STATEMENT BY THE NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES ALLIANCE

Councilman Addabbo’s incendiary remarks, and his facilitation and encouragement of the attacks, are highly offensive and hostile, and an insult and abomination to all right thinking people, including people of color and diverse communities every where. By blaming the victim, he has eschewed the basic norms of decency and humanity, the rule of law, the due protection of law afforded to all by the Constitution, and our system of justice and fair play.
Indeed, by publicly casting guilt on the aggrieved family with full knowledge that the District Attorney's Office is carrying out its investigations in this matter, and being mindful that one individual has been charged in this case, he is interfering with and obstructing justice, and seeking to derail the judicial process. For this reason alone, he has shown himself unfit for public office as a hate monger, and should resign immediately.

Worse yet, his countenance of savage and uncivilized attacks on homeowners as being justified if there are questions whether the homeowner has complied with the building code, confirms that he is unsuitable for public office. His statements and strong arm tactics further confirm that, as a public official, he usurps the fundamental rights, guarantees and civil liberties of some of his constituents over others, based on his illegal, jaundiced and premature determination of issues which should be decided by the relevant agencies charged with such duties.
No responsible leader with any sense of judiciousness and dignity should pronounce with such insensitivity and recklessness, and use his high office to foster, coordinate and protect illegal conduct, especially in the volatile and oppressive environment in which the well being and safety of the Gounden family is seized.

Councilman Addabbo has spent 7 years in the City Council. Why did he fail to address and curtail overdevelopment and escalating building violations in our neighborhoods in the proper manner? Recently, he stated that he was planning to run for office in the State senate district, which is a far more diverse district than his City Council district which encompasses Howard Beach and environs.

His handling of this situation validates that his innate prejudices will prevent him from doing his official duties effectively and fairly to all constituents and communities in this district, regardless of their ethnicity, race, creed or class, instead of creating divisions, hate and acrimony in our neighborhoods. We demand his immediate resignation, just compensation to the Gounden family and atonement to all affected by his sordid role in this matter.
Contact person: CHUCK MOHAN

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THE NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES ALLIANCE
106-11 LIBERTY AVENUE
OZONE PARK, NY 11417
(718) 323-8260
September 25, 2007
PRESS RELEASE

CONTACT PERSON: CHUCK MOHAN
WE CONTINUE TO DEMAND COUNCILMAN ADDABBO’S RESIGNATION FOR HIS ROLE IN THE HARASSMENT & HORROR THE GOUNDEN FAMILY IS FACING IN HOWARD BEACH, AND DENOUNCE HIS BIGOTRY!
STATEMENT BY THE NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES ALLIANCE

(Over 500 community organizations, businesses, community leaders and officials)
Councilman Addabbo’s incendiary remarks, and his facilitation and encouragement of the attacks, are highly offensive and hostile, and an insult and abomination to all right thinking people, including people of color and diverse communities every where. By blaming the victim, he has eschewed the basic norms of decency and humanity, the rule of law, the due protection of law afforded to all by the Constitution, and our system of justice and fair play.

Indeed, by publicly casting guilt on the aggrieved family with full knowledge that the District Attorney's Office is carrying out its investigations in this matter, and being mindful that one individual has been charged in this case, he is interfering with and obstructing justice, and seeking to derail the judicial process. For this reason alone, he has shown himself unfit for public office as a hate monger, and should resign immediately.Worse yet, his countenance of savage and uncivilized attacks on homeowners as being justified if there are questions whether the homeowner has complied with the building code, confirms that he is unsuitable for public office.
His statements and strong arm tactics further confirm that, as a public official, he usurps the fundamental rights, guarantees and civil liberties of some of his constituents over others, based on his illegal, jaundiced and premature determination of issues which should be decided by the relevant agencies charged with such duties.

No responsible PUBLIC OFFICIAL with any sense of judiciousness and dignity should pronounce with such insensitivity and recklessness, and use his high office to foster, coordinate and protect illegal conduct, especially in the volatile and oppressive environment in which the well being and safety of the Gounden family is seized.Councilman Addabbo has spent 7 years in the City Council. Why did he fail to address and curtail overdevelopment and escalating building violations in our neighborhoods in the proper manner?

Recently, he stated that he was planning to run for office in the State senate district, which is a far more diverse district than his City Council district which encompasses Howard Beach and environs. His handling of this situation validates that his innate prejudices will prevent him from doing his official duties effectively and fairly to all constituents and communities in this district, regardless of their ethnicity, race, creed or class, instead of creating divisions, hate and acrimony in our neighborhoods. We demand his immediate resignation, just compensation to the Gounden family and atonement to all affected by his sordid role in this matter.

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HOW THE NYS DEPT. OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION (DEC) IS BEING USED TO HOUND THE GOUNDEN FAMILY OUT OF HOWARD BEACH BY COUNCILMAN JOE ADDABBO

It was a clear summer day, August 6, 2006. Kris Gounden was working on the waterfront property he had recently purchased in Howard Beach.

No one had lived on the property for a few years. Neighbors had been dumping garbage on the property during that time. Tall grasses and shrubs had grown on the land. No one had filed a report with any state or city agency regarding the apparent abandonment of the property, save and except for one report to the City’s Dept of Environment and Conservation Board (ECB). Shingles from the siding of the house had been falling off and a violation dated 1/11/2001 had been placed on the property.

Suddenly, a boat with blaring siren and outfitted with radar, pointed guns and spinning flashing lights came up the canal and moored on Gounden’s ‘landing.’ Almost at the exact minute, two vehicles, one an SUV, entered the property. Boats and motor vehicles, bearing the DEC ensign and carrying uniformed, armed DEC officers, were ready to start World War III. This was new neighbor Kris Gounden’s withering introduction to owning a waterfront property in Howard Beach, the first person of color to do so in Ramblersville, Howard Beach.

What had Gounden been doing on the property? The officers of New York State’s DEC found Gounden using a bobcat to clear the shrubs and garbage and filling up a dumpster. Now, owning a waterfront property comes with a handbook full of strict rules and any violation of these rules attracts criminal summonses, with thousand dollar penalties- to be answered in the Queens’ County Criminal Court, 120-55 Queens Boulevard.

Gounden says that although he had been working near to the edge of the canal clearing weeds and shrubs, he did not disturb the soil – and at no time was there any danger of weeds or soil slipping into the canal. DEC officers, Jeffrey Conway and Ecode Dougherty wrote three summonses to the shaken family: (1) Conducting regulated activity in tidal wetlands w/o permit. (2) Land fill in an area adjacent to a wetland (3) Deposit of solid waste. All summonses were scheduled for hearing at the Criminal Court in September 19, 2006.

A few days later an officer of DEC, Lehigh E. Vogel, Biologist, Division of Marine Resources, Region 2, visited Kris Gounden. The Officer was there to inspect the canal to determine whether anything (grass or soil) had fallen in the canal – and also to advise Gounden on compliance procedures to satisfy the summons before the trial date. To comply, Gounden purchased 80 bales of hay (to be used as filters at the edge of the canal), several yards of silt fencing and geo textile material to cover the soil adjacent to the canal. Every few days for the rest of summer 2006, officers in the same SUV, bearing the DEC ensign, visited. Why were they visiting so often, Gounden asked, when other white neighbors’ activities drew no attention to them? To make sure Gounden did nothing on the property in violation of the rules of the waterfront property’s handbook, they claimed, but others thought it was part of a plot calculated to drive the family out of Howard Beach.

On September 19, Kris Gounden appeared at Queens Criminal Court with his lawyer, showed receipts and pictures for the bales of hay, geo textile material etc. and the dumpster. The summonses were dismissed.


THE RULE OF LAW
The concept of the “Rule of Law” is undoubtedly one of the most important concepts in civilized and democratic societies. It conveys order and respect for the law, based on the principles of fairness. One law for everyone. The law must be enforced fairly – not selectively – regardless of race, creed or culture.

Gounden is disturbed about what he sees as rabid racism. He is looking a few yards across the canal and he sees construction of a bulkhead over the water and on the edge of the opposite property. He sees no geo textile material, no bales of hay, no posted permit. On another property, a few yards away from his, he sees another house being raised a few feet above the water. Again no permit, no hay bales, no nothing. The occupants are white.

Gounden knows in his heart – there is one law for him, a person of color; and another for a white man. He knows Howard Beach is a place where the people are mostly of one race, bonded with each another at luncheons, social clubs and yacht clubs. He cannot fit in; he is resented. He knows it must be because of his race. Many people understand racism. Many people accept racism in America as a fact. Gounden says the America he knew and studied at school is that this is the one country in the world where the rule of law is supposedly sovereign more than in any other country in the world.

But that belief exploded when he stared down the drawn guns in the gun boat, and the threats of arrest from the officers of the DEC. He saw the morbid fear in his children’s eyes, as he trembled as to whether this was only a bad substitute for his American dream of home ownership. How does Gounden reconcile his Howard Beach experiences with what he had learned and believed about America?

Yet, his faith in America is not shaken. He says America is indeed the one country in the world where the rule of law is strongest. What we have in America are pockets of racism where some leaders can still get away with manipulating city and state agencies to harass and persecute minorities.

Kris Gounden says he went to Councilman Addabbo’s office and engaged the all white staff with what he sees: a bulkhead being built, a house being raised over the water – all without permits or bales of hay and geo textile material. The administrative secretary, Patricia, dismissively asked Gounden, “How do you know they don’t have permits? How do you know they are not following proper wetlands’ procedures for doing work near and over the water? Get out of our office, and don’t come back here. You are only causing us problems in this community.” Subsequent calls for help were met with more abuse.

Kris Gounden has long believed that the calls to the State’s DEC were made from Councilman Addabbo’s office. But this does not disturb Gounden and he says he does not lose any sleep over this. What bothers him, he says, is the fact one homeowner is a target of the DEC because he is colored, whereas others are not because they are white. When the Councilman himself, the Honorable Joe Addabbo, came uninvited to his house and told him that he could not build a fence on his own property, that he was the cause of the hate attacks on himself and family, that the thug who threatened him with a baseball bat is innocent of hate crimes, and that the violations will continue against him-that, Gounden says, is blatant racism. Worse, it comes from the top as part of an organized plan to drive him from Howard Beach, orchestrated by the very person who was supposed to be fair to him as a tax payer and constituent -his Councilman Addabbo.

What troubles and disturbs him more than anything else is the fact that - and the ease with which - a powerful state agency can be manipulated by “powerful people” to intimidate and harass the owner of a property – simply because of his race. The visits from the DEC were only the tip of the ice berg. While this was going on, the Department of Buildings, the Department of Environmental Protection, the police and several other state and city agencies were assembled and orchestrated against Gounden-all trying to extort their plan to drive him and his family from Howard Beach.

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PUBLIC RALLY CONDEMNING THE HATE CRIMES HARASSMENT THE GOUNDEN FAMILY IS SUFFERING IN HOWARD BEACH, AT THE HANDS OF COUNCILMAN ADDABBO, THE POLICE, DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS, SANITATION & OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

WHERE: At the Victims home-1 Bayview Avenue, Van Der Linn Street, Rambersville, Howard Beach, NY
TIME: October 2, 2007 at 10 am-next Tuesday

Two American-Guyanese and Hispanic families are being threatened and harassed to move out of Howard Beach, victims of a horrifying campaign of harassment and intimidation by the Police, the Building Department, other governmental agencies and by Councilman Addabbo himself-who is blaming the Gounden family for the attacks! This family, which includes 2 babies, is suffering and living in fear. Come hear their story and give them your support! "It's something out of the Deep South, or the backwoods, circa 1950," a police source told the Daily News (see link below).

EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO LIVE THE AMERICAN DREAM, AND TO HAVE THEIR CIVIL LIBERTIES, RIGHT TO HOME OWNERSHIP AND BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS RESPECTED BY ALL! STAND UP AGAINST OPPRESSION AND VICTIMIZATION! YOU CAN BE THE NEXT VICTIM! YOU PAY TAXES TOO! EVERYONE MUST BE RESPECTED!

We spoke to this aggrieved and harassed family today. Their burden is overwhelming. They need help. They are living in morbid fear. Mr. Gounden revealed that Councilman Joe Addabbo actually tried to strong arm him into complying with violations issued by the city, and visited his property several times to enforce complaints from his neighbors-in an intimidating manner, without invitation. Mr. Gounden also said that the Coucilman and his staff have coordinated and orchestrated the chronic harassment from law enforcement, building inspectors and other city and state agencies, and blatantly refuses to assist him as a constituent, instead blaming him for the tense situation. "Mr. Addabbo and staff have played the role of facilitators in one of the worse incidents of racial discrimination. We are at his mercy," the family said.
The Gounden family has been the victims of hate crime attacks in Hamilton Beach,
Howard Beach. Their next door neighbor has been charged with felony hate crime charges-menacing, aggravated harassment, criminal possession of a weapon and trespassing. Since they moved into Howard Beach last July, the Gounden family have been the victims of a harassment campaign by some of their neighbors to run them out of the neighborhood. The Daily News of August 24 & 25, 2007, and the WABC TV Channel 7 News of August 25, 2007, with links reproduced below, reported on this gravely troubling story:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/08/24/2007-08-24_family_haunted_by_hate_in_queens.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/08/25/2007-08-25_nypd_is_probing_police_race_bias_in_howa.html

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5601945

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ADDABBO: ‘GOUNDEN WAS ATTACKED BECAUSE OF WHAT HE DID ON HIS PROPERTY’.

By Vishnu Bisram

It had been four weeks now since Councilman Addabbo made the bold pronouncement: ‘Gounden was attacked because of what he did on his property and that the “attack” had nothing to do with racism’.

The “attack” refers to the attack by a 19-year-old neighbor swinging a baseball bat shouting racial epithets including use of the N-word. Howard Beach weeklies have gone into high gear to try to convince the world that Gounden either deliberately or inadvertently invited the attack upon himself because of what “he did on his property”.

Kris Gounden, of Guyanese origin, was raised in the United States and had attended Aviation High School. Seventeen months ago, he purchased a 15,000 square foot property in Howard Beach and he immediately became the target of harassment by his neighbors and several agencies of the City Government: Dept of Buildings (DOB), Environmental Control Board (ECB), and the Police Dept.

I became interested to find out just what it was that Gounden could possibly do on his property to provoke a “racial attack”. Did he fail to fix up a dilapidated property and remove an eyesore to the neighborhood? Was there a strange manner in which he proceeded to conduct repairs that he became a nuisance to his neighbors? Did he violate some cardinal code of the people who live in the Howard Beach enclave?

Gounden listed for me the following incidents:

Sunday 9/16. Gounden was picking up trash in his yard. Building Inspectors were summoned. Someone had falsely reported Gounden was in the act of doing repairs to his house. The Inspector found Gounden picking up trash, issued no tickets and left him alone. It seemed one of his neighbors cannot stand the idea of leaving this family alone to live in peace. The Inspector advised Gounden to sell his property and get out of the neighborhood.

Some months ago, Councilman Addabbo with an official from some mysterious Govt. agency entered Gounden’s property with a document that looked like a survey. Three times Gounden asked to look at the document, only to have Addabbo say each time the document is classified. Gounden had marked off the boundary line on which he was building a fence. The Councilman warned Gounden: “You cannot go beyond this point; there are sewer lines under the ground”. Gounden says, there are no sewer lines there, only septic tanks. Gounden built the fence anyway. Another set of Inspectors came and said the fence is fine – the right height, within Gounden’s property, and within Gounden’s rights.
Had the Councilman been trying to intimidate Gounden about what he can or cannot do on his property? Doesn’t he have better things to do representing his district?

The Councilman saw a truck and a Camper parked on Gounden’s property. He asked Gounden: “Whose vehicles are these?” Gounden said the vehicles are his. He bought them but hadn’t registered them yet. A day or so later, an Inspector visited and wrote a bunch of summons to Gounden for having unregistered or dead vehicles on his property.
Gounden says: “The words on the summonses came from the Councilman”. Gounden has long believed that the Councilman’s office had been used to coordinate the campaign of harassment on his person and his property. Gounden also expressed the belief that the calls to various govt. agencies were made from the Councilman’s office.

There are some upscale neighborhoods where bylaws prohibit the parking of unregistered vehicles in one’s yard. We do not know whether such laws exist where Gounden lives. But by golly, why would a Councilman get involved with this kind of stuff? This kind of behavior is certainly infra dig for a Councilman.

A neighborhood resident had been parking boats and repairing same on the property before Gounden bought it. This resident apparently deprived of this privilege complained to his friend, the Councilman. This prompted a visit by Councilman Addabbo who warned Gounden: “You can’t fence it off”.

This is an old house. It had been closed up for maybe a year or two before Gounden purchased it. Neighbors had been dumping garbage (old tyres, unused car parts, all kinds of junk) on the property. And, it was nobody’s business. Nobody called out the City’s Inspectors. When Gounden bought the property, Inspectors from various government agencies immediately began to rein down on him.

Gounden said he threw out twelve super-sized dumpsters of garbage from the property.

The deck had rotted away. So Gounden began replacing the deck. Someone called the Building Inspectors who wrote three tickets. Gounden says these tickets were dismissed.
Apparently another set of Inspectors came, saw the deck and concluded that it was not against the law to repair or replace an existing deck

There is clear pattern in the foregoing. Gounden’s neighbors don’t like him and his family there – and they will harass him endlessly with the complicity and/or manipulation of City Inspectors.

Gounden says his neighbors are always blocking his driveway. And, on top of that they are always calling police and Building Inspectors. One day a no-nonsense Hispanic woman-police officer came ostensibly to give Gounden a ticket. Gounden explained how the neighbor’s car was at the time blocking his driveway. She began ticketing the car. The neighbors ran out, flashed their badges, told the officer of their friend, another officer of the same precinct. The woman police officer said: “I don’t care who you know. This car is blocking Gounden’s driveway – and it had no business to be there”. An angel in the form of woman police officer delivered a measure of justice.

A pro-Addabbo weekly, the South Forum, in an article titled: “Digging for the Truth” said there had been a violation issued in year 2000, long before Gounden bought the property. This violation apparently said the property is “structurally unstable”. This is an enigma. Experts on building code violations say: ‘If this were true, the City would have closed the building down”. Gounden says, there were some shingles from the ‘shingles siding’ that had fallen off – and that that most probably was what triggered the violation of 2000. Still in this maze of building codes, no one can understand it, including the Inspectors themselves. One set of Inspectors writes summonses for apparent infractions, another set disagrees and often say, they would not write such summonses. All this going on, while one set of neighbors of demonstrable ill will for Gounden have so far been successfully manipulating the NYPD, DOB, ECB to rein down havoc on the Gounden family.

Gounden hired a contractor recommended by Councilman Addabbo to replace the siding.
This contractor who did hundreds of siding jobs reportedly said, he does not need a permit.
Did Gounden get a summons for replacing the siding w/o a building permit?
One thing is for sure, the same law is applied differently in different neighborhoods – or in the same neighborhood when the owner of the property is of a different ethnicity. The whole regime of enforcement of building code violations has long been a tool of witch hunting and harassment to target minority and emigrant communities.

Gounden has hired an architect to remove the violation from year 2000. The neighbors of Gounden working in cahoots with Council Addabbo should just leave this family alone.
Gounden is working assiduously to remove the garbage from the once closed-up property. How more callous can neighbor(s) get, calling in Inspectors when the man is just picking up garbage from his property?

Come on Councilman, in good conscience, what has this citizen done on his property to deserve such vilification? We have seen no structural change to the property and no house-wide renovation, as claimed by the South Forum. The only work done was the replacement of the siding and a rotted deck; neither of which requires a building permit.

What has this man done on his property to arouse the ire of a Councilman and some residents of Howard Beach is surely a mystery.

I hereby issue an invitation to the Councilman Addabbo and Patricia Adams of South Forum to walk through Gounden’s property with me to observe and make a determination as to whether Kris Gounden did any work that requires a permit.
JULES NIETO’S ASSIGNMENT: WATCH THE GOUNDEN HOUSE!!- THREE CITY AGENCIES AND ONE STATE AGENCY MOBILIZED

Who assigned Building Inspector Jules Nieto to watch the Gounden House? And what crime (or building violation) is Kris Gounden suspected of, or might have a propensity to commit?

Seventeen months ago, Kris Gounden purchased a lot with two houses in Howard Beach – one, a new house (contracted to purchase while under construction), and the other, an old house that had been closed up for maybe two years. Life for the Gounden family has been hell ever since.

Gounden says Inspector Jules Nieto has spent up to five hours a day for the better part of three months watching his house. Nieto would sit in his car outside the Gounden property; then he would take turns walking around; then sit across the canal watching. Once, Gounden says, Nieto tried to pull a piece of wooden plank out of the way to enter the yard to take pictures of something – and only the shouts of Gounden’s wife deterred him.

The behavior of this modern day Inspector Javert (legendary Inspector of Les Miserables) is an attack on the sensibilities of all minorities and immigrants everywhere in New York City. After three months of a sustained day-after-day watch over the Gounden property, this modern day Javert wrote two tickets for Gounden: one for an unregistered truck and one for a garden wagon (in the Caribbean we call this a wheelbarrow) without plates. In the summons, Javert described the garden wagon as a flatbed trailer. Everywhere in this city, thousands of unregistered vehicles are sitting/parked in peoples' yards – and it does not constitute a building violation. Here, in Howard Beach, Javert says: You cannot park a wheelbarrow nor a truck in your own yard. Someone in this police state apparatus also wrote a ticket for Gounden’s bobcat which he utilizes in the winter to remove the snow banks piled in front of his house by the sanitation graders. There maybe bylaws prohibiting “dead” vehicles in this Howard Beach district – but I want to know why are there so many “dead” vehicles and several bobcats in Howard Beach without plates (I saw it with my own eyes) – and its nobody’s business. Only the Gounden property is a target for all manner of Inspectors: City’s Building Department, Environmental Control Board (ECB), Sanitation Dept. - and one state agency, Dept. of Environment and Conservation (DEC). Only an extremely powerful person or outfit could have mobilized so many agencies to go on the witch-hunt for crimes or violations suspected of being committed on the Gounden property.

Two days after the attack by a man brandishing a baseball bat and screaming the N-word, Gounden said a policeman showed up and threatened to arrest him – three threats in five minutes. What for? You wouldn’t believe this one: One of New York’s finest accused Gounden of riding an ATV outside his yard. Gounden denied the charge. Only when Gounden called out to his wife to bring the video camera to record his arrest, the finest lost his nerve and did not carry out his threatened arrest. But not before he wrote a summons for noise caused by the ATV.

Let’s consider these mentioned summonses. Summons for an unregistered truck in one’s yard; summons for a wheelbarrow; summons for noise from an ATV. What are we to make of these summonses? (An ATV is a preteen’s four wheel toy bike with a small engine). I saw Gounden’s preteen kids riding the ATV in their yard –and believe me you would be shocked to know that anyone anywhere in the United States of America would get a summons for noise emanating from an ATV.

I am deeply suspicious that these summonses are just the tip of the iceberg in an organized and centrally directed campaign to bankrupt Kris Gounden – and eventually hound him out of Howard Beach. The Oxford English Dictionary has one word to describe these individuals who are directing and executing the campaign. The word is callous – and the meaning is “a hardened state of mind”. In popular usage and culture, we call someone who suffers from a “hardened state of mind’, a racist. Simply put, what we have here is a bunch of racists in Howard Beach trying to drive Gounden out of there for no other reason but “race”.

What might be the trigger for this campaign? Gounden wanted to fence his yard – perhaps to give privacy and to better protect his kids, especially when they ride their ATV. He probably never realized this would kick up a storm that had the potential to wipe out himself and his family in the most violent way if necessary.
The root of the problem lies in the fence. I visited the Gounden property twice on two successive weekends. All I did was to study the fence and the property boundaries as per the survey. The fence, if built according to the survey would immediately affect ingress and egress to an auto repair shop. The repair shop is most likely illegal. But this is not a problem in Howard Beach. Howard Beach is a law unto itself. Anything goes in H.B. The owner of the shop is a friend of the Councilman. The Councilman intervened to ensure the privileges of the repair shop operator are not affected. I surmised that Gounden must have insisted on building the fence. I also figured the Councilman went away seething with rage at what he perceived as “disrespect”, an affront. Poor Gounden could not realize nor comprehend what he unwittingly did. When a powerful Councilman for H.B. orders you “don’t build the fence”, you don’t build the fence.
Gounden says that in one conversation with the Councilman, he offered to give up two feet of his property which when added to property from the other parties would create an easement. But it was of no avail in assuaging the Councilman’s demands.

There was a pretty, neat excuse offered up by a Howard Beach newspaper, namely, the fence would block access of emergency vehicles – fire, ambulance etc. – to other peoples’ properties. This is a patently false excuse. At the southern and western edges of Gounden’s property is the canal. The houses on the eastern edge have frontage with 102nd street.

Rabid ethnic prejudices (vandalizing, flat tyres, pissing on the property etc.) manifested themselves long before the fence-trigger occurred. The fence was the last straw, and thereafter the big shots got involved and turned this thing into an organized campaign to hound the Gounden family.

Another excuse had to be invented: Gounden invited this upon himself because of what he did on his property. This has got to be the most ridiculous and stupid excuse ever invented to justify a racial attack. But what exactly has Gounden done on his property? Gounden replaced the siding and the deck – neither of which required a building permit. Gounden has done no other work on his house. And, has broken no laws – so said, several builders and architects with whom I consulted.

The Councilman and his propagandists in the Forum South have this incredible obsession about Gounden doing construction w/o permits. And, Inspector Javert camped outside the house for three months, failing to find evidence of construction w/o permits ended by writing two bogus tickets – one for an unregistered truck and one for a wheelbarrow. Some other Inspector wrote a summons for having a bobcat on the property - another bogus ticket.

The real crime in this whole Gounden episode was what some powerful individual or group of people did in manipulating three city agencies and one state agency to descend on the Gounden property with a simple goal – use the arm of the law to aid and abet in their scheme to hound the Gounden family out of Howard Beach.

The perpetrator(s) of this crime may or may not succeed, depending on communities of good will everywhere rallying to an urgent public cause: defend a family who have been unfairly treated and simultaneously expose the racists of Howard Beach.

This past week Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron addressed a press conference in Howard Beach to expose the campaign of harassment against the Gounden family. We need scores of community leaders to speak out against this evidently racial and unfair attack on the Gounden family.