Park Slope Top Cop On Fatal Dog Attack: 'We Dropped The Ball'

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Days after Jessica Chrustic said she was chased through Park Slope by the man she suspects killed her dog, dozens of Park Slope residents appeared at a police precinct meeting demanding to know where the cops had been.

Sixty-six people logged into a Zoom meeting with the 78th Precinct for a 40-minute conversation — the first 14 of which Commanding Officer Frantz Souffrant spent discussing bike and scooter theft — that ended abruptly when the time-limited software cut off a resident mid-sentence.

“I would describe the meeting as farcical,” Chrustic told Patch after the meeting. “To run down the clock talking about scooters is disgraceful to avoid the elephant in the room and not meet it head on."

With only 26 minutes remaining, Souffrant said he'd reviewed body camera footage from Friday morning, when Churstic says she followed police instructions and followed the man she hoped they would come arrest, to better understand "what transpired and, uh, why officers wouldn't respond in a timely manner."

Patch asked the NYPD if body cameras are typically activated when officers are en route to respond to a call, but did not receive a response.

Souffrant said officers arrived at wrong locations and had to circle the block to go further north on Prospect Park West, then claimed Chrustic hadn't picked up her phone when officers tried to contact her.

“Perhaps they were trying to reach out to me when I was running for my life down the street,” Chrustic said to Patch.

"We make mistakes and I think in this situation," Souffrant said. "We may have dropped the ball."

Residents fumed at the response time — which Chrustic said was 40 minutes — and demanded to know about cops Chrustic said waved her away when she tapped on their window and begged for help.

Lisa Bowstead, after asking why officers ignored a citizen in distress, said, "I want to know that if I'm in Prospect Park in broad daylight, with lots of people around and something happens, and I go up to a police car, that they're going to respond to me."

Another Park Sloper who lives near Prospect Park, Diana Poveromo, said she is terrified to go into the park and demanded more information instead of what she characterized as "ridiculous answers."

"The police come in five minutes when people on my block on Seventh Street call for double parked cars or alternate side and someone's parking in a spot and I can't get out," Poveromo said.

"You're here right quick, in three to four minutes. Someone's getting attacked and it takes 40 minutes? Come on."

"For the safety of the people here and for the safety of the person that did this, something needs to be done," Poveromo continued, "It's taken two months, and this should not be happening."

At this point, attendees began demanding for the moderator to allow Chrustic, who had yet to be called on, to speak.

Chrustic said she called both a sergeant and a detective directly after spotting the man Friday morning and told Patch after the meeting that, despite the sergeant being at home in Staten Island at the time of the incident, he was one the first people to respond, she said.

“That should speak volumes,” she said.

Chrustic told Souffrant during the meeting about how afraid she'd been as she waited for help.

"My personal safety was neglected," she said.

Souffrant apologized, but Chrustic wasn't having it.

"'I am sorry' does not cut it," she said. “I’m being chased by a man with a stick and you want to just sit there and say I’m sorry? No. You should say I am ashamed of the response time," Chrustic said. "It is nothing short of shameful."

Chrustic told Patch that she was disappointed in the response from Souffrant.

“As far as his commentary, it attempted to obfuscate the actual facts, and saying ‘Oops’ isn’t acceptable,” she said.

“We’re almost three months since the initial incident, and it’s not for lack of effort on my part.”