Cop Fired on in Aftermath of Rally at Grand and Putnam
[nggallery id=”21567″ template=galleryview] Yesterday’s press conference at the corner of Grand and Putnam avenues about the recent wave of violent crime in Eastern Clinton Hill (photo on the jump) must have touched a nerve: Less than 12 hours after Councilmember Letitia James and Deputy Borough President Yvonne J. Graham finished decrying the lack of resources…
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Yesterday’s press conference at the corner of Grand and Putnam avenues about the recent wave of violent crime in Eastern Clinton Hill (photo on the jump) must have touched a nerve: Less than 12 hours after Councilmember Letitia James and Deputy Borough President Yvonne J. Graham finished decrying the lack of resources being devoted by the city to the 88th Precinct, a traffic cop was shot at just yards away. According to a detective we spoke with this morning, the shooter fired on a traffic policeman in his patrol car between 2 and 2:30 a.m. this morning; the bullet missed its mark. The street is now closed off and the detective going door to door, in marked contrast to the shrug-like response that last week’s drive-by shooting on the corner elicited from the law enforcement community. The casual attitude taken by the precinct towards the situation was crystallized by a comment the same detective made to us. Because the corner was much worse a decade ago, he suggested, everyone should just be happy and stop complaining about it now. (This sounds remarkably similar to a comment another cop made to someone we know a couple of years ago that if she didn’t like the way things were in the neighborhood she should move out.) This from a guy, we can assure you, who lives nowhere near the neighborhood he works in. We’ll see whether this latest attack on their own gets the police to focus on this problem that has been under their noses for years. A good place to start might be the hours of videotape that the landlord of the problem building has of drug transactions going on in broad daylight. Up to now, the police have shown zero interest in viewing them. Maybe DA Charles Hynes can make the time.
Another Shooting on Grand and Putnam [Brownstoner]
Turning Up The Pressure on Grand and Putnam [Brownstoner]
Murder on Putnam: Will The Cops Show Up Now? [Brownstoner]
Is Divatude still operating? Whatever happened to that short lived coffee shop or that make shift diner that has had its gates down for sometime and whose storefront now serves as a gathering spot for some of the old timers and “drunkman”.
This corner is a throwback and an anomaly , police presence which seems to do little over time(although I am disturbed that there has been any in the past few days) is a panacea, the only way this corner will change is when it becomes commercially viable for more merchants, there are a few but not enough- police seem to respond much quicker to business owners than homeowners or renters(my opinion).
When that dank dark rinkydink putnam candy store is bought out and the yemenese landlords relatives(who are decent but seem to have adopted the bad habits of whom they host) ) who run the deli stop condoning and covering for that scary lady runner/lookout/prostitute on her bike and the few pre 16yr olds who aid in the traffic- then we will see a change.
7:36, phrases like “got the job done” are delightfully vague. You mean they pushed the drug dealers over to the next block, or over into an even poorer neighborhood? Yeah boy, that sounds like progress.
Brownstoner you are such a jerk. You do very little on this site other than stir up class warfare and hatred, then you whine like a child when when a little bit of hatred presents itself on your stoop in the form of a shooting. Hah. Your chickens are coming home to roost, that’s all.
4:35,
No the police can’t guarantee the safety of anybody not even their own. Remember James Byrne. But there will be casualties in any struggle. I have seen people who felt so passionate about cleaning up their neighborhoods that they did what they had to do. In the case of one woman in Bushwick a copule of years back, she paid with her life for trying to get drug dealers off of her street. Her neighbors picked up in her stead and got the job done.
Um, ClintonHilChill @ 4:31, I am glad I gave you all a good laugh, but in fact drugs are sold out of that building. I don’t know why you would think that simply because young men congregate in front of that building that would be the source of my information – I am not naive enough to think that says anything. Nor do I think the tenor of my comments (I always sign in) would indicate that I would be so quick to jump to a stupid conclusion like that. I’ll send you a private post on Brooklynian with the apartment at the building I am talking about (why doesn’t this site have that same ability?). I have noticed that on both this site and on Brooklynian you are quick to discount the presence of drug dealing when it is pretty obvious to the eye (your comments discounting any link between the guys selling drugs in front of the music store on Fulton at St James is one example of this).
But I’m not really interested in getting into a dispute as to whether a building is a sometime spot or an always spot, or just on the last Thursday of the month. My point is that the selling of drugs is not limited to a few particular buildings. As I am sure you are aware, for many dealers it is a passing job of convenience which often doesn’t end up paying all that well. Street level dealers move around and use different apartments for stash houses – be it the gf’s house, a family member’s or a user’s. The name of the game is moving it around. When I raised the issue that there are other sources of drugs in the neighborhood I was trying to question those who sought to say “Putnam and Grand” bad, rest of Clinton Hill good – as different as “night and day” someone said in a very unfortunate simile. In many places this traffic goes on unnoticed or discounted (why is that doorbell ringing at night so much, door slamming, etc, oh well…)
I’m glad the traffic at your friend’s building is so subtle that she doesn’t even know it is going on. Doesn’t mean it isn’t.
We used to have guns and drugs on our block in Bed Stuy
But we took ownership of the situation
we phoned the cops almost everyday for 14 months about a house on our block in where Heroin and crack being sold (heroin to the seniors crack to the kids) and hookers were working
one night, after one phone call to the cops (for noise as usual) the main drug dealers girlfriend was pulled out of there by cops beaten half to death while the dealer was jailed.
All of the entourage moved on within three days and our block no longer has a drug problem.
The house, four months later has been relet to normal people
As for the corner on the avenue where random dealers used to hang, a contingent of volunteers from our block — most of whom had lived on this block for 30 years or more — turned an empty lot into a city park. The same volunteers (and some newcomers) now control that corner not the drug dealers. Buyers dont like to come by much when there are a dozen people weeding and grilling.
You have to take ownership of your nayb and if some people would rather live surrounded by squalor, drugs and violence, then fine, but they’re not doing it where I live.
it is up to everyone wherever they live to take ownership of their neighborhood. I hope all of those of you bitching about JBs self interest and such are out doing community work in other people’s naybs. Of course you don’t want people being shot or selling drugs or committing crimes on your street. Especially when you have little kids to care for.
I have lived in bed stuy for a long time, and consider myself part of the neighborhood,even though I dont have five generations of relatives here. What is more i consider ALL of my neighbors to be part of the neighborhood too no matter what they look like, what they do, why they own or rent their place. None of that is my damn business. Brooklyn is an amazing and diverse place to live, anyone who thinks it is somehow divided into factions who are or should be “at war” needs to find something productive to do with their time
4:42 – go back to the suburbs.
The What is a tranny hooker on Fulton and Classon. Say hello next time you see her “working.”