For weeks now, I’ve been living through the surreal experience of waking up and heading out to the local dry cleaners, pharmacy, bodega, and subway stop in what recent headlines suggest is the most dangerously violent place in New York. It sure doesn’t feel that way in Crown Heights. But that might be because we’ve been through these spasms of horror before.
My friends, family, and neighbors are combating a sudden, shocking spike in street violence in more or less the same way we dealt with blizzards, blackouts, water main breaks, or the COVID pandemic: singly and in groups, people emerge from their homes to chat, check on each other and do the small, meaningful acts of care that make the neighborhood safer.
That might mean shoveling the walk for one of the seniors, or treating local youngsters to pizza as a favor to their overwhelmed single mom, or stopping the flow of rumors by spreading accurate, official information about crime in the neighborhood. It might not seem like much, but over the course of 40 years in the neighborhood, I’ve seen the effort pay off.
In the late 1990s, several block association presidents and merchants met month after month and quietly pointed out the drug spots and dealers to the local precinct, who gradually began clearing them off the corners. And starting in 2006, continuing for more than a decade, we held marches, rallies and prayer vigils after the strangled body of 16-year-old Chanel Petro-Nixon was found just outside of Brower Park. Chanel’s suspected killer, Veron Primus, has been indicted in absentia; he is currently imprisoned in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where he was convicted of murdering a woman years after being deported from the U.S.
A few years ago, when a spate of shootings had Crown Heights on edge, police-community relations were solid enough that we had a public walk through the neighborhood by then-Commissioner James O’Neill — as always, to show that people are not afraid, and will outwork and outlast the criminals.
These days, the task at hand is to come out of our homes to pray for peace, demand better policing, and simultaneously drain the swamp of misery and poverty that are a breeding ground for crime and disorder.
“Obviously, none of us are doing enough,” says the Reverend Kirsten Foy, the founder and president of the Arc of Justice, a community-based ministry and advocacy organization. “There is no coordinated effort.”
He’s right. In the space of a few weeks, Crown Heights has seen four murders in quick succession, in places where children and families shop, gather, and play. The neighborhood now leads the city in fatal shootings this year. The incidents don’t appear to be connected, but that doesn’t lessen the horror — or the need for local leaders to get our act together.
On the afternoon of February 26, a man asked Nazim Berry, the cashier at Amin Deli on Franklin Avenue, to give him a cigar for free — and, when Berry refused, bickered with Berry, left in a rage, then returned with a gun and shot the man in the head. Police later arrested Daquan David, who has been charged with murder.
Two days after Berry’s murder, Lamine Bah was shot to death around 6 p.m. on McKeever Place outside the Ebbets Field apartments in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity by members of a local gang. The very next day, 13-year-old Troy Gill called his mother to say he’d been shot while walking home from the Barclays Center, where he’d watched the Nets play. The child died at the corner of Brooklyn and St. Marks Avenues near the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
And a little more than a week later, with the neighborhood still reeling, 40-year-old Lavel Frasier was found shot to death on March 10 in the basement of a brownstone on Sterling Place that reportedly was an underground gambling spot.
“Everyone handles these incidents in a different way. But when it affects them personally, no one knows how to deal with it,” says Brian Saunders, who chairs the 77th Precinct Community Council. “So we have to be there for the community and we have to listen to the community.”
Earlier this month, Saunders and the Reverend Taharka Robinson, the chaplain for the precinct community council, organized what will be the first of many prayer vigils and rallies against violence. A lot of wise words and sound strategies were shared.
“There’s a lot of other young men out here. Give them some help. Give them some resources,” said Richard Green, the 76-year-old founder of the Crown Heights Youth Collective. “Call on the political leaders. You know who they are. After the election is over, you don’t want them to disappear.”
“We have to do whatever we can to make sure that a tragedy like this never happens again,” said Eli Cohen, the longtime executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Crown Heights. “There’s two parts to it. One is that we have to create a new sense in the community of meaningfulness, of purpose, of connection. The other thing is that we have to also take a step back and think: Are we doing the right thing by pulling back on the enforcement side?”
Senior leadership at One Police Plaza know how to keep Crown Heights safe. A few years ago, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, now the highest uniformed officer in the NYPD, was running the 10 precincts of Brooklyn North, including the 77th, and was part of a concerted community-police effort to tamp down a spike in violence. Maddrey and Chief Scott Henderson (the current commander of Brooklyn North) are tough, street-smart leaders who I’m sure will apply pressure and presence where it’s needed. That starts with making it a priority to find the killers of Gill, Bah, and Frasier.
Beyond that, we need intensive outreach to the lost young men of the community, who are often overlooked, angry, and prone to form or join gangs. Reverend Foy’s group conducts an annual “Occupy the Corners” outreach program that sets up tables overnight in the heart of high-crime areas, bringing food, social workers, lawyers, and conversation to people on the edge of society, giving them a reason to put down guns and find a positive path forward. Crown Heights could use some of that approach.
“Everybody has to ramp up a little in times like this. “That means really deep, intentional investment in communities being impacted by violence,” City Councilwoman Crystal Hudson told me. She favors trauma recovery centers, mental health services, and other efforts to attack the root causes of criminal behavior. “You can’t just keep adding police and the same thing keeps happening,” she says.
One of the most heartfelt voices at a recent street rally against violence was that of Robin Lyde, the mother of Benny Lyde, a promising young man, lost to violence back in 2005, who is missed to this day. “We have power, people, but we’re not using our power,” she told the assembled crowd. “We have the power to speak up. We have the power to stand up. We have the power to raise the village.”
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