Murder is down, but petty crimes on the rise in bad economy

Residents say prostitution is on the rise in Hunts Point, where in the evenings, several can be found on the corner of Lafayette and Hunts Point Avenues.

Amar Ndiaye calls his street vendor stand a “luxury item boutique.”

While passersby of the five-foot long plywood table may not define the 51-year olds’ street stand as either “luxury” or a “boutique,” it nevertheless has been a prominent fixture on the corner of Westchester Avenue and Southern Boulevard for the past eight years. Ndiaye, a resident of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, sees his stand as his occupation. Opening at 11 a.m., and closing at 9 p.m., the revenue he receives from selling his wide range of “luxury goods” supports his wife and two kids.

Colorful belts, faux-leather purses and neon-colored cell phone cases hang on top of the racks of Ndiaye’s stand. Oddly shaped sunglasses sit on a shelf below his table, along with a wide assortment of “I Love NY” key-chains and gold-colored watches. “How much is this?” asked Nikaya Wilson, 16, as she held up a bright green BlackBerry case. “Thirty dollars,” Ndiaye said, barely looking at the girl.

Ndiaye says he rarely makes eye contact with customers, but rather, is busy watching where their hands are. “This street is too busy,” he said. “People just come and take whatever they want without paying.” Ndiaye’s fear of shoplifters is not the result of paranoia. Each month, he loses more than $200 in revenue from people who steal from his table. Petty theft, said Ndiaye, has been a constant nuisance for both him and other street vendors in the neighborhood. Last week, after trying to apprehend a teenager he caught shoplifting a $50 watch, Nidaye was punched in the face. He still has a bruised lip to show for it. “It wasn’t worth it,” he said. “Sometimes, I think I get too old for this business.”

While many merchants along Southern Boulevard echo Ndaiye’s woes, statistics from the NYPD show the crime rate in Hunts Point is down by 6.3 percent this year compared to 2008. Crimes such as murder, rape and robbery, once commonplace in the neighborhood, are increasingly becoming an anomaly, which violent crimes have collectively decreased by over 70 percent since 1993. While so, many residents in the area say petty theft, drug use and prostitution are on the rise, especially within the past year. These crimes, whose numbers are not publically reported by the police department, are what many residents believe is the result of the Bronx’s high unemployment rate from the current recession; driving many to commit crimes in order to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

Jose Gau, 45, has lived on Longwood Avenue his entire life. He remembers the days of the “real Fort Apache,” the nickname given to Hunts Point 41st precinct in the 1970’s, when the neighborhood’s crime rate was at an all-time high, and murder incidents in a given year were well over 100. “You shoulda’ seen it back then,” Gau said, as he stood behind the glass counter of Mobile Communications, a cell phone store he opened up ten years ago on Southern Boulevard. “You couldn’t walk out at night… actually, you couldn’t walk out during the day… there was just gunfire all the time.” The 1970’s were a low-point for Hunts Point and much of the South Bronx. Widespread arson, homicide, and armed robbery occurred in broad daylight, causing 60,000 residents, nearly two-thirds of Hunts Point’s population at the time, to leave the area. It was not until the 1990’s that the neighborhood re-populated, which the community was zoned to bring in large industries, including the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, luring in new residents seeking jobs. In 1992, New York City’s housing department invested in 3,600 new housing units to replace those destroyed by arson, allowing the population to increase by over 16 percent over the following decade. Since then, Hunts Point’s population has continued to grow, and new business districts, such as the row of commercial shopping found on Southern Boulevard, began to develop.

Photo Credit: Rob Sgobbo

With the neighborhood’s population back on the rise, police presence has increased. Federal funding in the 1990’s enabled New York City to hire 7,000 new policemen, many of whom patrol the city’s most crime-riddled neighborhoods, like Hunts Point. “There’s a cop on every corner,” said Gau. “Inside stores, waiting outside stores, everywhere.” With more patrolmen on the street, and the installation of closed-circuited surveillance cameras on street lamps, residents say Hunts Point is barely recognizable from its ugly past. According to police statistics, since 1990, the neighborhood’s murder rate has gone down by 93 percent. While in October of 1990, there were 44 homicides, this year to date, there have only been four. A similar trend is seen with robbery and rape in the neighborhood, which incidents have fallen by 73 percent and 45 percent, respectively. “The police definitely did a good job,” said Gau. “It’s a totally different neighborhood.”

Even though Hunts Point’s turnaround in violent crime is astounding, many residents in the community claim the neighborhood’s quality of life has improved little since the 1990’s. John Robert, the district manager for Community Board 2, which encompasses Hunts Point, said the NYPD’s statistics do not reveal crimes that affect neighborhood residents on a daily basis. “The police department only gives the numbers for seven different crimes,” Robert said. “These crimes, which are your more severe crimes, for the most part, are going down. But it’s the things that are harder to track that you’re seeing more of.” CompStat, a weekly report released by each NYPD precinct, only discloses records for murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of automobiles. But for Robert, it’s crimes such as small theft, drug use and prostitution that he wants to see trends for. “These are the things people see all the time,” Robert said. “Those numbers I would really like to know.”

Gau finds the drop in violent crime comforting, but says it’s not an excuse to “get comfortable.” Shoplifting at his mobile phone store is a normal occurrence. “I have to write off close to $300 a month,” Gau said. “People come up, and steal cell phones that I’m showing them on the counter. They just take it, grab it and run out of the store.” Gau now refuses to sell phones to teenagers without their parents present, after a young man stole a $150 Blackberry phone. “I’m getting tired of it,” he said. “But you just have to suck it up and just deal with it.”

Petty theft is not the only common crime in Hunts Point. Grand larceny, which in New York state is defined by the “physical taking” of property worth $1000 or more, is one of the few types of crime recorded by CompStat that has shown a steady increase over the past several years. Since 2001, incidents of grand larceny have gone up by more than 54 percent, including a sharp increase of 13 percent this year alone. Burglary is also on the rise, with a 6 percent increase from this time last year. Officer Dan McNulty from the 41st precinct said this year’s rise in grand larceny and burglary is not without reason. “It has a lot to do with the economy,” he said, as he stood on patrol outside of GameStop, a popular video game store on Westchester Avenue. “People are out of the job, people have less money. A lot of people have been stealing bigger priced items from peoples’ homes and stores,” he said. “I think we might see more of it until the economic situation gets better.” In August, the Department of Labor reported unemployment in the Bronx rose to 13.2 percent, over three percentage points higher than New York City’s average. For McNulty, the unemployment numbers show the struggle many Bronx residents are going through to support themselves and their families. “People are doing more desperate things for money,” McNulty said. “They steal items, then sell them off to pawn shops. People are trying to keep money coming in by stealing. But businesses are hurting too in the recession, and the shoplifting doesn’t make matters better.”

For residents of Hunts Point, many are more fearful of the crimes not easily seen by police patrolmen, particularly drug use and prostitution. “People ten years ago used to shoot up heroin right on the street,” said Gao. But with the increase of patrolmen in the 1990’s, Gao said, these seedy crimes have moved indoors. “Drugs and prostitution are still here,” said Officer McNulty. “The amount has stayed the same over the past few years, and some say it’s gone up recently. Since it’s now happening in private buildings, it’s harder to catch.”

Ricardo Soto, 48, who lives at 1275 Lafayette Avenue, three blocks away from Southern Boulevard, said he’s witnessed incidents of drug use in his building over the past year. “I’ve been living in this building for three years,” he said. “There were stories about how bad it used to be here… but that was like ten years ago, and it wasn’t bad when I came in. But just this year, I’ve been seeing some shady stuff.” Over the past few months, Soto has noticed non-residents in his building’s lobby, smoking marijuana and crack. “I find the stuff left over on the floor the next day, it’s disgusting,” he said. “A lot of people are trying to find an escape… people are out of the job, have no money. They’re depressed.”

Robert said he has received more complaints this year than in previous years from residents like Soto who find drug users, and increasingly, prostitutes, in the lobbies and courtyards of private residences. “There have been reports of prostitution on Lafayette Avenue,” Robert said. “But these things, the numbers aren’t made public. I’m sure the police are working at it, and we know it’s out there, but there’s no numbers on it.” Soto agrees. “Prostitution is a major problem. But it’s in the buildings. It’s not out in the open like it used to be,” he said.

As Amar Nidaye began to dismantle his “luxury boutique” by wrapping up his plywood table and sales racks in a blue tarp, he said he tries not to think too much about the state of his neighborhood. “It was once bad,” he said. “Then it got better… and now, well, I just don’t know how it is.” While so, he lamented over the hardships many in Hunts Point currently face. “I feel bad for the people who need to steal,” he said. “It hurts people like me, but they also must be hurting. People must be pretty desperate to steal my $5 sunglasses.”