http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/opinion/no-courage-no-peace-in-brooklyn.html 2016-09-07 10:04:47 No Courage, No Peace in Brooklyn J’ouvert needs to be shut down or altered so it can be policed effectively. === Mayor Elected officials in Brooklyn need to demand it, even if it means breaking with the mayor and facing angry constituents. Somebody needs to show courage in defense of innocent lives and challenge a well-loved but chronically violent event in the Caribbean heart of the city. Mr. de Blasio does not seem up to the fight. He has It didn’t work Each year, officials promise that J’ouvert, whose name is a French-derived term pronounced joo-VAY, will be safe. Each year proves them wrong, and then a cloud darkens that day’s enormously important and popular West Indian parade. Last year’s victims were Carey Gabay, a Cuomo administration lawyer, who was fatally shot, and Denentro Josiah, who was stabbed to death. The incoming police commissioner, James O’Neill, needs to insist that his officers will not be drawn again into a futile effort to protect neighborhoods from an event that is a magnet for gang violence, in the predawn dark, amid an estimated quarter-million revelers. The Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, was vague on Tuesday, about J’ouvert’s future, saying through a spokesman that all options need to be reviewed. A Brooklyn council member, Jumaane Williams, said he wanted an “honest discussion” but wouldn’t commit to any changes — though he warned that ending J’ouvert would be like imposing “martial law.” He and others are right that controlling J’ouvert and J’ouvert-inspired revelry is a challenge — the partying and parading sprawl across several Council districts, including backyards and nightclubs, and people will be out no matter what the mayor and the N.Y.P.D. say. But chaos and carnage are not inevitable. The daytime parade, once plagued by violence, is now a peaceable event. J’ouvert needs to be shut down or altered so it can be policed effectively. Suggestions include starting it at daybreak, not the middle of the night, and screening the crowds, forbidding backpacks and deterring guns, the way Times Square is secured on New Year’s Eve.