Chokehold case focuses attention on New York's 'forgotten borough'

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Does a grand jury's failure to indict a white policeman in the death of a black man he put in a chokehold reflect a lack of diversity in this, New York City's most suburban, most conservative and least populous borough?

Staten Island is a 25-minute ferry ride from Manhattan and a $15 bridge toll from Brooklyn -- closer to New Jersey than the rest of the city. It has no subway and no skyscrapers. In a city that's less than half white, the borough is two-thirds white.

That profile has raised questions of whether Staten Island's political, racial and cultural makeup affected the grand jury's decision in the death of Eric Garner, who is seen on videotape being wrestled down by a policeman with an arm around his neck.

But the reality of Staten Island is more complicated than the stereotype.

The borough has changed. Democrats outnumber Republicans; the island went for Gore in 2000 and Obama in 2012, and five years ago elected its first black city council member. It has more than a half-dozen mosques and several Chinese schools. One in five residents is foreign-born.

If the island is less diverse than the rest of New York City (in which 37% of residents are foreign-born), it's more diverse than the rest of the nation (more than 13% foreign-born).

"It's a peculiar place,'' says Bobby Digi, 40, a business owner and community activist who describes what sounds more like a small town than a city of 475,000 within a city of more than 8 million.

Digi personifies the new Staten Island. The son of Nigerian immigrants, he has lived in the borough for most of his life. He's had confrontations with white cops he believes assumed he was up to no good because he's black.

But he also describes his area of Stapleton on the northern end of the island as one where ethnic and racial community leaders and police commanders have each other's cell numbers, and people mostly get along. "It's a great place to live and work,'' he says.

Generalizing about Staten Island is dangerous, because it has three distinct parts.

The densely settled, racially diverse North Shore, where the Garner incident occurred, is like much of the rest of the city. Residents range from Brooklyn-style hipsters to Manhattan office commuters to poor housing project residents. Local products include the great hip-hop group, Wu Tang Clan.

The South Shore, on the other side of the Staten Island Expressway, is largely white, suburban and conservative, home to many police officers, firefighters and other municipal employees.

Mid Island is a transition area, a sort of political museum that's still home to many conservative Reagan Democrats and moderate Republicans. It's also a popular destination for immigrants from South Asia.

"The further south you go on the island, the more conservative it gets, until finally you have George W. Bush-conservatives, like in the rest of America'' says Abe Unger, a political scientist at Wagner College in the borough.

Until Rudy Giuliani's election as mayor in 1993, Staten Island felt alternatively neglected and abused by City Hall. The symbol of this alienation was the Fresh Kills landfill, the nation's largest dump, to which refuse was carted citywide. It closed more than 10 years ago, leaving the toll on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Brooklyn the hot local issue.

The precise racial composition of the grand jury in the Garner case is not known. But a Garner family lawyer says it was roughly half white , with the other half split among blacks (who account for about 10% on the island) and Hispanics (16%).

Digi says he wasn't surprised the grand jury didn't indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo on the most serious charges, but was shocked "they didn't even come back with a lesser charge.''

Ralph Ferrara, a South Shore resident who commutes to Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry, accepts the jury's decision, despite a video showing Pantaleo with his arm around Garner's throat: "They saw all the evidence, and they were in the best position to judge what really happened.''

Lori Weintrob, a college professor who lives with her family in the Castleton Corners section of the North Shore, said that the composition of the island's political and community leadership has not kept pace with its demographic changes.

Republicans control major offices. U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm is the only one in the city's congressional delegation, and the borough president and two of the three city council members are Republicans.

"As a result, you've got tensions,'' Weintrob says, "and we all have to think about what we can do to improve that.''