By Rich Bockmann
For all the political bandying over stop-and-frisk this election season, some of those most affected by gun violence in southeast Queens said it is not the singular issue that will determine their choice for the city’s next mayor in November.
“It’s one among many,” said Shenee Johnson, whose 18-year-old son, Kedrick Morrow, was murdered at a Springfield Gardens house party in 2010. “Along with gun violence we have communities where young people don’t have jobs and there have been cuts to a lot of programs. They have nothing to do and no direction.”
Johnson said that until the death of her son, her views toward the NYPD had most significantly been shaped by the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell, the unarmed man who was killed by police in a hail of bullets on the eve of his wedding.
After her son’s murder, Johnson said, she began to develop a more nuanced position toward the Police Department and its policies.
“I’ve always said that as long as it’s fair, there should be a happy medium between the community and the Police Department,” she said. “I’m against racial profiling. Of course, I feel that if the guy who killed my son had been stopped and frisked, it possibly wouldn’t have happened.”
Whoever is chosen mayor in the November election will likely be faced with the choice of either continuing or rejecting Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s continued pushback against NYPD oversight measures.
Last week, the Bloomberg administration filed a lawsuit challenging a law the City Council passed against his wishes last month that allows alleged victims of bias-based profiling to sue the NYPD in state court.
The city Law Department has also asked a federal judge to postpone implementing reforms to the Police Department as it appeals her ruling that the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk violated constitutional rights.
One of Bloomberg’s allies in his fight against guns has been Dionne Gordon, who is still diligently trying to find those responsible for the murder of her brother, Maurice Gordon, outside their parents’ South Jamaica home one night in 2010.
Gordon appeared in a video for Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, and she said she had initially been a strong supporter of his policing policies.
“At first, when stop-and-frisk came about I was 100 percent behind it,” she said. “I thought, ‘Kudos. Good job.’”
Gordon said she started paying more attention to the public reaction to the practice, and it altered her position.
“I looked at the victims who have been wrongly stopped and how they were treated and I had to take a step back and say, ‘Dionne, are you wanting this because you are angry, or do you really need to take a look at this and see how people are affected?’”
Gordon said she hopes the next mayor will put more of a focus on community policing and stopping illegal guns from ever entering the city, but as far as stop-and-frisk goes, she said she had more important things to think about.
“It’s not even in my top three,” she said.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
