Same Old Story...But Still--Mugging on Eastern Parkway

How do I know they are poor and depressed? 1.) what person would steal someones cell phone and money because they were wealthy or had money. 2.) they are obviiuosly depressed based on the lack of success theyve been able to achieve in their lives. Look its not hard to figure these retards out. I grew up in a similar neighboorhood in new jersey. This is like a quick fix for these pieces of trash that gives them a quick high as if they dominated someone higher up on societys ladder, if only for a brief moment. Listen to bill Cosby, you think this guy preffers to have half of his race upset at him? He's just being honest and that's the first step in making a change to fix the problem. If only the ones who need to hear the most would listen.

hmm. I'm not sure if you are just willfully missing my point, to be argumentative, just angry in general because of the crime, or what.

Last shot.

Say you go to the doctor because your arm hurts when you reach behind you back. The doctor says, "Don't reach behind your back." Do you hate him? The fact is, that there is something wrong with your arm, and it is going require a lot of physical therapy and work to heal. In the meantime, while that is taking place, you ought to stop putting your arm back there and making it hurt.

Not wearing your iPod does nothing to combat the problem of crime in the neighborhood. There are a lot of other things that have to be done to do that which are far more complicated and will ultimately take a lot of time. It will help make your arm stop hurting in the meantime though. You, of course, are free to do what you like.

Amazing. That's the kind of logic that blames rape victims because they dress too provocatively and are probably asking for it. Keep making excuses for predators and blaming the victims... it's exactly what those thugs want. Attitudes like that only exacerbate the problem.

18 wrote: Crime Is Low, but Fear Knows No Numbers[/size]

By JAKE MOONEY
Published: December 16, 2007

JOSÉ SANTIAGO, 39, has been around Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, ever since he was a child and started spending summers in the neighborhood with his father, a building superintendent who worked there. Mr. Santiago is a building superintendent himself now, living and working just down the street from where his father lived and worked.

It is a good neighborhood, he said, and safe. Much safer, anyway, than during the crack epidemic of the 1980s, when he once saw a man punch a woman in the face in broad daylight to steal her earrings. Those were the years when he got used to the sight of hollow-eyed people searching the cracks in the sidewalks for anything they could use to buy drugs.

With all that in the past, this might seem like a strange time for Mr. Santiago to worry about the safety of his teenage daughter and the friendly-looking people who live in his building.

Strange because the neighborhood is wealthier than ever, with the glossy white Richard Meier building going up at Grand Army Plaza. Strange because, statistically, the city is at its safest point in recent memory, with crime down sharply in all categories from the highs of the early 1990s.

But the other day, sitting in the lobby of his building, Mr. Santiago sounded nervous. “Crime around here, I guarantee you, it’s going to pick up,” he said. “This year it’s going to pick up. I have a gut feeling.”

He bases this feeling on the teenagers he sees wearing what look like gang colors on handkerchiefs and beads. And he recounts a string of disturbing recent incidents: a man who was fatally stabbed on Washington Avenue, and another who was shot and injured on St. Johns Place. As of last week, in fact, murders and rapes were down from last year in the 77th Precinct, which includes Prospect Heights, but robberies, felony assaults and burglaries were up.

Even with those increases, crime in the area is a fraction of what it was in 1990. Plenty of old-timers and would-be old-timers would point to that fact as evidence that New Yorkers now are soft. Muggings happen, this argument goes. Don’t like it? Go back to Ohio.

•

Over the summer, Mr. Santiago was walking past a bodega on Underhill Avenue near Prospect Park when he saw a group of skateboarders exchange words with a bunch of tough local kids. The interchange turned violent, and according to Mr. Santiago, somebody got hit over the head with his own board and was cut.

Over the months, as retold time and again through the local grapevine, the injury became increasingly serious, until Mr. Santiago, an old-timer himself in a way, chuckled at the way neighborhood rumors can get out of hand. “But still,” he said, turning serious again. “You get hit on the head, it’s not a good feeling. It’s dangerous as hell.”

This is the other, murkier side of those encouraging crime numbers. They don’t make themselves felt uniformly throughout the city. People still get guns pointed at them, and iPods still get stolen. And low numbers can obscure the fact that being the victim of a crime is unpleasant, even if the city is home to fewer such victims.

•

And from where Mr. Santiago sits, there is always the possibility that the situation will regress, if not entirely, at least noticeably. Maybe because the economy is weakening, or because gentrification is inevitably accompanied by tensions, or because the rich people in upscale buildings like the one down the street are easy targets.

Or maybe Mr. Santiago and people like him are just worriers. Maybe things will keep getting better in this new New York, where, according to statistics made public a few weeks ago, the chances of being killed by a stranger are, statistically, close to zero. These are the possibilities that the people who paid Richard Meier to design his building in Prospect Heights are betting on.

Eventually we will know who was right. But as of now, there are numbers, and then there are some people’s gut feelings. “I predict this summer is going to be crazy,” Mr. Santiago said. “Not wild, crazy, bananas, but crime is going to pick up.”