight at the corner of Cranberry and Hicks, about 7 patrol cars and one team of undercover cops descended from all directions (wrong way on Hicks etc.) on a guy walking down the street…they interrogated him for about 15 min…he gestured to someone else he saw walking further south on hicks, and then they let him go…later I saw a police chopper searching the area.

  • bornhere

    Cranberry – The police presence on the street was in response to an possible break-in on Willow Street. The helicopter was related to a possible jumper on the BB.

  • nabeguy

    Sounds like things were hopping last night! 7 patrol cars in response to a possible break-in? That seems a bit excessive and a rather bad allocation of resources. Maybe that’s why there’s never a cop around when you really need one!

  • Cranberry Beret

    Thanks for the info…how did you find out? I picture you sitting in a darkened room, listening to your police scanner late into the night. :-)

  • weegee

    You get seven cars on a job like that because there’s simply nothing else going on at the time, and because they can. The dispatcher is not assigning seven units to it. Usually, the patrol supervisor will order a “no further;” keep one or two units at the scene, and order the rest to spread out and canvass. It’s a proactive “race to the sound of the guns” mentality, really — most cops aren’t going to say “someone’s already responding there” and leave it, they’re going to go where something’s happening. Particularly if the different routes of getting there could be used as escape routes for a potential perp. One car coming from, say, Hicks and Montague is useless if the perp has gone north on Hicks. It’s better to have more resources than not enough.

  • http://www.brooklynstrong.com Brooklyn Strong

    This story sounds exactly like what used to happen to me. I grew up in Boerum Hill and now live in the Heights. One afternoon walking alone down Smith after exiting the F at Bergen after school, I was attacked by eight other teens. Nothing was taken, but they knocked me around pretty well. Two of their female friends saw what happened and followed me into Ziad’s Deli (where I stumbled to get help). One of them was crying and told me that their friends “bounced white kids for fun.” She was really shaken up. This story sounds really similar.

    On another note, there’s been a spate of both overt and undercover police activity on Columbia Place between Joralemon and State over the past several months. They seem to be monitoring Palmetto Playground for something. Just last week my wife spotted a pickup parked on Joralemon whose driver was looking down Columbia with a pair of jumbo binoculars for quite a while.