http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/nyregion/03precinct.html
An Emergency Call Brings So Much Help a Scuffle Breaks Out
By KAREEM FAHIM and COLIN MOYNIHAN
Set against the daily cadence of drama in the city, an emergency call from a Grand Street apartment on Monday night was routine enough. An elderly woman, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was threatening to hurt herself, possibly with a knife. So her neighbors called for help.
It came sometime before 8 p.m., when a Fire Department ambulance arrived at the Lower East Side apartment. A few minutes later, two emergency medical technicians with Hatzolah, the volunteer Jewish ambulance service, arrived, summoned by the neighbors. Officers from the Seventh Precinct had also been called. The woman, it seemed, would have all the care she needed.
But a dispute broke out between a member of the Hatzolah crew and a police officer - resulting in the arrest of the Hatzolah volunteer - and the dispute escalated later that night into a shouting match involving a small crowd outside a Manhattan station house that calmed only after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who lives nearby, arrived and helped broker a truce. The Hatzolah volunteer, the son of a prominent local resident, was released.
Five days later, the emotional temperature has still not cooled. After the frenzied scene on Monday, the meeting planned as part of the truce was canceled and the police served the Hatzolah volunteer with a summons. Some officers are furious, saying they were coerced into giving preferential treatment to an organization with strong political connections. A petition circulating in the Seventh Precinct goes further, suggesting that the fight had religious overtones. The angry parties are set to meet next week, Mr. Silver said, to discuss the dispute and to make sure it does not happen again.
The entire episode took only a few days to develop into the kind of caustic New York brawl that can blister bystanders and leave scars on neighborhoods. It could lose steam just as suddenly. In interviews yesterday, though, the fight still seemed fresh. A volunteer for Hatzolah recalled the events that night, saying police officers and medical technicians on the scene had been insensitive, ignoring Hatzolah's advice that an elderly Jewish woman might be better cared for by their volunteers - familiar faces who had grown up in the neighborhood, and who speak Yiddish.
It all started downstairs from the woman's apartment, said the emergency medical technician, Kenny Fried, 22. When he arrived, he said, a Fire Department ambulance was outside the woman's building. "They said: 'We don't need you guys. You can leave,' " he said.
But they did not leave, Mr. Fried said, because they thought they had a special responsibility to the woman.
The dispute continued as a low-level squabble, Mr. Fried said, until the crews reached the woman's door.
There, police officers arrived, and so did a Hatzolah supervisor, Shalom Jacob. After that, conditions deteriorated, and Mr. Jacob was taken into custody.
While the course of events that evening remains the subject of dispute, there is general agreement that Mr. Jacob repeatedly appealed to officers at the scene to allow the Hatzolah volunteers to treat the woman.
A spokesman for the Police Department, Paul J. Browne, said Mr. Jacob tried to interfere with the care the woman was receiving, and as a result, he was arrested.
Fire officials said that the Fire Department emergency medical technicians were already treating the woman quite capably and that allowing another crew to do so would have changed the patient's environment, possibly making her worse. The department crew "rendered excellent patient care," and took the woman to Bellevue Hospital Center in stable condition, a department spokeswoman, Virginia Lam, said.
Mr. Jacob's father, Heshey Jacob, also a Hatzolah supervisor, was called to the scene. His son was already in handcuffs, he said, and a police lieutenant was threatening to arrest him, too, if he and the rest of the Hatzolah crew did not leave immediately. "He said, 'Shut up and get off the floor,' " the elder Mr. Jacob said yesterday in a phone interview.
He said that he decided to walk over to the Seventh Precinct station house to see if he could resolve the trouble.
Mr. Silver, who lives in a Lower East Side building managed by Heshey Jacob, said that sometime after 10 p.m., he got a call from someone in the neighborhood about the incident. The caller - not the elder Mr. Jacob, he said - told him that a crowd of people, supporters of the Hatzolah volunteers, was gathering around the station house. Mr. Silver said he went there, where Deputy Chief Brian Conroy said that officers would serve Mr. Jacob with a desk appearance ticket for disorderly conduct.
"I said to the officer, you have this situation outside that you don't need," Mr. Silver recalled in an interview yesterday. "We've got to cool the situation down. Let's walk away from here as best we can." He said he suggested that the summons be written and left at the station, and that they all meet again on Wednesday to discuss the matter further, when "cooler heads would prevail." Mr. Silver said he assumed that the summons would be served then.
On Tuesday, Mr. Silver said, officers served Mr. Jacob a summons, a move that Mr. Silver called "totally unnecessary." The Wednesday meeting was later canceled.
Mr. Silver said that he never suggested that Mr. Jacob not be served with a summons for his conduct outside the woman's apartment.
But for reasons that are still unclear, that perception has persisted among officers assigned to the Seventh Precinct, and this week, precinct representatives of the police union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, began circulating a petition claiming interference in their daily work. It has been signed by 40 officers so far, a union delegate, Officer Aaron Jackson, said yesterday.
"The police officers of the Seventh precinct believe that whenever we have to take enforcement actions against a person who is Hasidic/Jewish or politically connected, that the hierarchy of the N.Y.P.D will overly scrutinize our actions, and lawful arrest," the petition reads in part. "We also believe that if a police officer makes a lawful arrest, it has the likelihood of being downgraded or completely voided."
Mr. Browne, the Police Department spokesman, responded by saying: "Nothing was downgraded or voided. Police officers are expected to enforce the law impartially and they are supported by the Police Department in doing so."
A police officer at the precinct, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he was disappointed that Mr. Jacob seemed to have received special treatment while he was detained at the station on Monday. The officer said that Mr. Jacob was held not in a cell, but in a room usually used for juveniles, and that visitors walked in and out of the room freely.
The elder Mr. Jacob and Mr. Silver both said that relations between the Jewish community on the Lower East Side and the Police Department were normally very good. Still, Mr. Jacob said he was treated badly by some officers during the confrontation at the station on Monday.
Another meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, Mr. Silver said, and would include representatives from his office, and from the precinct, Hatzolah, and the Fire Department. The goal is for Hatzolah and fire crews to work out proper protocol
