Death of a Scholar

Contents

Prologue

The Riot

Dinkins And The Police

Where Was The Leadership?

Kill The Jew Death By Knife

Outcome Problems

Death Of A Scholar

The Neighborhood

Invisible Black And White

The Grand Rebbe

Rabbi Schneerson

The Movement

The Public Hospital System

Daggers

Apgar Zero

Miscarriage And Death By Aircraft

Fish Or Fowl

Cases Which Changed The Practice Of Medicine

Problems Plague The New System

Bronx Screamers

Politics, Money And Public Health

Operating Procedure To Medical Housestaff And Fellows

Money, Politics, And Health

Dinkins Vs Carillo

Why Can’t Everyone Be Like Loretta?

Education

The Medical Board

Emergency Meeting Of The Medical Board

The Fall Out

Suny Health Science Center Responds To The Media

Other Opinions

More Allegations And Crises

Death By Gun, Hostages And Fleas

Happiness

Brotherhood

Examples Of Anger And Unhappiness

More Backlash And A Personal Attack

Second Distressing Encounter

Trials

Trials Of Lemrick Nelson

Death By Child??

The Story: Death By Cross

Trial Or Settle

Settle

House For Sale

Check In Hand

Sell And Suffer

New House—Another Story

Final Sale

Lux Et Veritas

Death By Old Age

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Many years ago I read a book titled House of God. It basically was an autobiographical account of one doctor’s journey through his internship. Many of his encounters with patients took place in the emergency room and he detailed his frustrations and his life as an intern in a large hospital. In a way this was a stimulus for me to write this book. Many many years ago doctors were considered almost like gods. They were the ones who knew things that others did not know and they could heal and help the sick and the wounded. They were revered. They lived in a world unknown to the common man. Most were rich and respected. No one questioned their authority or their diagnoses. No one judged them. There were no quality assurance agencies. There were no documentation standards. This is an era long gone.

As a high school student at the Bronx High School of Science in the Bronx, New York, I was privileged to be taught by Dr. Paul Schweitzer. He was the Chairman of the Department of English and his classes were always stimulating and motivating. I always remembered that he told us that each of us has a novel to write about our lives. At that time I simply laughed. Who would think about the life I had lived up until that time. As time went by I thought about this statement more and more and began to understand what he had said. Each of us has something to communicate. One has only to recognize what experiences one can share with others. In this book I looked at a series of events which occurred at a particular time in my life and which also made me look at past events as well.

There are things in this book about health care, racial relations, money, greed, death, politics, and law. Many things do not change and some seem to recur over time. Sometimes we think we have made great gains in our society and often we do not know that we are still struggling to move forward. This was made very clear to me when I was helping my daughter with her essay for school on the Elizabethan Law of 1601 about how to care for the homeless. Strangely we have not made great strides since them. The law provided that those who are homeless and out of work shall be provided food and shelter. Only vagrants were stigmatized. Often the law encouraged relatives to help provide for families and especially those with children. They even looked to give work opportunities to those who had fallen on hard times.

My story is about real people and many are still alive. I have tried to provide information that is in compliance with material in newspapers and from documents which were distributed to personnel. These are my experiences and what I believe are the things worth the writing.

THE RIOT

August 19, 1991

It was a hot and humid night and the rioting began with crowd hysteria. It was like a carnival. It was an expression of power, of the will to dominate. Shouting and laughing comingled. It was strength in numbers and it was a seizure of a neighborhood. Broken glass filled the streets and garbage pails rolled along the center of the streets as young men beat on them with baseball bats. And the shouting began, Kill the Jews.

There was a taste for blood and if one were to listen carefully, words of silent prayer might be found behind the door of the Hasidim as they hid from the wild crowd.

It was also a night for a killing and one in which a mayor would be accused of turning his back on the violence.

I have always feared and hated violence. As a young child I had the idea that guns and killing were all fantasy and they only existed in comic books and movies. When my parents whispered that my cousin had been killed in the war I was not supposed to hear but I became very upset and unable to sleep.

The riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn began in the late summer of 1991 and when I saw them on TV I was as fearful as when I was a child. The accounts which were printed in the New York Times left me numb. It was more than disbelief. I knew it was not fantasy but I could not comprehend that looting and fires in a local neighborhood so well known to me was occurring. As the story unfolded I followed every detail. This was a terrible time for the city and for me personally.

About 8 PM on August 19, 1991, a car driven by an orthodox Jew was part of a motorcade traveling thru Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The Grand Rebbe was in the procession. The driver veered to avoid hitting two black children playing in the street but hit a wall and struck them. There was no evidence that the driver was speeding. An ambulance run by a Jewish organization arrived along with police. The police helped the children and directed the ambulance to take the driver who was then being assaulted by the crowd. The child named Gavin died at the scene and his cousin Angela Cato was eventually taken to the hospital by a City ambulance. The crowd at the site believed that the police showed preferential treatment to the driver.

Rumors began to circulate and crowds began to form. The incident was magnified and the rumor became: The ambulance helped the Jews and left the injured black children to die. The crowd began to shout. They had always believed that the Hasids in their community received preferential treatment.

By 9PM there were calls to 911 reporting that a riot was taking place in this community of about 180,000 people… made up of West Indians 50 percent, African Americans 39 percent and Jewish residents ll percent. Some historians have called it one of the most serious incidents of anti-Semitism in American History. The Jewish Community has called it a POGROM.

One of the crowd of young men named Charles Price began early on to incite the crowd to take revenge by attacking Jewish people. A group of young black men ran down the street and about 5 blocks away spotted a 29 year old man. There’s a Jew, get the Jew they shouted and Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jewish scholar from Australia who was visiting in Crown heights was attacked. Four stab wounds were inflicted before the police arrived at the scene. As he lay bleeding on the ground, the police walked Lemrick Nelson and Charles Price over to him and Yankel identified Nelson as the one who stabbed him. A bloody knife was found in Nelson’s pocket.

The mayor was notified at 10:25 that evening of the events. At 12:30 Mayor Dinkins went to Kings county Hospital and met with the police commissioner Lee Brown and deputy mayor Milton Molen. The Mayor visited with the fathers of the Cato children and with Yankel Rosenbaum. Despite these meetings and the fact that the situation continued and strengthened in intensity, there was no strategy or plan to contain it. The Mayor, who is black did not go to Crown Heights as he felt it might increase the tensions. His liason to the Jewish community, Herbert Block (my nephew and the son of Rabbi Irving J. Block of the Brotherhood synagogue in new York City, and the brother of my husband) visited Crown Heights and the Jewish leaders there complained to him of the slow and peripheral response as the violence continued and the Hasids remained behind closed and locked doors afraid for their lives.

DINKINS AND THE POLICE

Dinkins continued to maintain that he had no awareness that the situation was out of control until the next afternoon when businesses were looted and rocks and bottles were being thrown. The Mayor praised the police for showing restraint while being hit with rocks and bottles. At 4 PM, the black demonstrators marched to the Lebavitch headquarters on Eastern Parkway and commenced to hurl rocks and bottles at the building while shouting anti-Semitic slogans. Just one half hour earlier, Commissioner Brown had told reporters that the Crown Heights situation was under control. In the course of the riots, 49 officers were injured and EMS records show that 25 of them were taken to hospitals. The EMS aided 30 civilians and took 18 of them to hospitals. Seven paramedics were also taken to the hospital. Following a new strategy by the police, some 1800 officers were assigned to take back the street and to disperse the crowds at the first sign of trouble. It worked and three days later an uneasy calm resulted.

In analyzing the events of those days, many accused Dinkins of ordering the police to use restraint and allowing the demonstrators to vent their anger. To some it was unclear how far Dinkins would go to accept some responsibility for the mistakes made by the police.

Nearly three years after he had left office, former Mayor Dinkins was sharply questioned again about his handling of the racial violence in Crown Heights. He vehemently denied withholding police protection from the Jewish victims. After Mayor Dinkins lost his bid for reelection to Rudy Giuliani, Dinkins harshly criticized Giuliani for agreeing to apologize for the city’s conduct at the time of the riot. It was the strife, the violence and the failure of the police to prevent it that became a symbol of a city out of control and led to the political downfall of New York City’s first black mayor.

WHERE WAS THE LEADERSHIP?

I have met Mayor Dinkins on my occasions, including the wedding of my nephew Herbert Block, and have found him to be pleasant and interested in those around him. I personally believe he did not know how to handle such a conflict and made assumptions that it was not as serious as it was and that it would fizz out. He never impressed me as a strong and charismatic leader but also not a prejudiced person. It is also possible that the leadership in the police department was weak and fragmented and no one really assessed the true problem or had any idea how to quell it. Leadership seemed to be lacking in all areas and this was a key element leading to the disaster.

In addition, the police inadvertently erased 35 calls it was ordered to preserve. There was a communications mixup and some tapes were destroyed according to Eugene Borenstein, first deputy Chief of the tort division. The Crown Heights action committee requested the tapes in order to prove that the city allowed the violence to continue without interference. Master 911 tapes are saved for at least 90 days, . . . but not in this case. (Shades of Nixon). Many Hassids who called during the violence for help were told that the police department’s hands were tied.

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KILL THE JEW" DEATH BY KNIFE

When Yankel Rosenbaum arrived at the Emergency Room at the Hospital he was still alert. The senior attending physician in the ER, and the Chief Resident, were in the operating room with a patient who had sustained a gunshot wound. An ER resident, had received the patient and did not apparently accept or review the information given by the EMS ambulance staff which stated that the patient had sustained stab wounds to the Left and right of his back.

The two surgical residents in the ER apparently did not identify the wound on the left side as serious during the initial examination of Yankel Rosenbaum. They were not then supervised by an attending physician. One of the surgical residents was then called to leave the trauma unit by another surgical staff resident, so that she could assist in the care of another stab wound victim.

An xray technician was twice turned away when he came to take a chest xray of Yankel Rosenbaum. The first time because there was another stab victim next to Rosenbaum and he couldn’t get thru the crowd in the room and the second time because the staff did not want him to interrupt Mayor Dinkins who was at Rosenbaum’s bedside with his entourage.

The junior resident apparently did not believe a nurse who noted that Mr. Rosenbaum’s vital signs were changing rapidly. As the evening wore on in a night in which the ER was swamped with more than the usual shootings and traumas, more and more issues with care commenced. These issues continued to interfere with the care of Yankel Rosenbaum. A review of the highlights of that care taken from a chart, by the New York State Health Department reviewing the care that night and which later proved to have documentation issues as well, (and which was also summarized in the New York Times (Sept. 24 1991 p. B4)noted:.

11:43 P.M. Aug. 19                  Yankel Rosenbaum arrives at Kings County Hospital emergency room.

                                                Ambulance record indicates stab wound

                                                Below both shoulder blades.

11:45                                       The patient, in pain, is seen by second and Third year surgical residents. Neither Doctor notes wound on his left side. Pulse 120 beats per minute and blood pressure 140/120 (elevated but probably due to the stress of his injuries.) Neither doctor noted cause for concern.

11:55                                       Tube is placed between ribs into right side chest to drain blood from the right lung area which would permit lung to expand and allow patient to breathe better.

12:30 A.M. Aug.20                  Third year resident examines Rosenbaum again and discovers wound on left side.

12:40                                       Second and third year residents use stethoscope to listen for breath sounds on the left side. Although surgery would later show chest filled with blood, the doctors reported hearing normal breath sounds suggesting no major bleeding or lung collapse. Chief resident is informed of left side wound but does not listen with his stethoscope.

12:44                                       Xray requested at 11:55 is taken. Staff members feel patient is stable but do not record vital signs.

1:00                                         With Mayor Dinkin sat his bedside, Mr.Rosenbaum is still having trouble breathing. (Mr. Dinkins would later state he had no idea that the patient was in distress). The Xray (which had been delayed twice previously) shows blood on the left side and collapse of the left lung.

1:15                                         A tube is inserted into the left side of the chest. Heart rate slows, patient is pale. At this time four doctors gather at bedside.

1:25