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Murder Of JASA Employee Highlights Safety Concerns 
An NYPD poster offering a reward for information in the case of Imonil Aminov, the JASA deliveryman killed last week. Aminov, who lived in Starrett City, was remembered as a decent, brave man. by Doug Chandler When a dispatcher instructed Imonil Aminov to deliver meals for the elderly Nov. 10 at the Brownsville Houses, did the 55-year-old Bukharian immigrant balk at doing so, fearing the Brooklyn housing project? Or did he do so without hesitation, as he had in the past? Those are some of the questions being asked in the wake of Aminov’s murder, which took place three months after he was hired by the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged to deliver prepared meals to the homebound elderly.
The New York Police Department and the state’s Crime Stoppers program are offering $12,000 for information leading to the arrest of the gunman, described by police as a black man in his 20s. Detectives suspect that robbery was the motivation behind the crime, noting that Aminov’s wallet was found near his body. Aileen Gitelson, JASA’s chief executive officer, said Aminov was hired in August as a full-time “floater” for the agency, meaning that he filled in as needed for drivers and delivery people who were on vacation or had called in sick. The agency sends teams of drivers and delivery people, but the drivers normally stay in the van as the deliveryman drops off meals, she said. An immigrant from Tajikistan, Aminov came to this country in 1989 and worked as a livery driver before joining JASA, according to family members. He lived in Starrett City, Brooklyn, with his wife, Nadezhda, and had three grown daughters and seven grandchildren. Friends, relatives and even strangers described Aminov as a decent, brave man who died while committing a noble act — helping feed the most vulnerable citizens. At a memorial service in Queens attended by hundreds of mourners, Brooklyn’s borough president, Marty Markowitz, said Aminov was engaged in “making life better for those in need.” Charles Barron, the city councilman whose district includes Brownsville and Starrett City, spoke of the killing as “tragic” and “senseless,” and appealed to Brooklyn residents to come together to ensure that such an act doesn’t happen again. “I’m appealing to my community to send any information to my office if they’re not comfortable talking to the police,” Barron said in an interview later. “We want to make sure that this service [the city-funded Meals-on-Wheels program] continues.” As the community mourned Aminov, questions arose about security precautions for Meals-on-Wheels deliverymen, especially in high-crime neighborhoods. Aminov’s nephew, 28-year-old Arthur Leviyeva, told The New York Times last week that his uncle feared the Brownsville Houses and refused to go there Monday morning before a dispatcher ordered him to do so. The New York Daily News also quoted “relatives” of the victim as saying he had expressed reservations about making deliveries in Brownsville and nearby East New York. But one of the victim’s sons-in-law said Aminov “worked in that area as a cab driver for several years and wasn’t afraid at all. He knew that type of neighborhood.” The relative requested that his name not appear in print. The son-in-law also described Aminov as a “very quiet man” who, if confronted by a robber, would have parted with his money rather than put up a fight. Officials at JASA, meanwhile, say Aminov knew about the neighborhood and the job’s responsibilities when he took the position last summer. “When the job was posted, offered and accepted, it was with the knowledge that this was the contract area, that it included a number of routes that go into Brownsville and that, on any given day, the floater would need to take whatever route needed to be covered,” a spokeswoman for the agency said. All of JASA’s delivery people carry cell phones provided by the agency and wear badges identifying them, Gitelson said. Aminov’s van was also marked with the agency’s logo and signage indicating that he was delivering meals to homebound seniors. Apart from those details, Gitelson said she was “uncomfortable” discussing safety precautions that have been implemented in the past, or that may be implemented, during a criminal investigation. Those issues will be explored, though, by a law firm retained by Aminov’s family, said one of the attorneys, Robert Akerman of Robert Weiss, Esq. Akerman said Tuesday that he had yet to discuss any of the substantive issues raised by the case with Aminov’s family. But he has already spoken to a “lower-level employee” of JASA about “why JASA was sending deliverymen into dangerous areas alone, without any protection.” The employee deferred the question to the agency’s senior officials, the lawyer said. Akerman said he and Weiss would also interview the family at length after a decent interval. He said it would be “premature” at this point to say whether the family intends to sue any of the parties involved in the case, including JASA. Other agencies that deliver food to the homebound elderly have adopted a variety of safety precautions, depending on the level of risk in the areas they serve. “I’ll never send anyone alone into a housing project,” said Rabbi Avrohom Hecht, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Canarsie. “We’re very careful, and we have very good volunteers who know the community,” Hecht said, adding that the council uses both volunteers and staff members to deliver the food. Among the areas served by the council is Starrett City, a complex of 16,000 residents, many of them Russian-speaking Jews, right on the edge of East New York and two or three miles from Brownsville. A spokesman for Dorot, an agency that delivers meals to elderly residents of Manhattan, said his organization uses only paid staff members to make the deliveries and that they always go “in teams of two.” Although the practice was adopted for efficiency, rather than security, he added that he doesn’t think it hurts in terms of safety. Dorot also screens all of its clients, a process that gives the agency information about each building it enters, he said. Outside of New York, the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles doesn’t feel the need to team its employees, who make their deliveries in “a solid middle-class area” of the city, a spokesman said. But he added that, “with all of our drivers, the rule of thumb is, if you feel at all unsafe, don’t deliver the meal.” Meanwhile, the reaction among employees at JASA and at other local agencies that serve the elderly is one of shock and sorrow. “We’re all really devastated by this,” Gitelson said, calling the past few days the worst that JASA has experienced during her 13-year tenure with the agency. JASA has already hired bereavement counselors to work with staff members, who deliver 350,000 Meals-on-Wheels each year, the vast majority of them kosher. “We were certainly alarmed and saddened by the incident,” said the spokesman for Dorot, Andrew Martin. At the same time, he added, he’s convinced that every agency involved in a meal-delivery program “takes every step possible to ensure the safety of its delivery staff and the seniors who receive their meals. This unfortunate incident is an anomaly given the success of delivery programs throughout the years.”n |
  
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