The Bad Sunday In The Park

By John Cloud

Real New Yorkers don't gawk from the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. But, just like tourists, even jaded natives love to stroll through Central Park, maybe kick back in a paddleboat, nosh a hot dog, gather for the world's best people watching. It's an oasis--today a safe one, usually--so how on June 11 did it become a hunting ground for a roving pack of sexual aggressors? How did four or five dozen guys, some obviously drunk and stoned, get away with groping and in some cases stripping as many as 47 women during the festivities of Puerto Rican Day? What happened to the new New York City?

Last week the answers got caught up in several of the city's roiling social debates, stoking resentments just in time for a hot summer, and were broadcast around the world, thanks to the fact that the events happened in the city's landmark park. Some victims said police didn't take them seriously when alerted that evening; some cops said their hands were tied by pols who wanted to avoid at all costs another racial incident sparked by the mostly white force. And no one wanted to face the scariest implication--that the city could again become the dangerous place it was 11 years ago, when the gang rape of a jogger gave Central Park its first "wilding" headlines.

This time the suspects, according to one of their lawyers, "were there chillin', smokin' a couple cigarettes and watchin' the babes go by." The Puerto Rican parade had developed a reputation as a great place for folks to ogle, since it usually falls on a hot day when people dress light and splash themselves to stay cool. Men had doused women with water in the past too. "Why do you think so many guys were out there with video cameras?" asks Gordon Ludwig, an attorney representing one of the first men arrested. But this year, Ludwig says, "it was like a wet-T-shirt contest that got out of control."

By week's end authorities had used the videotapes to piece together what happened. At first it seemed that a handful of women had been doused and grabbed by a rowdy but isolated group of men as more than 1 million people wandered into the fading sun after the parade. But as the week progressed, more women emerged, some saying their clothes had been torn off, their breasts and genitals pawed and poked, and not just during a few overheated minutes. Two said they had been attacked during the parade--hours before the incidents caught on tape--and two said they had been clawed at a preparade festival the night before.

Tourists and locals, white and minority women alike, endured the onslaught. "All day I got grabbed," says Yaneira Davis, 20, a Rutgers student. "The attitude was, 'I'm going to touch you, and I don't care what you say.'" During the most concentrated period, as a fluctuating group of 50 or so men roamed the southeast corner of the park for about an hour at sunset, as many as six of them penetrated an 18-year-old British woman with their hands.

It was she who succeeded in getting the attention of cops, and they made two arrests on the scene. By Saturday, 16 men were in custody. They ranged in age from 16 to 33 and included a barber, a minister's son and a father of two. The melee was "an innocent water fight that got out of hand," one of them told the New York Times.

Even so, more than 75 detectives were on the case by week's end. But the all-out manhunt seemed a little belated, since so many women said police all but ignored them the day of the attacks. One witness, Web producer David Grandison, 33, said he was standing near some officers when he heard a roar from the crowd. The cops didn't move--and "I'm sure they saw some upset women walking away," he says. Two victims, Ashanna Cover and Josina Lawrence, both 21 and roommates in Somerset, N.J., said they were sprayed with supersoaker water guns and groped, and their tops were pulled off. Yet when they finally found an officer, his first response, they say, was "Calm down." Another told them he couldn't leave his post to investigate whether other women were still trapped in the gauntlet. An exasperated Cover yelled at the cops, "What do you mean you can't do anything?" The friends plan to sue the city.

Officers throughout the ranks offered several explanations why a park crammed with 950 cops could turn into a civic version of Tailhook. Police Commissioner Howard Safir blamed a tactical snafu: "In the past there haven't been large crowds in the park after this event. We should have redeployed resources." As for not leaving their posts, Anthony Miranda, president of the Latino Officers' Association, says, "The department, unfortunately, does intimidate officers to the point that they follow the last order they're given. God forbid that you should have an original creative thought to solve situations."

But some women said Safir's department should have known something terrible could happen. "A friend and I were talking last week about how we were not going to be in town this day," said Elizabeth Mason, a civil rights attorney who represents sexual-abuse victims. "Every day I'm vigilant about my personal safety, and most women here feel that. But there are certain events that I stay away from, and this parade is one." Past Puerto Rican parades have brought complaints of groping, but not on this scale. Much of the anger appeared to be aimed at Latino macho culture, but in a city where diversity is part of the ideological dictate, few pinpointed the blame so starkly.

In fact the police department has come under intense criticism in recent months for being too aggressive--fatally so--in minority neighborhoods. "Given that the department is overwhelmingly white and male, it's no surprise they don't aggressively pursue hate crimes," says Richie Perez, a spokesman for the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, a group that monitors police. "And this was a hate crime against women."

On Puerto Rican Day, officers seemed partly paranoid and partly petulant--some fearful of appearing insensitive as a community celebrated its parade, and some angry that city residents don't realize that police shootings have actually declined in the '90s even as cops have managed to reduce crime. "The police department is in a catch-22 situation," says Patrick Lynch, president of the patrolmen's union. "If we control the problems out there, we get blamed for being aggressive. If we don't act fast, we get attacked. It's paralyzing." The paralysis may be part of the reason the murder rate has risen 12% this year after a modest increase last year as well. Still, there should be a middle ground between gunning down innocents and sitting around eating doughnuts. Says Mitchell Moss, an urban expert at New York University: "Cops know the difference between inciting a riot and controlling a riot, but they are acting as if they don't."

--Reported by David Kuhn and Elaine Rivera/New York

With reporting by David Kuhn and Elaine Rivera/New York