'Night Out' At NRPD HQ Brings Community Together In A Trying Time

NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Children's screams of delight and the aroma of barbecue pierced the warm, but crisp, evening long before families approaching the celebration, pushing strollers and holding the hands of children bouncing with excitement, arrived at police headquarters.

Grownups could perhaps be forgiven for sharing a a childlike excitement as the "National Night Out" celebration revealed itself. Sure, the face-painting, the bounce houses and the giant inflatable slide were strictly for kids, but the closeup look at rescue equipment, demonstrations from first responders, a DJ with a knack for keeping the energy up and food straight from the grill brought that same sense of wonder to children, parents and grandparents alike.

Most strikingly, the crowded event had the feel of a summer block party. New Rochelle has the knack of sometimes feeling more like a shared neighborhood than New York's seventh largest city just when you most need it to and right now, the Queen City on the Sound could use all the benefits that come with being a close-knit community.

Across the country, National Night Out celebrations are intended as events that promote "police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make our neighborhoods safer, more caring places to live."

In New Rochelle, the event held each year simply put on display what we already know about ourselves as a city, where we are far more connected to each other than most places.

Aside from the carnival-like scale of the attractions, it was easy to imagine we were all guests at a backyard cookout. Pre-teens, young moms and senior citizens picked at cotton candy and chatted with uniformed police officers like friends and neighbors. Moments like this were repeated throughout the gathering — a small reminder that what unites us as a city and as a community, far outweighs what divides us.

Perhaps, that is part of the reason why, when tragedy struck, New Rochelle didn't tear itself apart like so many other towns and cities across the country in similar situations.

But, just a few feet from the National Night Out revelry, a group of more than a dozen protesters stood as a reminder of the pain that is still fresh and being felt by many others in the very same community. A repeated chant of "No peace; no justice" marked a divide among neighbors that won't be mended with free snow-cones and balloons.

At 4:29 p.m. on July 3, the New Rochelle Police Department responded to a local grocery store after a complaint about a man who didn't pay for items at a grocery store just blocks from NRPD headquarters.

Responding officers confronted Jarrell Garris who was unarmed. The interaction would end with the 37-year-old fatally shot by police.

Officers Kari Bird, Gabrielle Chavarry, and Detective Steven Conn were placing Garris under arrest when he physically resisted, according to New Rochelle police. The department said in a statement released July 4 that Garris then grabbed an officer's gun and attempted to remove the weapon from the holster.

Body cam footage released by the NRPD appears to back up the assertion. It shows Garris apparently ignoring attempts by police to talk to him, initially walking away. When officers tried to place him under arrest, a scuffle ensued. One officer can be heard calling for the use of a taser, but moments later, a male police officer can be heard shouting, "He's got a gun. He's got a gun."

Jarrell Garris should be alive today. And it would be hard to find anyone in this city, in uniform or on the streets, who does not wish desperately that he had not been killed that day.

A police officer once explained to me that media coverage of the police is a lot like coverage of plane crashes.

"Planes take off, land get to their destinations, thousands of times each day for months and years, and it never makes the news, but when there's a tragedy, it's wall-to-wall coverage," he explained. "And rightfully so. It's the same way with cops. There are thousands of interactions between police and citizens each day in this country. They mostly go exactly like they are supposed to, but when something goes wrong it, it's just like a plane crash."

The analogy from a police officer might be apt, but when there is a plane crash, countless man-hours are put into finding a cause, demanding accountability and making certain that the circumstances that led to tragedy are never repeated. There is no reason to expect anything less when the death comes at the hands of police rather than an airline.

In the end, what went wrong, who deserves accountability and how to prevent disaster from happening again in the future will be decided by those far better equipped to understand than you or I. In the meantime, the community will come together as best it can, but the healing won't start until there are answers.

We were right to be proud of our city coming together and taking joy in a shared love of our community. The protesters, holding signs and wearing shirts emblazoned with the picture of Jarrell Garris were there to remind us that our neighbors are in pain and that is something we all bear responsibility for.