ICE vs. Brooklyn

• Multiple confrontations with ICE erupted across Brooklyn on Tuesday night after the agency detained a father in Bushwick and were followed by people surrounding the ICE vehicle who attempted to block it by standing and tossing construction barriers in front of it.
• More demonstrators followed the car in Clinton Hill, near Pratt Institute, where they again tried to block its path, with some even sitting on top of it. Some, per this amNY report, were pepper sprayed by ICE and dispersed by police after the NYPD — “Cops say they were unaware that ICE was on the scene until they arrived,” says amNY. Later, City Council Member Jen Gutierrez, who reps parts of Bushwick, and Borough President Antonio Reynoso, her predecessor and former boss, who is currently running for Congress, both tweeted their support of the protests, writing “#FUCKICE” and “Bushwick made it clear last night: ICE IS NOT welcome here” respectively.

Unhappy Ending

• Online, redditors are sounding off on Mosa Spa in Ridgewood, where one customer claims to have been held essentially hostage in their parking garage for not tipping. “Because we decided we didn’t want to tip, we were genuinely held hostage…The woman at the front desk refused to let us leave and buzz us out of the garage until we tipped,” the post reads.

Tonita

• Owner of the famed Caribbean Social Club, over in Williamsburg, made an appearance at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, serving him a shot mid-performance.

Ridgewood-Bushwick Border Drive-By

• A 23 year old from Bushwick and three teens were arrested for a mid-afternoon drive-by shooting that injured a bystander who was waiting for a tattoo appointment on Wyckoff Avenue. (possibly the most Bushwick/Ridgewood way to catch a stray…)

Violent Dognapping

• Earlier this month, Myrtle Avenue was the scene of a violent home invasion in which a crew of burglars barged into multiple apartments, assaulting residents and stealing “everything”—in this case a phone, credit cards, $8000 worth of Pokémon cards, and a French bulldog named Coco, per this News12 report. The crew of four—one of whom was wearing “bedazzled sweatpants”, according to a description on the Citizen app — included a lookout and sped away in two different cars. Fortunately, Coco was found the next day; the purloined pooch was returned to its owners by two nurses at Wyckoff Heights, after the “armed bandits… dumped the dog in a parking lot at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center,” per a report in the Staten Island Advance. No word yet on the Pokémon cards.

Crushed by Garbage

• A heartbroken father of four was asking for help identifying anyone who may have encountered his wife at popular local night spot Mama Taco the night before her “chopped up body was discovered by NYCHA workers in a Borinquen Plaza building on Bushwick Ave. near Seigel St. in East Williamsburg,” as the Daily News has it, a building four miles away from the Gowanus Houses where she lived. 
• However, the following week the NYPD put forward the more grim story that she “is now believed to have fallen inside the garbage chute by accident and slowly died,” per amNY. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny: “Our theory right now is that she may have dropped an item into the chute and went to retrieve it and fell headfirst into the chute. Later ended up in the chute room two floors down and was processed through, meaning being crushed by the garbage chute.” 
• The case bears an eerie resemblance to the fate that befell Jaclyn Elmquist in Chelsea in 2023. As if that wasn’t enough, a building on the same block was evacuated later in the month after a fireball exploded out of a manhole, engulfing a car, injuring two and leaking carbon monoxide into the area.

Renegade Landlord Threatens: “NYC Will Fucking Crumble” 

• Upset local property developer Humberto Lopes, unhappy with Mamdani’s promise of rental rip-off hearings, droppeda TikTok attempting to rally fellow landlords to “stop paying fucking property taxes,” claiming they could “destroy the fucking city.”
• Lopes has been on the warpath against the new administration for a while now. He told Politico last fall that they have “woken up a lion” and that he would like to take “a bunch of [young Mamdani supporters] and throw them in Cuba for a while.” The Mamdani administration’s hearings rip-off hearings started yesterday. Roughly 500 tenants signed up to speak at one in downtown Brooklyn, as the Post has it. 
• Meanwhile, local state reps Julia Salazar and Emily Gallagher have introduced a bill that aims to stabilize rent for small businesses so your favorite bar doesn’t have to shut down for no reason.

Make Morgan Safe

• The anti-car lobby Transportation Alternatives is calling for improved traffic conditions along Morgan Avenue, which stretches from the BQE to Flushing and has seen five deaths and a whopping 384 injuries over the last ten years. The industrial zone, notoriously dangerous for cyclists, has grown 21% in population since 2010

Outside of Bushwick, it’s still ICE vs. Everyone

• For ICE, life comes at you fast: one minute the agency trying to intimidate a local politician while scouting a location for a new ‘mega detention facility’ in Kansas City —an industrial warehouse surrounded by Walmart and Amazon distribution centers and a nuclear plant, owned by two real estate bros; and the next, the deal is off after an anonymous woman tries to burn the place down. Then — wouldn’t you know it — the trend starts to catch on. 
• ICE is also infiltrating social media with a program of “masked engagement,” which Ken Klippenstein says is being labeled as kind of “’middle ground’… between monitoring and full blown undercover work.” Reddit, Facebook and Google have also been hit with “administrative subpoenas,” per a report in the New York Times, over data on anti-ICE users — a DHS maneuver that doesn’t require a judge’s approval. The social media sites have “complied with some of the requests,” the Times says, citing anonymous government officials.
• But everyone loves Anti-ICE Kid, the kid who punched a pro-ICE classmate who was protesting at their school, while wearing Meta glasses and named Danny Spud. (!)
• While the young Mr. Spud, who normally records himself doing fire alarm pranks, received a social media bump from the incident, his assailant, on the other hand, was suspended for two days and now resides in the realm of legend thanks to his Schwarzenegger-esque one liner delivery. 

Brian Jones Kraft is a writer who has been living in Bushwick for over a decade and a half. He has previously written extensively about the legacy of Andrew Cuomo, David Dinkins and that mural on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Evergreen.

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Top photo taken by Brian Jones Kraft, around the Morgan Avenue station.