1536 Big Mac on Bedford Avenue

1536 Big Mac on Bedford Avenue

The West Indian Day parade is a burst of blinding color, song and dance.  It takes place at the same time as Labor Day in the shadow of what once was Ebbets Field where the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team used to play.

It’s a landmark location where the city now has one of those dreary, cookie cutter dropped from the sky housing projects.

The parade attracts thousands of onlookers.  And it attracts violence, violence that often goes unnoticed beyond the project and nearby Prospect Park.  A mention in the Daily News, maybe. A ten second video clip on Channel 4.

It was a little different this year, because when gunfire broke out -- as it does every year --  a man named Carey Gabay took a bullet. Gabay is a wheel in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration and was there to celebrate.

He’s one of those functionaries you never hear of until something bad happens.  Something bad happened to him.  At this writing, he’s at Kings County Medical Center in critical condition.  Kings County is not a place you want to be with any condition, let alone one that can kill you.  People are wheeled in on stretchers every day.  Many of them also leave on stretchers.

The governor was marching in the parade.  When asked, he said his man was “not in good shape.”

Cops say Gabay wasn’t a target.  He was just a bystander.  Gang war, they said.  They found a MAC 10 45, in the street. Big MAC.  An auto machine pistol that takes a magazine as long as your arm and some of which have built in suppressors -- a “silencer” to us amateurs.

So the police will make an extra effort to find the shooter because this victim was a Harvard lawyer who works for the state?  Unlikely they’ll find anyone. If they do, he (and it almost has to be a “he,”) will tell us about his tough childhood, how he goes to mass every Sunday, helps his mom around the house and is “... not a bad person your honor. It was an accident.”

Yes, an accident with a banned weapon designed for the military and that somehow got into the hands of a Brooklyn gangbanger.

Some ordinary victim?  File and forget.  

The combination of a machinegun, a gang guy and the West Indian Day Parade is a batter from which only death and injury can be baked.

Shrapnel:

--The Dentist of Death is back at work. Jolly Wally Palmer, who when not extracting teeth is extracting heads from big game -- Cecil in particular -- has reopened his practice in suburban Minneapolis. Here’s hoping he’s the loneliest fellow since the Maytag repairman.

--Let’s hear it for Microsoft.  Not only are they increasing their “diagnostic” (read spying) capacity on Windows 10 but they’re trying to expand it to Windows 7 and 8.x.  The old fashioned have an advantage over the leading edge ten users in that they have to opt in and can ignore the nagging from MSFT to “update.”

--Wal-mart is reopening five stores closed because of “plumbing problems” but still denies workers’ attempts to organize for better pay was the real reason.  Took six months to fix plumbing problems? Who’d they hire, Wal-mart Customer Service?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015