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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
By GINIA BELLAFANTE MARCH 25, 2016
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Glen Grays, a 27-year-old mail carrier, and his mother, Sonya Sapp, at a news conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday. CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times
Late in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Grays, a 27-year-old African-American mail carrier, was making his rounds in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, about to leave a package at 999 President Street. Mr. Grays prides himself on getting to know the community he serves, he told me on Wednesday. He figures out who is sick, or old, or enfeebled, and makes sure that their parcels, especially if they contain medication — “I can shake a box and usually figure that out,” he said — land directly at the doors of the people waiting for them, even if they live in fourth- or fifth-floor apartments, in walk-up buildings.
On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.
This video of Glen Grays's arrest on March 17 contains graphic language. Video, via DNAinfo.com, is courtesy of the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.
By the time Mr. Grays arrived at the front door of 999 President Street, the police were approaching him. A
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Glen Grays, a 27-year-old mail carrier, and his mother, Sonya Sapp, at a news conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday. CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times
Late in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Grays, a 27-year-old African-American mail carrier, was making his rounds in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, about to leave a package at 999 President Street. Mr. Grays prides himself on getting to know the community he serves, he told me on Wednesday. He figures out who is sick, or old, or enfeebled, and makes sure that their parcels, especially if they contain medication — “I can shake a box and usually figure that out,” he said — land directly at the doors of the people waiting for them, even if they live in fourth- or fifth-floor apartments, in walk-up buildings.
On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.
This video of Glen Grays's arrest on March 17 contains graphic language. Video, via DNAinfo.com, is courtesy of the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.
By the time Mr. Grays arrived at the front door of 999 President Street, the police were approaching him. A
- video of the incident, taken by an observer on the street, begins at this point and shows Mr. Grays, in his postal uniform, as he is handcuffed, frisked and taken to the unmarked car. The officers tell him to stop resisting, even though there is no evidence in the video of resistance. What the video does not show, Mr. Grays said, is what happened next, after he was placed in the back seat of the unmarked car, with his hands cuffed and without a seatbelt, compelling him to leave the mail truck unattended. The driver, who had turned around to taunt him, hit the vehicle in front of them, Mr. Grays said, causing him to bang his shoulder against the front seat. Mr. Grays was then taken to the 71st Precinct station, where he was issued a summons for disorderly conduct that will require him to appear in court. He was then released.
On Tuesday, the Brooklyn borough president, Eric L. Adams, himself a former police officer, released the video at a news conference, expressing what he said was his outrage over the ostensible violations of the civil rights of yet another young black man, this one an employee of the federal government.
Mr. Grays is the oldest of six boys. His mother, Sonya Sapp, who lives in middle-income housing in Fort Greene, spoke briefly, only to say, “I worry about them every day, every minute, every second of every day,” before fading off with, “I’m short on words; I’m just hurt.”
Photo
A still from a bystander’s video of Mr. Grays in the custody of police officers. He was later issued a disorderly-conduct summons.Creditvia The Office of the Brooklyn Borough President
Mr. Grays’s fiancée is also shaken. She is a New York City police officer he met while delivering the mail.
The day after the news conference, the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, announced that his office would not seek a prison sentence for Peter Liang, the former police officer convicted of manslaughter in the death of Akai Gurley two years ago in an unlit stairwell at an East New York housing project. In response, Mr. Gurley’s family issued a statement demanding accountability and a real message from prosecutors that “police officers are not above the law.”
About Mr. Grays’s encounter, the Police Department said only that the matter was “under internal review,” in an email response to queries. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, Monica Klein, added that the mayor would be “in close touch with Commissioner Bratton over this incident’s investigations and findings.” (William J. Bratton is the police commissioner.)
Mr. Grays, who speaks with an intense focus, has an elaborate tattoo on his right arm, a tribute to his paternal grandmother that says, “Willa May Grays 1928-2004.” Twenty-two years ago, when he was 5, she covered his eyes on a sidewalk in Brownsville, shielding him from the sight of a stabbing that unfolded right in front of them. “I have been to more funerals than graduations,” Mr. Grays said, explaining that the horrors he had witnessed kept him from whatever nefarious temptations might present themselves to a boy growing up in a rough place.
Before joining the Postal Service, Mr. Grays worked at a branch of Key Food in Park Slope, where he took home $117 a week, he said: not nearly enough. He dropped out of college at City Tech, he said, because he couldn’t afford to stay in school. Later he worked stocking inventory at Fresh Direct in Long Island City, in Queens, but the stocking room was very cold, so he took a job in Floral Park, near the border with Nassau County, for a uniform company, which required him to leave his apartment in the Bronx at 3 a.m. to take the D train to the F to a bus that brought him to Carnation Avenue by 5:30.
Mr. Grays recounted these aspects of his biography to me at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, in Brooklyn. He brought along his mother; three of his brothers, among them a set of 4-year-old twins; and his aunt, who, he pointed out, had accomplished the feat of sending one of her children to Brooklyn Tech, the highly competitive high school. He quoted something his grandmother used to say: “The best way for a black man to become successful is to stay away from the cops, to keep a clean record.” Mr. Grays said he felt that he needed to live his life as an example for his siblings. He pointed to his fiancée, who sat silently in the corner. “I don’t hate cops,” he told me. “I’m marrying one.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/nyregion/glen-grays-the-mailman-cuffed-in-brooklyn.html
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