UPDATE: Cops Arrest Driver Who Killed Pedestrian in Sheepshead Bay

This headline is no longer accurate, thanks to belated work by the NYPD.

Police have arrested the driver who they say mowed down a Brooklyn pedestrian in January

Richard Goldblatt, 58, was charged with failure to yield and failure to exercise due care for hitting Gail Ackerman, 77, as she crossed the busy commercial section of Avenue U at E. 29th Street. Ackerman had been in the crosswalk and had the light as Goldblatt piloted his 2016 Nissan SUV into her as he turned left onto Avenue U from the side street, cops said.

Goldblatt had remained on the scene of the Jan. 20 crash, and was not initially charged, though Streetsblog called for action, given that the initial police report suggested that he did not yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk and, by killing her, failed to exercise due care. The charges could result in a maximum of 30 days in jail for taking Ackerman’s life.

Police offered few other details about Goldblatt’s arrest.

Seven pedestrians and cyclists have been injured on the six blocks of Avenue U between Nostrand and Bedford avenues, a busy commercial stretch that lacks any safety upgrades. To put the larger carnage on our streets in a broader perspective, there were 3,980 reported crashes in the tiny 46th Council District in Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park last year, resulting in injuries to 54 cyclists, 176 pedestrians and 1,292 motorists. Five pedestrians and one driver died.

The district averages 11 crashes per day.

Larry Littlefield

Streetsblog should ask the head of the PBA about this.

The police officers said they would let people get killed unless they got 1,000 more dues paying members. And then Melissa Mark-Viterito funded that 1,000 extra officers, at the expense of other priorities, including funding for the MTA capital plan.

Then the PBA said we deserved to get killed, robbed and raped because they didn’t get another 5,000 dues paying members over and above the initial 1,000.

Does this mean that the PBA has conceded that even with only 2.9 times the national average number of officers per 100,000 residents as the U.S. average they shouldn’t just let people be killed, robbed and raped because the aren’t getting more? Which is pretty much what the UFT does. Perhaps because Mark-Viterito lost.

Or does the PBA consider this unfair, because Goldblatt had every right to run over Ackerman unless we all paid more more and accepted less?
William Lawson

All we can do is hope and pray that the next dead victim of one of these scumbags is a cop. I’m actually hoping for a cop to be run over and killed by a non-yielding driver while on duty, because then we’ll finally see them spring into action. Any of the following things are likely:

1) Driver will be arrested on the spot and charged with involuntary manslaughter, despite New Yorkers having been told for years that such charges are impossible.

2) The PBA will go into overdrive, making statements about the menace of reckless drivers and how police work is insanely dangerous

3) The officer’s colleagues at the scene will pump dozens of bullets into the car, killing the driver, and the shooting will be defended by the PBA as a legitimate response to a driver who was threatening an officer with an act of vehicular violence.

What we *won’t* see, in a million years, is the NYPD treating the incident the same way it treats vehicular violence against ordinary members of the public. You won’t hear any victim blaming. You won’t hear that the cop was “looking at his phone” or otherwise distracted. You won’t hear the cops making any kind of preemptive defense for the driver. You won’t hear the DA say that his hands are tied. None of this. You’ll see swift, severe justice, and a massive outpouring of outrage about reckless drivers from the very people who couldn’t give a shit when the public gets slaughtered the same way.