Enough With the Marauding Teenagers!
A couple of months ago as we were walking East on Greene Avenue between Waverly and Washington we noticed in our peripheral vision someone approaching fast from behind. When we spun around, it was a teenage boy, probably about 15 years old, who had crept up and was hovering inches from the back of our…
A couple of months ago as we were walking East on Greene Avenue between Waverly and Washington we noticed in our peripheral vision someone approaching fast from behind. When we spun around, it was a teenage boy, probably about 15 years old, who had crept up and was hovering inches from the back of our head mocking us provocatively to the clear delight of his jeering friends. Ever risk-averse, we quickly walked out into the middle of the street and starting dialing on our cell phone. With a few shouts, the pack continued down the block. We jogged back to a police car we had noticed parked back on Vanderbilt, told the cops what had happened and went home. The next day we heard that a woman had been mugged half an hour later a few blocks from there by a bunch of teenagers. We’ve heard of several similar instances in the area in recent weeks. And it’s not just Clinton Hill. A post on Brooklynian describes how a trio of teenage girls (19, 17 and 12) mugged five different people in Prospect Heights on Saturday night (and how only one of them decided to press charges) and an email we received yesterday told of a violent mugging of a twenty-something male by a group of boys at around 8:15 Monday night at Dekalb and South Oxford Street in Fort Greene (above). What can the community do to combat this activity? Obviously greater police presence would help, but given the paltry resources the NYPD devotes to this part of town, it’s going to take a lot of vigilance on the part of residents in terms of reporting even small incidents of harassment and pressing charges. And everyone should be aware that a lot of these muggings are happening during daylight hours, often between the end of school and dinner time, so it’s a good idea to minimize iPod and cell phone usage during those times. Please use this comment thread to document other similar incidents that you know about in recent months as well as to suggest ways to address the problem.
anyone else think all we hear about is the crime in this area since this is where Brownstoner is?
John Brownstoner almost got Ass-Raped. Ha, ha….
Maybe New Brooklyn is experiencing what the Old Bronx did two/three decades ago.
Hope not.
NYC was a dump in the 70’s because it was transitioning from light manufacturing, transportation to service/white collar dominated economy, dealing with global economic downturn, tight/nonexistent credit, losing swaths of tax base in terms of business and individuals as white flight revved up, at the same time absorbing the financial impact of social programs meant to deal with a poor population, race riots Newark were still a vivid memory,
and it was still converting itself to a car city thanks to Mr. Moses…who intentionally cut off neighborhoods of poor. (Red Hook was a no mans land for 30 years.) Mass transportation was essentially abandoned, as the great merger was still going on (IRT, BMT)
None of this faces the city. What’s Goldman going to put into that tower on the West side? files? I don’t see a slump in the 100MM apt market in Manhattan.
“Manhattan is the home of the ULTRA rich and is not going to change…”
Just as NYC in the 70s was a dump and was not going to change?
09:53 speaks a bit of truth to power and his type of tough love (gasp – fund education!, admit that individualism does not preclude taking care of your neighbors!)
yet I am not sure I agree with point 6.
The last time this city (and nation) faced a society changing economic contraction was the 70’s, China was in lock-down, India was (to the US, anyway)still the land of ghandi and some brilliant engineers and Latin/South America was essentially the wild west.
This is not the situation, Manhattan is the home of the ULTRA rich and is not going to change, they will keep coming to NYC. Middle class people will have to live somewhere (i am looking at you MBAs and JDs) – elite brooklyn, etc. and Normal people will also have to live somewhere.
This city will not hit the lows of the 70’s because it is no longer an American city – it is a global city and as such there is always new and real money coming here…go to jamaica/ozone park, about as far from the geographic center of the city as you can get – its a thriving enclave of west indian and indo-pak. Go to Bayside queens, the asians there don’t really seem to care about the value of your brownstone, they are doing just fine.
Know why you can no longer point a “black” neighborhood like Hollis or Bellmore or even Harlem? because it doesn’t work that way, these are neighborhoods and have some integration, the crimes and criminals don’t emanate from there, they emanate from dehumanizing conditions and environments like projects and blighted hoods with minimal services. (Starbucks is not exactly a service). They come from environments where kids get swept up and are used to being questioned.
So neighborhoods with functional people will continue to be decent places to live, but as long as they surround situations where people are not used to opportunity or empowerment there will be strife.
As has been pointed out ‘kids will be kids’; kids who absorb anger (from broken homes or random violence) are a little more dangerous…
Some tough but honest solutions to this:
1. Stop the insanity of self focus in this country, whereby one ignores the plight of others to make oneself filthy rich.
2. Give kids real education and jobs, and if that doesn’t work because the kids are too f-ed up and the parents don’t give a sh*t, then take them away from the parents, sterilize the parents (of all races, before you say I am being racist), and put the kids in work prison making green technology.
3. Crack down on guns, no matter how afraid politicians are of the NRA.
4. Have an open and honest conversation about race, and the fact that it is incredibly hard to make yourself out of the inner city projects without the solid foundation of education and strong family bonds – elements often missing in these environments.
5. While doing all of that, train yourself in self-defense, but don’t be stupid. You never know what can happen when you react to kids with no sense of humanity or self for that matter. They have no self esteem and think they have nothing to lose, including their life if it comes to that.
6. If that doesn’t work, move out of the City, because honestly, crime like this may only get worse, as the City falls into a fiscal mess the likes of the 70s and the housing market falls back more than 50%, which it indeed will over the next few years.
10:37 here:
all should remember Racism is the act of using prejudice to control a situation, most commonly methods of betterment or even survival. The Caucuses and the mess in most of Africa is essentially tribally based racism.
Prejudice is having pre-conceived notions of a subject.
Saying all whites listen to Coldplay is prejudicial.
Subjecting non-whites to Coldplay is racist.
Similarly, assuming that everyone who is white and moves into the neighborhood is from an estate and has a trust fund and no sense of reality is prejudicial.
Assuming that the ghetto will change overnight (with no effort, just because you moved in) is slightly racist (but really more classist)
Do you people really need to watch ‘Do the right thing’ again? or even Breaking Away?
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