An ongoing fight to keep a Brooklyn grandmother in her family home escalated on Wednesday when the police arrested Councilmember Chi Ossé as he protested the move.
Ossé (D-Brooklyn) was in front of the Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone with community supporters to prevent longtime resident Carmella Charrington from being evicted when officers from the New York Police Department pulled the Council member to the ground and cuffed him, face down, video shows.
NYPD officers took Ossé to the local precinct, according to a statement from his office. A police department spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Charrington spoke with THE CITY Wednesday just after she said she spent six days on Rikers Island, held in contempt for a guardianship case linked to the property.
“I swear I feel like I’m in ‘Get Out,’” she said, referring to the 2017 horror film. If she and her family are evicted, she said: “It’d be devastating. It’s four generations of irreparable harm.”
Her son, William McFadden, said his 6-year-old daughter was rattled by the police action taken Wednesday. McFadden and she were both in the home when the police, marshals and members of the sheriff’s office arrived.
“No child should have to ask, ‘Daddy, why are they taking our house right now? Daddy, why are they changing the locks?’”
Charrington’s home on a tree-lined block of Jefferson Avenue has been the subject of a complicated and fraught saga that goes back several years.
In 2021, a company called Brooklyn Gates LLC signed an agreement with a supposed family member who had a partial stake in the property at 212 Jefferson Ave.
Brooklyn Gates LLC was run by brothers Elliot and Joseph Ambalo and their partner Etai Vardi, whose dealings THE CITY uncovered in a previous investigation. The trio was among the groups of speculators targeting homes in gentrifying, historically Black and Latino neighborhoods whose owners died and left a network of dispersed inheritors. The three men would buy partial deeds from the heirs — often well below the value of the multi-million-dollar homes — and leverage their new partial ownership to force out longtime residents.
By 2023, the LLC had terminated the agreement with the person who claimed to have a partial share of the property. Vardi told Brownstoner the trio canceled the contract because “it’s so complex, and there is so much family history” involved in the house.
Property records show that in 2024, another company called 227 Group LLC purchased the home for $1.4 million from several alleged family members.
Deed theft — made through schemes related to forged documents, short-sale, foreclosure-rescue scams and other mechanisms — can strip families of generational wealth
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who made fighting deed theft a priority in his mayoral campaign, on Wednesday morning had not seen the video of Ossé’s arrest, but responded when a reporter described it to him.
“That’s exactly something that we’re going to follow up on, not just on the nature of this arrest, but also what was the underlying issue that was being protested,” Mamdani said at an unrelated event in Queens. “I know [Ossé’s] been on the front lines of fighting deed theft. It’s especially prevalent in his Council district, and I appreciate, frankly, the efforts that he’s led in the past on ensuring that this is front of mind for all of us.”
This is a breaking news story that will be updated. Additional reporting from Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Katie Honan.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
The post Council Member Arrested at Brooklyn Eviction Linked to Alleged Deed Theft Scheme appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
