Hadiya (third from left), was killed just a week after singing at President Obama’s inauguration in January. (Twitter/Love4LifeSong)
Okeith Sutton, who lost his 7-year-old child to stray gunfire in bloody Chicago, said ‘New York is going to be in trouble.’ (William Farrington)
‘NOBODY EXPECTS TO LIVE PAST 21 HERE’: Chicago police at the scene of a deadly shooting in East Garfield Park on June 23. (Getty Images)
BITTER EXPERIENCE: First Lady Michelle Obama stood with Nathaniel and Cleopatra Pendleton (top left) after the slaying of their daughter Hadiya (right, and third from left, inset) in February. (Twitter/Love4LifeSong)
CHICAGO — Residents of the murder-plagued Windy City, where the streets are flooded with guns and children regularly get caught in the crossfire, told The Post yesterday that a judge’s decision to overhaul stop-and-frisk will send New York down the same dark path.
“If crime rates are down in New York, don’t stop what you’re doing. Don’t test the water,” said Nathaniel Pendleton, whose 15-year-old daughter, Hadiya, was shot to death a week after singing at President Obama’s inauguration in January.
Pendleton said Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin — who on Monday declared the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional and ordered an overhaul and a court-appointed monitor — may soon have blood on her hands.
“Can you sleep at night if someone gets shot because a cop couldn’t search someone they know has a gun?” he asked.
Pendleton, whose daughter’s funeral drew dignitaries including First Lady Michelle Obama, said he wished that Chicago cops used stop-and-frisk as aggressively as New York because “if they did it, they would find a lot more guns.”
His grim comments came as New York City lawyers huddled to plot their appeal of the decision, which calls for additional training and supervision of cops — and requires cops to wear body cameras in precincts with the most stops.
An NYPD cop had ominously told The Post Monday that without such aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics, New York’s crime rate would soar.
“Welcome to Chicago,’’ he said.
Okeith Sutton, whose 7-year-old daughter Heaven was killed by a stray bullet as she sold candy in front of her Chicago home last year, ripped the judge’s ruling.
“I think New York’s going to be in trouble,” he said. “Unfortunately, some parents are going to experience what I’m going through. It never leaves your mind. I will forever mourn her. I will forever be in grief.”
Chicago had the highest murder rate in the country last year. New York — three times larger — had nearly 100 fewer slayings.
Mary Wilson — who lives on little Heaven’s block — said, “If more people are allowed to carry guns in New York, little girls will die there, too.”
“And not just little girls — grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, all will be dead,” she said. “Just a barrage of people will die if something doesn’t change.”
A top Chicago official has called for the Second City to adopt stop-and-frisk.
“As a black woman, I am sensitive to our community’s tense historical relationship with law enforcement,” City Treasurer Stephanie Neely wrote in March in the Chicago Tribune.
“However, the impact that gun violence has in our neighborhoods is too great for us not to start looking at things differently.”
Yesterday, Neely told The Post: “The primary goal is to get illegal guns off the streets and save lives. This is one way; not the only way.”
Former New York Gov. George Pataki yesterday ripped the Justice Department for getting involved in the stop-and-frisk case.
“If [Attorney General Eric] Holder and [President] Obama want to investigate a police department, why don’t they look at Chicago, where the civil rights of young African-Americans are being not only taken away, but they’re being murdered in record rates in the South Side of Chicago?” Pataki said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Even gang-bangers admit the city of Chicago is beyond hope.
“We don’t even cry at funerals no more,” one said. “Nobody expects to live past 21 here.”
Additional reporting by Kate Sheehy, Bruce Golding and Rich Calder