Cool in Crown Heights
CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn — The touchy, sometimes volatile relationships between black and Jewish residents of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights have frayed, with members of each community blaming the other for violent attacks aimed at youngsters.
In January, a Jewish teenager needed stitches after being jumped by black youths shouting epithets. In April, a black college student got pepper-sprayed and clubbed by a man police say may be a member of a Jewish community patrol. And Friday, another Jewish teen was beaten and robbed by black perpetrators.
There have been no arrests, prompting complaints from black and Jewish residents, along with irresponsible accusations that police are shielding lawbreakers of one group at the expense of the other.
We’ve seen this movie before, and it can end badly. The 1991 riots that racked Crown Heights were preceded by ethnic grievances that city officials were slow to recognize and inept at easing. Fortunately, City Hall is not standing idly by this time.
Community affairs aides have been circulating to maintain communications among local leaders and neighborhood organizations. And the NYPD has responded aggressively, and evenhandedly, to every incident. But still, there are tensions.
Some critical messages must get through. First is that crimes, both basic felonies and hate crimes, should be treated as individual acts, representing the mind-set of the perpetrators only and not of a larger community.
As our colleague Errol Louis, who lives in Crown Heights, wrote on Sunday, “Where the conversation goes haywire is when people retreat into their tribal corners, seeing every crime as a skirmish in some larger ethnic war.”
The second critical message is that the NYPD will come down hard on retaliation, should any occur. And the third message, perhaps the most important, is that all of Crown Heights shares the goal of reducing crime.
Like all of New York, the neighborhood is far safer than it used to be. Major crimes are down more than 75% since 1990 in the two police precincts that cover Crown Heights. But in one of those precincts, the 77th, the number of murders climbed from nine in 1998 to 15 in 2007, with the pace picking up further this year.
Recognizing the trend, the NYPD has assigned special anti-crime troops to the area. That is exactly what’s needed, along with a concerted, cooperative push by all parties to assist in battling crime. While also taking to heart that something as simple as a smile and a greeting to one’s neighbors can add small drops to the reservoir of goodwill.
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reader
Good article. Crown Heights also needs more security cameras,in buildings too, in addition to cops-cops can’t be everywhere.
concerned
Police see a double standard in Crown Heights. Chassidim do not want to turn Jews in to cops but insist that they find perpetrators of crimes against Jews. Blacks feel that Jews get more police protection when they see more police when something happens to a Jew which brings even more feelings of animosity from blacks.
These issues also need to be addressed.
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Cool have any more pics great pics from the marach great pics thanks thanks
Chillin in the Heights
To CONCERNED:
You arrogant revisionist!
Conveniently leave out half the narrative.
The jewish “assault” did not occur in a vaccum.
And History in Crown Heights did not begin with that assault.
For how long have jews been assaulted, mugged, had rocks/bottles/pipes thrown at them before this “assault”?
Jews, or any other citizen group, for that matter, owe nothing to anyone in return for equal protection of their person and property.
How dare you equate this ONE incident of retaliation to the countless unprovoked attacks that have the Jewish community cowering and fearful to leave their houses.
Are the Joneses and the cops looking over their shoulders when they see a group of bochurim? You know the answer and you also know it is because Jews do not go around RANDOMLY ATTACKING INNOCENT CIVILLIANS!!!
As for the lack of police protection in the black communities – they should also protest to demand more of it -BUT WHY SHOULD 2 WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT???
WHY SHOULD ANY CITIZEN FEEL AFRAID TO WALK OUTSIDE?? WHY SHOULD ANY CITIZEN BE SUBJECT TO A REALITY IN WHICH EVEN WERE THERY TO FINGER THEIR ASSAILANT THERE WOULD BE NO ARREST!
NO! the POLICE owe the jewish community an apology and a huge change in attitiude. -NOT the other way around.
Tell me, concerned, if there were wittnesses who came forward in the Shmira case, do you think the Officer on Kingston who did nothing while watching the biker would have acted any differently?
Journalist should report, not distort
“with members of each community blaming the other for violent attacks aimed at youngsters.”
A good example of a journalist with good intentions (trying to be fair,) going overboard and distorting the context of the problem.
You need to be doing mental gymnastics to ignore the obvious distinction between a trend that is decades old – Regular violent attacks on Jewish kids – and an isolated occurrence – the rare beating of a black kid in self-defense by a Jewish patrol member.
chanie m
i agree with CHILLIN…. we have a bunch of naiive,liberal, narrowminded people that think they know it all. Maybe the statisitcs wouldnt be so low if they actually RECORDED ALL the incidents.
concerned
I did not say I feel that way but if you look on the police blog sites that is what they write. Blacks also say they feel the same way about Jews getting more protection. While this is not what I feel, this is how the police and blacks perceive things; and the way they perceive things, even if they may not be true, have an effect about how they deal with the Jewish community.