FREE-FOR-ALL: A mob is captured on security video trashing the Church Farm Market at 40th Street and Church Avenue in Brooklyn Monday night. They did tens of thousands of dollars in damage.
GATED COMMUNITY: Shops that would normally be open are shuttered, their anti-crime gates pulled down, as merchants along Church Avenue were taking no chances yesterday. (
)
A normally bustling stretch of East Flatbush was a ghost town yesterday, as merchants refused to open their businesses in fear of a fresh round of looting and rioting over the fatal police shooting of a local teenager.
Merchants were willing to lose a day’s receipts rather than have their stores trashed and robbed by supporters of Kimani Gray, 16, a Bloods gang member whom cops shot Saturday night after he allegedly pulled a revolver from his waistband.
The shop owners’ fear of renewed violence came as:
* A vigil planned for last night was canceled by Gray’s family because of bad weather and Monday night’s riot. Still, the NYPD stuck to its plan to bring extra cops from around the city into the 67th Precinct.
* A Bloods offshoot, the Outlaws, ordered a hit on any city cop in retaliation for Gray’s death, a source said.
“They [police] have intelligence that they [the gang members] put a hit out on a cop,” the source told The Post. “They want a life for a life.”
* It emerged that the two cops who fired at Gray, who was black, are both minorities. One, a sergeant is a dark-skinned Egyptian who identifies himself as black. He fired four times. The other, a Hispanic officer, fired seven times.
The sergeant was involved in another shooting in Brooklyn, in 2011, that wounded a 30-year-old perp who had opened fire.
* Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and City Councilman Jumaane Williams sparred over the Gray incident at a budget meeting.
Williams (D-Brooklyn), a frequent critic of the NYPD, slammed Kelly for not showing up enough in his district, and warned that there could be more violence down the road.
A visibly irritated Kelly dismissed Williams’ invitation to walk the streets with him as a “photo op” — and added, “I go to community meetings all the time.”
The after-effects of Monday night’s mayhem was felt across East Flatbush yesterday.
A roughly 25-block walk along Church Avenue from Nostrand Avenue to East 55th Street revealed that the owners of 58 small businesses — bodegas, barber shops and day-care centers — had pulled down their metal anti-crime gates on what would normally have been a busy workday.
“This is terrifying,” said a woman who gave her name only as Sooni, whose family owns K & S Fruit at 5109 Church Ave., which opened yesterday morning but was shutting down early.
“I want to close the store. I want to lock the door. I’m terrified,” she said.
The locked storefronts puzzled a FedEx deliveryman trying to do his job on Church Avenue.
“At first, I thought it must’ve been a Muslim holiday, Ramadan or something. But eventually, we just gave up on Church Avenue,” he said.
On Monday, the marauding mob grabbed fruits and vegetables from wooden stalls outside the Church Farm Market on Church Avenue and smashed the produce in the street.
“They threw all the fruit into the street, all ruined. Today, I’m closing early,” said rattled owner Suk Bak, who estimated his losses in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Surveillance video showed seven or eight young men and a women smashing displays and pocketing food while Bak cowered behind the counter.
Police said there was one arrest in the riot, Kaven Menard, 19, who was busted Monday and charged with robbery.
Gray, whose rap sheet included inciting a riot, grand larceny and possession of stolen property, was shot six times after the two undercover cops approached him and some pals hanging out at 52nd Street near Snyder Street at 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
Police said Gray pulled a .38-caliber revolver from his pants and pointed it their way.
After the shooting, he was rushed to Kings County Hospital, but he didn’t make it.
Kelly said that the two officers who fired at Gray had not been questioned by the NYPD at the request of Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ office, which is leading the probe.
He said witnesses heard the cops shout, “Don’t move! What do you have in your hands?’ and ‘Freeze!’ before shots rang out.
“There’s nothing to indicate that this shooting, at this time, is outside the guidelines,” added Kelly, who downplayed the chaos as being wrought by “a disorderly group.”
Although last night’s vigil was canceled, a small contingent of activists showed up at the 67th Precinct station house to protest. They were met with a heavy NYPD presence. One arrest was made, but there was no violence.
Gray’s mom, Carol, is slated to address the rescheduled vigil tonight at 7.
With additional reporting by Kirstan Conley, Sally Goldenberg and Jennifer Bain]