Murder Up in North Brooklyn, Down in South
The number of murders in North Brooklyn spiked 34 percent in the first half of the year while just about every other comman center saw declines. There were 59 homicides in the Brooklyn North Command (which includes precincts 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 90, and 94) through June 10 this year, versus…
The number of murders in North Brooklyn spiked 34 percent in the first half of the year while just about every other comman center saw declines. There were 59 homicides in the Brooklyn North Command (which includes precincts 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 90, and 94) through June 10 this year, versus 44 in the same period in 2006 and 36 in 2005. The main cause? According to John Jay College’s Richard Curtis, it’s a rise in “disrespect shootings” by teens, which includes such death-worthy offenses as looking at someone’s girlfriend the wrong way, as someone did around the corner from our house last year. Of course, all parts of North Brooklyn are not created equal. While murders in Bushwick’s 83rd Precinct rose from 2 to 6 in the first half of 2007, Brooklyn Heights and Boerum Hill have none for the second year running. Street crime in those tony nabes has risen considerably though: Robbery is up 21 percent, assault 12 percent and grand larceny 4 percent this year. None of this is exactly news for real estate brokers to play up.
Surge in Slayings Shocks Brooklyn [NY Post]
Amen to that 5:18.
5:10, you are, of course correct that education, hard work, etc, etc, would go a long way to curing these ills. However in order for those things to work, those programs/ideals need to work.
It seems like every day on this forum the topic of good schools vs bad schools comes up. No one will argue that most of the public schools in the 81st precinct district are not what they should be. But what is our response on this board? “Don’t move there!!!” or “Be prepared to ship your kids off to private schools.” If the more well heeled in the community – old and new, don’t invest in local schools, nothing will ever change, and they will stay crappy forever.
People with money have more power than people without money. Fact of life. Most people with money know how the system works, and have more access to knowledge, policymakers, and agents of change than people without money and connections. Another fact.
Let’s not think that lower income people don’t care about their schools or their kids’ futures – most do. But often they do not have the wherewithal to organize, or to be effective in the halls of power. That’s what money and personal power can bring. We need a coalition of people who want to fix things – not just because it directly affects us or our kids, but because fixing them is the right thing to do for everyone. These groups exist, and do what they can, but they need our support.
Same with jobs. We can’t expect a kid to get a good job if he can’t read. We can’t tell them to become something that will be a career – like a cop, for instance, if they can’t make ends meeton the salary offered.
It’s a whole eco-system here, everything is connected. If we want to break the cycle of poverty in this city/country, we need, on a huge level, a true war on poverty. That’s the war we should be fighting.
Sorry, guys, I may be having a bad day but I am getting the chills from this discussion when it starts dismissing crime when it is punk on punk or when we become fixated on real estate values and view the common good of our neighborhoods simply as a market variable. Thanks 2:21 and Brower Park – we lose our humanity when we think crime is OK for anybody. The reduction of crime is a form of liberation and it has served to be a key factor in the revitalization of Brownstone Brooklyn, but it is also something to be celebrated in and of itself. Separately, Brownstoner is correct in that the recent sharp drop in crime can cause a few incidents to skew the statistics. I can be thankful that in my own little universe the teenagers here allow me to give them a hard time.
5:18 – As much as many of us may support bringing the troops home – statistically for NYC – the correlation isnt there. Since we invaded Iraq, the crime/murder rate has declined significantly in NYC. As for an influx of Heroin – its not something I have seen – but even if true – Heroin is grown in Afghanistan (not Iraq) and while there are people who may feel that that war is crazy also – I think most people (including the vast majority of our allies who have significant troops there) don’t think ‘that’ war was so crazy (given 9/11 and all), or are contemplating withdrawing troops.
So while we may vehemently want to end the war in Iraq and keep our streets safe, falsely linking the two will probably do nothing to help either.
I overheard a woman say that heroin is flowing into this country way more rapidly since “Bush started that crazy war”. Apparently, her neighborhood (far east village) has been overrun with junkies latetly. She believes that Afghanistan’s chaos is heroin industry’s boon.
Now, i’m not one to blame Bush for EVERYTHING, but there may be something to that: the more focus we put on business that isn’t ours, the less resources we have to fight the business that is — such as weeding out the drug rings that supply gangs with their power.
NYPD’s entire intelligence resources are zeroed in on anti-terrorism (as well as everything remotely politically subversive). What have they got left for fighting crime — and more importantly, fighting the sources of crime?
There aren’t enough cops. The cops that we do have are quitting in record numbers both because of low morale and low pay. Time to bring the peace HOME.
What kind of help? When this topic is raised, many acknowledge the need, and then move on and hope that someone else does the actual work.
Of course, if you propose things like education, hard work, delayed gratification, marriage/partnership, etc. you are branded a conservative and dismissed.
Denny (and others) if the problem was strickly “generational” or the “hip hop culture” it would actually be easy to fix. Unfortuantly, it isnt that simple – Despite these statistical spikes – NYC (and Brooklyn North) still has a very low crime/murder rate compared to other demographically similar cities/areas (2 very close ones are Philadelphia and Newark)
and while NYC has some spikes in very discrete locations – most other cities (with similar generations and hip hop culture) have had huge increases in crime/murder over the last 2 years.
So murder/crime increases in the 81 pct in BedStuy or the 73pct in Brownsville cant simply be based on some generational thing – when the same rate hasn’t moved at all in Crown Heights or the 79 pct in Bed Stuy, and has declined in the Bronx.
It would be nice to be able to blame crime on some easy things like a ‘bad’ generation or lousy education but clearly the statistics at least point out that such simplistic analysis don’t pan out.
Good Point Brower Park:
I don’t want to be the one that says it. But I think the main reason why there’s so much crime in Brooklyn, especially with the young Minority community is because they live a Hip Hop lifestyle that revolves around violence. I grew up in Bushwick and Bed-stuy during the 80’s and 90’s even with the recent crime surge it feels like the suburbs compare to back in the days. I think these kids are a lost generation heading nowhere fast and they need help.
So the crime rate when up the most in the hottest real estate neighbs.
Apparently, a lot of people would kill to live in N. Brooklyn.
Just had to . . . sorry
And we do love Brooklyn! And I agree totally with Brower park (gee- i wish I had said that!)- the relationship between the community and real estate values is too often ignored in these threads. But property values don’t exist in a vacuum. As they used to say, if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
And one other thing- we forget NYC is not the only place with crime, nor od we often put the demographic breakdowns into perspective. NYC is not a microcosm of the rest of the country, and as such when those of us try to use statistics to explain or reinforce bias, it’s a gross injustice to everyone.