Good morning. It's Tuesday. I'm filling in for James Barron, who is on vacation. We'll look at a story about the death of a dog in Brooklyn that ended up being about so much more, and we'll hear from my colleague John Leland about writing an article where there are wrongs, but there may be no right. We'll also touch on a crime that happened over the weekend — a shooting just outside the house of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin. |
 | | Andrew Seng for The New York Times |
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Moose, an 80-pound golden retriever mix, was beaten by a stranger on Aug. 3 while on a walk with his owner in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a liberal enclave in a largely liberal city, John Leland wrote in his Metropolitan section cover story over the weekend. The dog died five days later. |
But that's about where things stopped being cut and dried. The man who hit the dog with a staff is at large, and the dog's owner is seeking his arrest. The man is Black, likely homeless and perhaps emotionally disturbed; the dog owner is white, a resident of one of the city's most costly pockets. |
Their park run-in has induced a clash that has played out on social media, in the park and even in some conservative publications, which have raised eyebrows at the tensions in Brooklyn. Some fear police intervention will put the man at grave risk; others fear for their community's safety if nothing is done. |
The tragedy of the dog has left progressive neighbors wrangling with different definitions of justice, as they struggle with opposing views of exactly who is under threat. Dogs like Moose? Residents? Or marginalized people — as many presume the man in the park was — who may need social safety nets, not handcuffs? |
"There are times when your values come into conflict with each other," Leland told me. "Who do we look after? Who is the vulnerable person here? Lots of people are vulnerable here in this situation, lots of people need care here." |
He added: "The question here is: How do we reconcile those, when all the tools to address them come with more threats?" |
In unpacking the story, Leland described what he as a reporter saw as "layers of threat" permeating what seemed at first to be a simple, if terrible, incident in the park. Perhaps most obvious is the potential threat to dogs and parkgoers. But Leland's reporting touches on a larger peril, as he framed it, to a society that fails to take action about its most vulnerable people — the attacker was rummaging through trash at the time the incident, he reports. |
And there is a threat to those people, his interviewees said, who can face lethal consequences when they come into contact with law enforcement or enter the penal system. |
The overriding question, Leland said, is: What's the right thing to do now? "As soon as you start to ask that question, so many other questions pop up," he said. |
I asked Leland a very un-journalistic question: What is his view about all this? He has a dog after all, Molly, a terrier-Chihuahua mix. A consummate reporter, he refused to answer. "I wanted the readers to be the experts on this and for them to adjudicate the matter," he said. "I thought that it was best to try and lay things out and trust the readers." |
Enjoy a sunny day near the low 70s. The evening is mostly clear, with temps dropping to around the mid-50s. |
Suspended today (Sukkot). |
 | | David Dee Delgado for The New York Times |
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Two shot outside Zeldin's home |
 | | Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Two teenagers were wounded in a shooting on Sunday near the Long Island home of Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York. The teens, both 17 years old, were from Mastic and Mastic Beach, according to the Suffolk County Police Department, and sustained non-life threatening injuries. The incident was not related to the Zeldin family, the police said. |
The teenagers were hit in a drive-by shooting, the police said: Three teenagers were walking on Saint George Drive West in Shirley, L.I., when someone in a dark-colored vehicle fired gunshots and hit two of them. The police said the wounded boys tried to hide in the yard of a residence on the street. |
The candidate has made crime a central part of his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul. Democrats have criticized Mr. Zeldin for opposing tougher restrictions on firearms. |
He was not at home at the time of the shooting, but his 16-year-old twin daughters were. |
"They ran upstairs, locked themselves in the bathroom and immediately called 911," Zeldin said after the incident. Yellow crime scene tape was hung around his home in Shirley, where he stood with his children and wife, Diana. "They acted very swiftly and smartly every step of the way, and Diana and I are extremely proud of them." |
I left my office at 48th Street and Madison around 9 p.m. and hailed a cab. |
The driver and I started to talk about how hot and humid it was. He said he walked everywhere, even from his apartment in Harlem to Chinatown. |
"Chinatown?" I said. "Seriously?" |
"Yes," he said. "Chinatown." |
"Well, in that case, you should run the marathon" |
"I have. Multiple times." |
He proceeded to tell me his name (Wilson) and his age (73). He said he had run 10 New York City marathons and that his personal record was 2:47. |
When we got to my building, I stayed in the cab for 15 minutes while we discussed running marathons and training for them. |
Wilson showed me pictures of his family and of him crossing the finish line. I showed him a picture of the bib from the last New York City Marathon I had run. |
He told me to look for him in the park, and we wished each other well. |
Some time later, I was running in the park with my friend Carolyn when I saw a gray-haired man speeding past us. |
"You are not going to believe this," I said to Carolyn. |
I hurried to see if my hunch was correct. |
"Wilson!" I yelled when I got within screaming distance. |
He turned around and we bumped fists. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — S.M.N. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com |
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