Tenants Of Harlem Block Where Officers Were Shot Feel 'All Alone'

HARLEM, NY — Days after the shooting in a Harlem apartment that ultimately killed two police officers and their alleged assailant, neighboring tenants found themselves in something of a militarized zone.

Squad cars lined the block, NYPD barricades blocked off building entrances, and residents were forced to show their IDs to be allowed into their homes.

"We couldn't move for an entire weekend," said June Moses, president of the West 135th Street Apartments Tenant Association. "It kind of felt like we were public enemy number one."

Many of the roughly 1,000 residents who make up the 10-building complex between Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Malcolm X boulevards are mourning the losses of Officers Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera. Both young men were known to tenants, having attended events on the block, according to Paulette Nixon, first vice president of the tenant association.

Residents are also grieving for Shirley Sourzes, whose 911 call about a domestic dispute with her son, 47-year-old Lashawn McNeil, set in motion the chain of events that ended with McNeil killing both officers in an apartment belonging to his brother, according to police. McNeil himself died Monday, from gunshot wounds inflicted by a third officer.

Though the police presence on their block has subsided, Moses said tenants still feel "on an island all alone," sensing a stigma simply for living near the site of the killings. In particular, Moses bristled at remarks given by a speaker at a recent rally on her corner, which seemed to blame the mother for summoning police to the home.

"That mother did everything that she was supposed to do," Moses told Patch on Wednesday. "You need help, you call for help."

Nixon, 74, has lived for 42 years in the West 135th Street Apartments, which consist largely of low-income, Section 8 housing. Calling the last few days "overwhelming," she said the city should focus on better treatment for people with mental illness — citing a recent walk to 125th Street in which she passed four different men "acting out."

"Those people need help," Nixon said.

Both Nixon and Moses expressed reservations about Mayor Eric Adams's policing plans, which include deployments of plainclothes officers and an openness to reviving the bygone stop-and-frisk program.

"He has to do what he has to do, as far as stop-and-frisk," Nixon said. "But I don’t think that it should be done in the same manner that it was done before. You [shouldn't] just stop every youth or harass every young person for walking down the street, because actually, that’s what it was."

Moses said her tenant association is at work finding a professional counselor who could visit the block, helping residents "process their trauma" from the past few days — especially those who live in the building where the shooting took place.

Above all, though, Moses said she wants outsiders to understand the dignity of her block, which sits at the nexus of a culturally-rich area — steps away from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the historic Harlem YMCA.

"We live in one of the best places in Harlem," she said.

Related coverage:

• Slain Police Officer Grew Up In Immigrant Family In Inwood
• 2nd Officer Dies From Harlem Shooting, Commissioner Says
• Police Officer Killed, Another Shot And Wounded In Harlem
• Controversial Plainclothes NYPD Units Coming To Harlem
  
• Adams Demands Armed Teens Return To Criminal Court