Surrender is the word for when the cops yanked the permit for an uptown block party within sight of the local stationhouse because they felt unable to provide adequate security against some black gang banging teenage thugs.
Surrender becomes total disgrace when you consider that the annual event serves as both a memorial for a young woman from the block who died on 9/11 at the World Trade Center and a birthday celebration for her son.
"This would have been the 10th anniversary," the murdered woman's 53 year-old mother, Kim Coleman-Bell, said Saturday.
The mother was standing on a perfect summer day on a nearly empty block of W. 152nd St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. It should have been smiling, laughing children as happy as her daughter had always been as a youngster at the annual party when she could bike right down the middle of the closed street.
"She loved riding the bike up and down," the mother recalled. "She loved parties and she loved kids."
The daughter's name was Jacquelyn Patrice Sanchez. She was 23 and working at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor when the plane hit the north tower. Sanchez telephoned her mother, frightened and having difficulty breathing. Her foremost thought was of her son, Cedric.
"Where's my baby?" she asked
"I have your baby," the mother replied. "Just get out of there."
At the approach of the first block party after 9/11, the mother decided there could be no better way to remember her daughter than with this event where she had always been the happiest of kids. The annual event became the liveliest of memorials to Sanchez and a celebration for the grandson whose first birthday came six days after 9/11. It also remained more than anything as great a time for the block's children.
"We do it for the kids," Coleman-Bell said.
Last year, the event had to be canceled because the block was overrun by armies of rats. The city responded and kept at it, even setting out fresh rat poison on Aug. 11, as this year's block party neared.
With the rats at bay and a permit in hand, the block hired a deejay and stocked up on food. A new arrival offered to put out finger paints and hold a water balloon contest.
"With prizes," Coleman-Bell said.
Coleman-Bell got book bags to give the kids in her daughter's memory.
"Education was very important to her," the mom said.
Then, just three days before the party, Coleman-Bell learned that police at the stationhouse just a block and a half away had yanked the permit, saying they could not protect the party from some two-legged rats, a gang called the Original Young Gangsters. Never mind that the gang is not even from W.152nd St.
