FiPS Readers Weigh In On NYPD's reaction to the BK Attacker

Everyone's been talking about how the NYPD is (or isn't) going about handling this BK attacker sitch. City Councilman Brad Lander recently wrote a letter to the public regarding the string of attacks. He says, "Every day, women are attacked by men and too often their accounts are dismissed, downplayed, or not prosecuted. This indifference keeps victims silent, and attackers pray on that silence. We need to hold the police, the press, your politicians (yes, me too), and each other accountable, to take sexual assault seriously." As one commenter responded, "Now that is a community letter.  That last paragraph makes me want to hug him so hard."

A few people wrote in over the weekend and weighed in with their own thoughts on the matter. One recounts her Saturday night spent watching cops use their time and manpower ticketing cyclists and cars cutting through Prospect Park. The other suggest a way we may actually catch the BK attacker:

NYPD IN PARK SLOPE = $ WELL SPENT:

I can tell you what the NYPD WAS doing last night, while the Park Slope predator assaulted another woman [Editor's Note: We have no confirmed reports of an attack over the weekend]: ticketing cyclists cutting through Prospect Park after 1 a.m.  We were heading home at around 2 a.m. from a party, and cut through the park to avoid crazy late-night (and drunk) drivers.  A group of three of us (one girl, two guys, in our late twenties) were pulled over by a pair of cops, and waited for over half an hour for our IDs to be run and tickets/summonses written up.  In that time, the cops pulled over another female cyclist, but let two elderly men with canes walk by scot-free.  The cops were obviously staking out the park to get an easy ticket quota from a certain type of person: harmless cyclists just trying to get home.  Were we to be assaulted or struck by cars while riding on the roads, the cops would have been too late or ineffective to help, but they were quite thorough in ticketing tax-paying members of the community riding home on a park path in the middle of the night.

Heroes in uniform, my ass.

- Sharon

GETTING UNFUCKED IN PARK SLOPE:

So I've been considering this as a solo action for a while now, but I think it might be the right thing to do en masse. I got off at 7th Avenue tonight at nearly 5am and a young girl was walking ahead of me, which I was thankful for because I'm entirely sure I'm not any of the our possible local rapists. But she kept looking behind her like someone was going to jump out at any moment and attack, and that's not the neighborhood we live in. A week or so ago, a woman was heard screaming all the way at Toby's and most of the area came out to comb the streets. Reactive action isn't enough anymore. So I'd really like to get a neighborhood watch going, a solid roster of guys—no disrespect to the women of the community, of course, but they are, after all, the targets—patrolling the streets at night, in shifts. If it doesn't lead to catching the motherfucker(s) out there trying to force their own good time, it might at least deter whoever it is. I think a lot of us have had enough of waiting to see if and when this guy is caught. Take Back The Night actions are heartening, but they don't do much. Let's put some people on the streets, especially down in the areas of the South Slope, and see if we can't *actually* take back the streets. We can start a Facebook group to organize volunteers. Hell, we can called it Unfucked In Park Slope. Doesn't matter. Let's get this neighborhood mobilized and take care of this/these guy/guys.

- Pat