In the sometimes separate world of public housing, a realistic fear of crime lingers over 400,000 tenants — and it’s getting worse.
Many of the working people and elderly who make up the vast majority of New York City Housing Authority residents live in a constant state of hyper-awareness to avoid becoming a victim.
Records obtained exclusively by the Daily News reveal that in the last five years, public housing tenants have been battered by a stubbornly resilient spike in crime.
NYCHA’s 334 projects saw a 31% spike in major crime to an eight-year high, while the rest of the city experienced a 3.3% increase, the records show.
“It’s out of control. It’s out of hand,” declared a frustrated Patricia Herman, 61, who’s lived in the Lincoln Houses in East Harlem since 1979.
At Lincoln, murders, rapes, assaults, robberies, burglaries, auto theft and grand larcenies — known as the “seven majors”— nearly doubled from 33 in 2009 to 60 last year.
A bullet tears through a senior citizen’s living room window. Drug dealers ply their trade openly.
For many NYCHA tenants, stepping alone into an elevator or returning from the drugstore as the sun drops below the horizon can be a heart-thumping moment.
The NYPD data, made public for the first time, breaks down crime project by project, and reveals many developments have experienced an eye-popping spike in major crime between 2009 and 2013.
While murders declined slightly (from 62 to 58) and shootings dropped slightly (from 224 to 209), assaults rose 40%, rapes went up 13%, robberies increased 24%, burglaries 28% and grand larcenies 51%.
The rate has continued to climb in the first quarter of this year.
Sometimes it was a bloody domestic dispute. Sometimes it was a smash-and-grab theft of smartphones. Often it was related to the growing number of loosely affiliated “crews” whose penchant for violence seems to grow each day.
Deputy Chief Gerald Dieckmann of the Housing Bureau said the department’s increased efforts urging victims to report domestic abuse have contributed to the rise in recorded felony assaults and grand larcenies.
In 2010 about 36% of Housing Authority assaults were domestic, with the rate jumping to 54% last year.
“Basically, almost the whole increase is domestic-violence-related,” said Dieckmann, adding that some robberies are the result of domestic disputes as well. “I think that talking about it so much and our education efforts is part of the reason why it’s being reported.”
He also acknowledged that the growth of crews has contributed to more violent crimes in public housing, noting that for most, “It’s not about crime, but turf.”
Just last week the feds took down the Murda Moore Gangstas, a crew charged with dealing drugs out of the Moore Houses in the Bronx. Prosecutors said the group was constantly at war with gangs from four other NYCHA developments in the Bronx.
Since 2009, the feds have taken down gangs across Brooklyn NYCHA developments, including Gowanus, Marcus Garvey, Farragut and the Marcy Houses. But major crimes continued to rise.
Most recently the city was horrified when a 14-year-old shot a passenger on a city bus while aiming at rivals from a Marcy-based gang.
Susan Kim, 44, who’s lived at Marcy since 2007, has requested a transfer because she no longer feels safe.
“Six months ago we were sitting in the park,” Kim recalled. “We heard the gunshots. We ran. They were shooting. They do it in the daytime like it’s nothing — even when cops are around, they still shoot.”
It’s like a crime drama on some days.
“I tell my husband I’d rather not pay for cable and watch what happens outside my windows,” she said. “There’s more action out here than on TV.”
At the Van Dyke Houses in Brownsville, major crimes jumped from 55 in 2009 to 82 last year — the most of any NYCHA development. For tenant Donna Saunders, 48, those numbers hit close to home.
She said her teenage son was robbed of his phone at knifepoint in an elevator five years ago. Since then, his personality has changed.
“My son stays in the house,” she said.
The mom told The News her son knows who did it, but he didn’t tell cops. So the crime isn’t reflected in the statistics.
“You don’t want issues with people because they’re not fighting,” she said. “They’re shooting. They want to kill you.”
The Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn had the second-highest number of major crimes last year: 76, up from 46 in 2009. To some, that’s better than the bad old days of 1992, when crack-fueled gang wars raged and the principal of a nearby school was gunned down searching the projects for a truant student.
“It was like, how do you say it, the gunfight at the OK Corral,” said longtime tenant Bernethea Curry, 64. “You’d be sitting on the stoop and they’d come by and say, ‘You better go back inside. We’re going to be shooting tonight.'”
But others say it’s gotten much worse recently, despite a big NYPD takedown of drug gangs there in 2006. Claude Davis, 70, blames young men dealing drugs and fighting meaningless battles over self-defined territory.
“Up until now it was pretty nice,” Davis said as an NYPD cruiser idled nearby. “We didn’t have as much drugs out here. (Now) you see a lot of young people selling drugs. It’s the little gangs fighting over certain turf.”
Across NYCHA, the constant threat of random confrontation alters behavior. Tenants come home from work and stay in all night.
At the Lincoln Houses in East Harlem, an elderly tenant dashed to the back of her apartment when a bullet ripped through the window.
“Since then she doesn’t like to come outside,” said Herman, Lincoln’s tenant association president. “She is fearful, apprehensive — even going to her mailbox.”
Herman describes tenants living in a constant state of anxiety: “There’s fear all around here. You never know when someone’s going to pop out shooting at someone.”
In August, six of the Democratic mayoral candidates spent a night at Lincoln. Two days later, a 23-year-old tenant, Olivia Brown, was murdered outside the building where the candidates slept.
“It’s just getting worse,” Olivia’s mother, Crystal, told The News last week. “People getting killed for no reason. Where are the politicians now?”
The Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City had 72 major crimes last year — the highest in Queens. Lillian Muller, 86, and her friends have a special door-knock pattern so they know who’s at the door.
“If they knock more than that, I don’t move. You never know who’s going to come around. You don’t know if they’re carrying a gun or knife.”
The spike in crime has occurred despite multiple efforts to make the projects safer.
The late Jack Maple, who was deputy NYPD commissioner for crime control strategies, more than a decade ago touted new techniques to target crime in the housing projects.
Crime did drop within NYCHA, as it did across the city, year after year. But starting in 2009, it began to rise again within public housing at a rate that far surpassed the simultaneous rise citywide, statistics show.
NYCHA and the NYPD have recently initiated multiple efforts to turn the tide.
Starting in 2012, NYCHA says NYPD increased “vertical” patrols in buildings at 12 developments deemed as a “high crime risk,” but would not disclose which developments got the stepped-up security.
That year, the NYPD also created “impact zones” at Soundview and Castle Hill in the Bronx that featured increased police presence. But major felonies at both of those developments has continued to climb, records show.
And last year NYCHA finally installed security cameras at 81 developments, but only after The News revealed they’d sat on money set aside for years for that purpose.
The NYPD says a crackdown in 2012 called Operation Crew Cut targeting violent crews has had some impact.
Some of these efforts have angered residents, who say they’ve been unfairly stopped and questioned by police simply coming and going from their homes. A federal civil rights lawsuit is pending.
“The NYPD regularly reviews crime data and other conditions potentially impacting upon the safety of NYCHA residents in order to identify any possible trends,” the NYPD and Housing Authority said in a joint statement to The News. “Where such trends are noted, the NYPD works closely with the members of the resident community, as well as NYCHA, other agencies and various interested parties in developing strategies for effectively addressing these safety issues.”
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.
