Employment in PH (split from assaulted on park pl thread)

homeowner wrote: [quote=J0518] maybe someone needs to be doing that instead of opening another faux-dive bar.

Actually what's interesting to me is that given the number of new establishments in the neighborhood, there seems to be little to no employment of local teens. Not sure that it is the owner's fault per se, as I'm not sure that teens these days seek out busboy or barback kinds of jobs (it seems that actors, singers, dancers, and college students have wrapped up those jobs) but it is interesting none the less.

Should the dive bar owner have hired all 5 of the kids? The reason that 5 people commit a crime is way worse than one single F up that didn't have good parents. When a whole culture breeds out right and wrong we are all the victims. This type of behavior is why any business owner should NEVER hire a local teen to work at their faux anything. If their friends stop by to say hello while at work this will happen in your place of business instead of in front of it. I have seen kids talking on the subway,acting out in the deli,and coming completely undone while attending a movie, their lack of control is the problem. No F-ing control. You should be the most afraid that those 5 kids don't think they did anything wrong. A measurable % of people around here call that kids being kids. It's not your job to hunt down the perps it's the police. The same people buying 40's and smokes with their benefit cards and getting cash back in front of me at the deli are the parents of the punchers.

homeowner wrote: [quote=J0518] maybe someone needs to be doing that instead of opening another faux-dive bar.

Actually what's interesting to me is that given the number of new establishments in the neighborhood, there seems to be little to no employment of local teens. Not sure that it is the owner's fault per se, as I'm not sure that teens these days seek out busboy or barback kinds of jobs (it seems that actors, singers, dancers, and college students have wrapped up those jobs) but it is interesting none the less.

Well new businesses areound here come in 2 flavors - bars/restaurants - open late and traditionally don't/can't have minors working in them and tiny little shops w/ tiny profit margins usually operated by the owner and maybe one other person.

Unless you want a 2nd Ikea to open around here or a Fairway, the local shops aren't really set up to hire hordes of aimless teens.

homeowner wrote: I just think its weird that with the exception of the supermarkets I can't think of another establishment that has any younger employees.

Its one of two reasons I shop at Acme Pet Store; one because I really like the owners; and two because they always employ young teens to help at the store and with deliveries.

My response was never intended to say directly or in directly that kids act like animals because they don't have part time employment as a bar back, bag boy or barrista. My concern is that there appears to be a minor increase in muggings and shootings. Mob mentality is not healthy for the community and a group of 5 adults or teens attacking somebody is reason for alarm.

cut off the balls of the kids and be done with, no next generation.

most teenagers dont even go to school in the area they live in.

Why should they work in the same area?

Bad Times Do Not Bring More Crime (if They Ever Did)

AL BAKER

Published: November 29, 2009

Unemployment has reached 10.3 percent in New York City, higher than it is in the state and nationally. The Bloomberg administration is weighing cuts from every city agency to help close a $4.1 billion deficit next year. Homelessness among families is at a record high, with more than 28,000 men, women and children now in the city’s shelter system.

In 2009, the signs of a bad economy are like blinking neon lights on Broadway.

Yet Police Department statistics show that the number of major crimes is continuing to fall this year in nearly every category, upending the common wisdom that hard times bring more crime.

“The idea that everyone has ingrained into them — that as the economy goes south, crime has to get worse — is wrong,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was never right to begin with.”

Murder, considered the bellwether crime, is down by nearly 13 percent so far this year, to 413 through Nov. 22, compared with 473 in the same period last year, the statistics show. Rape, robbery, burglary, grand larceny and car theft are also on the decline.

There has been a decrease in overall crime in all but two of the city’s 76 police precincts. Crime in the subways and in public housing complexes is down. The number of shootings citywide has fallen, as has the number of people hurt or killed by gunfire — despite the recent shootings of two teenagers in the Bronx and Queens who were not the intended targets.

Even the number of petty larceny complaints — the theft of items valued at less than $1,000, a crime mostly associated with shoplifting — has fallen, to 72,971 from 74,631 in the same period a year ago, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

New York has seen a steady drop in crime over the last 16 years, through Wall Street booms and dot-com busts, amid the devastation of the Sept. 11 attack and the revitalization that followed. Mr. Kelly said he was worried not that a floundering economy would turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals, but that there would not be enough city funds to replenish a depleted police force.

“People, generally speaking, are not committing crime to address a basic need for food or shelter,” he said in a recent interview at 1 Police Plaza. “The economy goes up, the economy goes down — there’s still an element of people who are committing crime not motivated by the economic environment that we all find ourselves in.”

Peter Vallone Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said he thought the commissioner was too modest. “It’s been very clear, since the beginning of time, that when things are bad, crime goes up,” he said, crediting Mr. Kelly’s strategies as the only thing keeping crime from spiking.

Experts have long studied how shifts in crime might be attributed to economic indicators like consumer confidence, unemployment or a faltering housing market, particularly when it comes to property crime, burglary and robbery. The findings have been “rather equivocal,” said Steven F. Messner, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied homicides in New York City.

While there is generally thought to be a lag between changing economic conditions and new crime patterns, he said, it is curious that there has been no pronounced jump in street crimes associated with the most recent recession, which took root last year.

“But it could take a while to work its way through the system and into people’s psychology,” he said. “I would say the jury is still out on the impact of this most recent economic collapse.”

Jesenia Pizarro, an assistant professor of criminology at Michigan State University, said crime was indirectly linked to the economy. Most crime is committed by the poor and uneducated, she said, and a bad economy can aggravate poverty in ways that are not obvious.

“The bad economy leads to social processes that are then more directly related to crime,” she said, citing “less services for youth and young people who are less occupied and don’t have the guardianship they need” or cuts in education “that can lead to crime.”

Another indirect effect on crime is opportunistic: Scavengers steal copper, appliances and “anything else they can get their hands on” from homes foreclosed on or abandoned, said John F. Timoney, a former first deputy commissioner in New York who recently resigned as the Miami police chief. That kind of mini-trend can occur in cities like Miami where overall crime is on the decline, he said.

But anemic tax receipts have perhaps the most troubling effect on law enforcement agencies, leading to cuts in overtime or delays in hiring, according to a survey of 233 police agencies conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group.

“The plans to discontinue special units are especially disconcerting,” Chief Timoney, the group’s president, wrote in the report.

In New York, the Police Department’s head count has dropped to 35,200 officers from a peak of about 40,800 officers in 2001, Commissioner Kelly said. And it could go lower, as the city’s fiscal problems have forestalled hiring and as the department is trying to find more cuts in a budget eaten up mostly by personnel costs.

“My primary concern is resources,” said the commissioner, who blamed the economic crisis for keeping staffing at what he called undesirable levels. “And there’s an impact — a very real impact — on policing.”

Though during his tenure crime has not risen in bad times, Commissioner Kelly said that increased crime and disorder would erode a city’s prosperity.

Public safety is “the foundation of everything else, you name it,” he said. “If you don’t have a safe environment, nothing is going to flourish, except the drug trade.”

armchair_warrior wrote: I think nyc lost alot of poor people over the years due to gentrification. maybe that could count for less crime.

I thought it was the long-term incarceration of poor people en masse for petty offences at higher rates than any country in history...

When I lived in Park Slope, I didn't see many teens employed there either.

The skateboard shop, Park Delicatessen, on the Crown Heights - Prospect Heights border employees some teens, not sure if they are local though.

Maybe I arrive home too early or too late, but I don't see to many teens loitering. I usually skate board North on Washington, then make a right on St Marks Ave. Usually around 2:30 PM or 4:00 PM.