NEW YORK -Hundreds of police officers will be stationed across Upper Manhattan this weekend and Dyckman Street will be closed from end to end, part of a city effort to prevent a repeat of the unsanctioned street gathering that ended in a fatal stabbing last Sunday, elected officials said Friday.
Steven Bodnar, 23, was stabbed in the stomach with a sharp object during a brawl on Dyckman Street in Inwood early Aug. 9 and later died at a hospital, police said.
The crowd had splintered off from the Dominican Day Parade held earlier that day on Sixth Avenue. City Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa, who represents the area, said at a news conference in Inwood on Friday morning that the parade itself went off without a hitch, and that the trouble came afterward on Dyckman.
De La Rosa said a safety plan had been in place before the parade but that it broke down, and that the neighborhood was overwhelmed by hundreds of people arriving from Connecticut and Long Island, Gothamist reported.
Officers will work Washington Heights and Inwood in two shifts across four sectors, with sanitation and fire crews on standby, she said. The Dyckman Street closure was set to begin Saturday. The street is one of northern Manhattan's main nightlife corridors, lined with restaurants and bars.
A flyer promoting a third installment of the gathering circulated online during the week, urging people to stay until the police shut it down. Such events, organized on social media and often called takeovers, have grown more destructive in recent years, officials have said.
Last Sunday's crowd caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property and vehicle damage and cost small businesses revenue when they were forced to close, De La Rosa said. Public spaces were left strewn with trash, according to a joint statement from Upper Manhattan's congressional, state and City Council representatives.
De La Rosa said most of the people who turned out were young, and she pledged expanded youth programming and anti-violence work alongside the police deployment.
An NYPD spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Gothamist reported.