Notorious Crackhouse at 474 Greene Avenue Up In Flames
Sad and disturbing news this morning from Bedford Stuyvesant. The beautiful brownstone at 474 Greene Avenue between Bedford and Nostrand was gutted by a fire in the early morning hours today, the result of a raucous all-night party gone terribly wrong. According to an email we received from a block resident, who fell asleep finally…
Sad and disturbing news this morning from Bedford Stuyvesant. The beautiful brownstone at 474 Greene Avenue between Bedford and Nostrand was gutted by a fire in the early morning hours today, the result of a raucous all-night party gone terribly wrong. According to an email we received from a block resident, who fell asleep finally at 4:30 a.m. only to be awakened by the sound of shattering glass at 6:15 am., the building “is a well known crack house that has been in operation for at least 3 years.” A group of neighbors has been trying to work with community leaders, the NYPD and DA Charles Hynes for much of that time to no avail. There have been daily calls to the NYPD but concerned residents “have been told repeatedly that it is near impossible to shut down.” The photo, at right, from Property Shark, shows the house pre-fire with windows and doors covered in sheets to keep out unwanted eyes. “Clearly we are all in immediate danger when people are living without electricity, using candles and making crack and NO ONE in the NYC system can close down the house,” writes the tipster. “That fire was big and we were all in danger this morning.” We’ve seen the same thing on the corner of Grand and Putnam where law enforcement officials know what’s going on but are hamstrung by laws that make it close to impossible to arrest and successfully convict members of the drug trade. GMAP P*Shark
Update: Here are a couple of photos from a few minutes ago. Send more photos or comments to brownstoner@brownstoner.com.
daveinbedstuy –
i live in clinton hill, and on a block that’s home to plenty of drug dealing. thanks.
regardless, i think it is callous that people are so distraught over the loss of the home’s details (which were probably destroyed long ago anyway), and no one has mentioned the possible loss of human life. could have been crack heads, or perhaps cops or firemen or neighbors injured.
Noodles is right. Uniform cops don’t handle drug complaints ever since the Knapp commission, the city is too worried about the possibility of corruption. Ironically this leads to cases where people see nothing being done, so they assume that the local cops are being paid off.
That being said, if you are a big pain in the butt, something will get done. Narcotics has to answer out every complaint that comes their way and if they get enough of them, they will do what they have to do to close the location. I’m just curious as to how many people sit around and grouse about a location, yet have never actually filed a comlaint, waiting for someone else to do it. In the meantime, the situation just continues. Again, Park Slope was downright funky in the 70’s and 80’s, but a small core of people kicked and screamed and made sure that their complaints were heard and as a result saved their neighborhood instead of sitting by quietly and letting things collapse. Strength in numbers.
It’s so easy to push the blame off on someone else, “oh the cops don’t care”, “the courts will just let them out anyway”, “The cops are getting paid off”, blah, blah, blah just a bunch of excuses. How many of the people complaining about things actually ever attempted to do anything about it? If you don’t fight for your own neighborhood, how can you expect other people to?
It’s naive to think that just because your dealer delivers and you’re only buying pot that you’re not supporting the rest of the drug trade. The organizations that distribute distribute all sorts of things, and even if you’re buying your weed from a hydroponic farmer in Oregon, I’d suspect they have ties to a biker gang you may not find so hygienic.
If you want to argue legalization, do so, but as long as you’re supporting the industry as it is, you’re supporting all parts of it.
noodles – that is awesome.
There is something you can do when you have drug dealers in your neighborhood. I know because I battled with one that set up shop next door to my apt in a building that we had past trouble with.
#1 Call the local precinct and report all activity. I used to call about two times a day. Keep a record of the call times and who you spoke with. Don’t get frustrated they most likely will do nothing and be annoyed that you call but you need to do this to do #2.
#2 Call 311 and keep calling them. Report the incidents and calls to precinct. They will put you in contact w/ the narcotics investigation unit. These are the only people that actually do anything. It does take a while expect at least 1-2 months but they came down my street w/ a SWAT team broke down the door and took everyone to jail and the problem ended for good.
The pre-guiliani era. Newbies have no idea. Remember when Mayor Dinkins got bonked on the head with a flying coke bottle when trying to intervene in the green market fracas in Brooklyn?
Wow, a rerun of what happened on our Flatbush block in the late 80s. Guy sold crack off his front porch day and night, terrorized the block, had fires, tapped Con Ed, broke in after multiple board-ups; cops would shrug, “We can’t arrest them in uniform, it has to be an undercover buy&bust, and they won’t bother doing a sting against a low-level street dealer.” Our block association was in despair; the crackheads were terrorizing us on our front porches. What finally got the scum out? A tough-minded Caribbean entrepreneur/investor bought the place and BROUGHT IN DOGS, then did a quickie reno to a 3-family. Probably not a legal 3-family, but nobody was complaining. Historically, we now think of that incredible time as the fatalistic chaos of the pre-Giuliani era, so I am appalled to think it can still be going on in a nabe with as much going for it as Bed-Stuy.
No, I don’t want my kids with the crack-heads. Its just that one of the programs I have seen seemed to work very well. But where there isn’t the public will to properly finance it, you’re probably right, it’ll just be a mess. And in this financial climate, theres no spare cash at all.
a lot of crackheads have been in the last year or so switching over to meth since it’s a lot cheaper and has much stronger and lenghty high. if you think people on crack act cracked out, you havent seen anything yet.
-rob