For a week, Karim tried to get a meeting with an influential Bloods member to calm down the potentially explosive situation.
Had the peace deal been accepted, the Muslim patrol would have stopped policing Gates Avenue and Marcus Boulevard in Brooklyn, N.Y., home to a notorious faction of the Bloods gang. In exchange, the Bloods would have agreed to inflicting no further violence on members of Wahhaj’s Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, which is largely seen as the force behind the Muslim patrol.
At the sit-down, the Bloods originally demanded that Karim, who serves directly beneath Wahhaj, turn over the Muslim patrol member who roughed up the teen or at least give them his address. Only then, the Bloods stipulated, would violence against Masjid Taqwa (Taqwa mosque) and the Muslim patrol be suspended.
Karim dismissed that demand and asked for an alternative peace plan that would involve the Muslim patrol agreeing to stop sending their police cruisers (styled to look like New York Police Department patrol vehicles) into the Bloods’ neighborhoods.