Borough Is at Odds With CBS’ ‘Brooklyn’

“Brooklyn South” may prove to be a hit for CBS, but it’s not a hit with many community leaders and residents in Brooklyn.

A number of community leaders object to the way their neighborhoods have been shown in the 3-week-old police drama, which premiered with a violent shooting spree by a cop-killer and has been promoted on bus and train ads here with bullet holes around the title of the series.

“Brooklyn is not a city where gunmen run around shooting in the streets, and every citizen is a potential perpetrator,” Brooklyn borough President Howard Golden said. “If people see this series and the way it’s being promoted, they’re going to think it’s reality. It’s not.”

Golden recently wrote a letter to Steven Bochco, one of the show’s creators and executive producers, to express his “outrage” over the way his borough has been depicted.

Bochco fired back, writing in a letter to Golden, “Most people are smart enough to realize that there are bad people everywhere, and good and heroic people, too. I’m sure Brooklyn has its share of both, and perhaps in the fullness of time, as your hysteria abates, you’ll see that the heroism and goodness of the Brooklyn cops and citizens we portray far outweigh their malevolence.”

Golden was not mollified by Bochco’s response, including the producer’s statement that his ABC series “NYPD Blue” hasn’t hurt New York City, nor did “Miami Vice” hurt Miami.

“ ‘Brooklyn South’ names specific neighborhoods and depicts them as crime-ridden,” Golden said in an interview. “In fact, Brooklyn today is economically resurgent and crime is down.”

Golden said he had received complaints from Brooklyn residents about the way their area has been shown.

Apart from economic concerns, what troubled several community leaders was the depiction of an African American man shooting several white police officers in the opening episode Sept. 22.

“This just confirms the stereotype of the young black man as a violent criminal,” said Richard Green, an African American who is president of a group of youth-development programs in Brooklyn.

In a coincidence of timing, the first five episodes of “Brooklyn South” explore what happens when charges of police brutality are brought after the wounded cop-killer dies in police custody, paralleling real-life brutality charges that have been brought against four Brooklyn officers in connection with what authorities have described as the torture last August of a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima. (The “Brooklyn South” scripts were written before the incident.)

“Why don’t the producers show efforts to improve relations between the police and the community--and the respect that already exists in many places?” asked Green, who was appointed to a mayoral task force on police-community relations after the Louima incident. “Showing a black killer, and white police officers kicking him, doesn’t help.”

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William Finkelstein, another of the executive producers on “Brooklyn South,” responded that critics of the show are being unrealistic.

“It’s true that crime is down in New York, but crimes are still being committed,” Finkelstein said. “We’re a police show, and cops arrest criminals. I think it’s beyond our responsibility as a TV show to ask us to show community basketball games because that’s good for the community.”

Finkelstein said that subsequent episodes of “Brooklyn South” have been much less violent than the premiere.

“The first episode was intended to portray the randomness and irrationality of violence, and it set up the next several episodes,” he said.

After complaints by commuters on the Long Island Rail Road, where a deranged gunman killed six passengers and wounded 19 others in 1993, CBS removed the ads (which promised that the opening of the series would “blow you away”). The bus ads stayed up, however.

Not all residents of Brooklyn object to having “Brooklyn South” in their neighborhood. During a recent week of shooting at several locations in and around the show’s fictional “74th Precinct,” several residents of the Park Slope area watched approvingly as the cast shot a police car screeching to a warehouse. (Unseen by the spectators outside, the plot calls for the officers to discover a dead woman inside, her throat slit.)

“It’s cool that they’re here,” one young woman said.

And how do Brooklyn police officers feel about the show?

“I like the way they’re showing sensitivity among the cops in their relationships,” said one Brooklyn police officer, who said that he wasn’t allowed to be quoted by name. “It’s realistic in that we can die at [criminals’] hands--and sometimes they die at our hand, in the line of duty. But all that violence in the first show? That’s not typical of our daily lives.”

* “Brooklyn South” airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on CBS (Channel 2).