Arson Destroys Brooklyn Free Store

Arson has claimed the .

The March 19 fire was the third in a series of fires that occurred over the last six months in the vacant lot that housed the store at 222 Walworth Street in Bed-Stuy.

While no one has hurt in any of the three separate arson attempts, flames from the fire damaged some cars in a neighboring parking lot in the most recent fire and spread to a three-story building next door which later collapsed.

That building was immediately demolished by city backhoes.

The Brooklyn Free Store started last summer, a reprisal of an earlier version run out of a Williamsburg storefront from 2000 to 2005. Mostly through word of mouth, the open market quickly became a unique, neighborhood sensation, with local residents stopping by to drop off used books, secondhand clothes, kitchen utensils, shoes and other items for folks to come by, pick up and keep-- for free.

Megan O’Byrne, an artist and volunteer who helped open the store last summer, said that she and other people involved with the store became suspicious that they were being targeted after the second arson attempt.

“We kind of just assumed that it was an accident at first, because it was small and it seemed likely that it was because of some carelessness or something,” said O’Byrne. “Then when it set on fire again a couple of weeks later, that’s when we started wondering if it was intentional or not. It just seemed unlikely that there were three accidental fires.”

Due to the nature of intent with each fire, FDNY arson investigators are working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate possible links to the arson to the radical Animal Liberation Front (ALF) group.

ALF, which is on the FBI’s list of “violent, extremist” groups, may have been set off by rotting, dead animals that were removed from Brooklyn Free Store lot before it first opened.

While the free store was popular with many residents, some complained that the lack of overall responsibility for the tent and its belongings led to it becoming a bit of a nuisance, with squatters often residing in the lot.

“In one instance it was good, but in another it brought a lot of undesirable people,” said C. Johnson, a mother and local resident whose car caught on fire as a result of the last arson. “No one was monitoring this store, ever. There were always people going in and out, all different times of the day and night"

"There were men behind here urinating at various times of the night," she said, pointing at the back of the fenced in lot. "And recently, someone jumped over the barb-wire in back of the building here and tried to break in the first-floor unit apartments, at least two of them. We never had that problem before.”

When asked about the lack of security at the store O’Byrne said that, because part of the store's appeal was that is was an open space that people could use whenever they wanted, security was kind of an afterthought.

“We talked about doing something, maybe putting up a camera, but overall we weren’t that concerned,” she said. O’Byrne also added that she’s “pretty positive that ALF had nothing to do with the fire.”

Plans are in the works to rebuild the Free Store in a new location in the near future.

When contacted by Patch for a comment, Fire Department Spokesman Steve Ritea said that the fire “remains under investigation.”