Astoria residents are fighting car culture one cop at a time

Astoria residents again attended the borough’s 114th monthly council meeting last week to complain about police officers’ reckless chases through the low-crime neighborhood. But this time the voice of one of the victims was the clearest.

The family of Amanda Servedio, a bicyclist killed in a high-speed chase while fleeing police officers during a suspected burglary, called for a statement to be read that expressed in all-too-poignant terms what many in the room were feeling – and felt long before her death on October 22nd.

“We believe that Amanda would still be alive if it were not for the deadly actions of this department and this department in particular,” the statement began. Further reference is made to the shocking data: From January 1 to September 30, 2024, police officers from the 114th Precinct participated in 38 high-speed chases on residential streets – the sixth most chases in the city’s 77 precincts during this period.

And that doesn’t include the pursuit of a burglary suspect that preceded Servedio’s death – just hours afterward last Monthly council meeting…attended by Astoria residents Also complains about the 114th District’s recklessness.

“There is no justification for a high-speed chase in a neighborhood like Astoria unless there is a real active threat,” the statement continued. “It seems to us like officers who completely ignored cyclists and pedestrians in their pursuit. We’ve seen the numbers; Everyone has. High-speed chases occur in this area far more frequently than is warranted, and the number of chases has skyrocketed across New York recently.”

This sequence of events on the night of Servedio’s death was particularly frightening to other speakers because it is the very tragedy that the 114th Precinct was repeatedly warned about. Nonetheless, cops pursued a burglary suspect in his 4,000-pound Dodge Charger (a vehicle so powerful it probably has no business in dense cities), which then fatally struck 36-year-old Servedio. The suspect and three accomplices fled on foot and were not caught.

“What is a burglary?” Rosamond Gianutsos asked police leadership at the meeting. “And what is the worst punishment a burglar can receive?”

Another woman, who gave the name Amy and said it was her first time at such a meeting, ridiculed the priorities of officials who recently promoted issuing tickets to moped drivers.

“In fact, it’s not the moped riders who kill people, it’s the drivers who kill people,” she said. “Drivers kill about a hundred pedestrians and cyclists every year.” (Actually, it’s more like 150.)

Michael Murtha noted that there were only six NYPD pursuits through the 114th Precinct in 2021 and 2022, but 71 in 2023 and so far in 2024, an increase in the threat to the community that is on the front page of every news outlet would stand if this were the case. It wasn’t about cars or the NYPD.

The police officers gave no answers, apologies or understanding to almost all questions.

The crux of the question is not whether police should never conduct car chases, but whether they should conduct car chases when there is no imminent danger to the public. This is a distinction that 114th Precinct Deputy Inspector Seth Lynch seems to understand. At one point in the meeting, he responded to a question by reading from the police manual on the subject: “Department policy requires that the pursuit of a vehicle be discontinued whenever there is a risk to uniformed service members and the public Danger to the community predominates if a suspect is not arrested immediately.”

But someone shouted, “How can a break-in happen?” After a long silence, the person repeated, “No, seriously, how can a break-in happen?” Others also demanded an answer to this question, but none was given.

Lynch is familiar with Astorians’ complaints about reckless driving by his officers, as well as residents. He’s been hearing it since his first council meeting in June, where he was bombarded with concerns about cars. The big issue of the day at the time was the rapidly deteriorating situation on a local greenway, the destruction of which was due entirely to a lack of enforcement against drivers illegally parking cars on the Astoria Greenway. Lynch initially dismissed the harmful effects of cars on the neighborhood and faced so many questions that his answers changed as he realized how serious the problem was for residents. Shortly thereafter, the greenway was cleared, thanks to Lynch. And it stayed that way.

That’s what community meetings are like allegedly work. The local public should act as a check on the non-resident police. Often, advocates who attend these meetings build relationships with individual police officers, many of whom are dedicated professionals who want to prevent the deaths we routinely face. The institution and its habits are the problem.

At the last meeting, I spoke with the officer who was first on the scene after a reckless driver destroyed a stop sign, running over and killing seven-year-old Dolma Naadhun. We talked about how traumatized we all were by this death. But this terrible tragedy led to a renewed focus on the problem of dangerous intersections, eventually forcing the Adams administration to implement the valuable safety feature called daylighting.

It remains to be seen whether a similar movement against police chases will emerge in Astoria and beyond, but one thing is clear: More people in more neighborhoods need to go to their council meetings to confront police about their loyalty to motorists, whether in uniform or not.

If we want change, it will not come from below, but from the citizens upwards.