Sunday, August 17, 2008

Police Activity on the Rise

Between my personal experience and what I've heard from others, the Police have really increased their coverage of the area.

A few signs:
  • A lot more police patrols (cars and scooters)
  • Over the past three days, I've seen the Police offer rides to two people walking home alone at night.
  • I overheard two plain clothes officers discussing their increased shifts in DUMBO while in Starbucks.
  • While walking around at night (in one case back and forth past the same area because I forgot my walled on the way to the store), the Police came out of nowhere and asked me where I was going and why I kept passing the same lane of parked cars.
Just secondary signs, but they're good signs. Let's keep watch.

Everyone, Stay Safe

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

why did you move next door to poverty ridden housing projects a ghetto full of every know social problem in the known universe?

this area has always been very dangerous from the days when it was docks , warehouses and factories.

it was never intended for luxury housing for yuppies. who have time on their hands to write these blogs. did you ever think of giving Square head or his ilk jobs? where are the dock, warehouse and factory jobs now blogger boy to support the families in the projects? do you bother to know that the locals depend on soup kitchens & food pantries to make ends meet? when were you handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving to the locals?

you are only a tool of the real estate developers out to destroy neighborhoods and drive the poor and working class from the borough and to destroy affordable housing.

what are you doing for the neighborhood and the people that where there before you were born?

wake up, it's called the class system. Charles Dickens where are you when we need you?

Anonymous said...

It's called change. Cities change all the time. Neighborhoods go through cycles. New people moving in will help turn this neighborhood around. That's the only way it happens. Dumbo and Vinegar Hill were once prosperous, thriving communities before they fell upon hard times. Then the city tore down dozens of historic brownstones to build Farragut in order to foist off the city's poor into a newly blighted, formerly stable residential area.

Many people in this community give to charity and are involved in outreach programs. Everyone, even those who aren't actively reaching out, has the right to live without fear that they'll be violently assaulted for a dollar.

The new residents in the neighborhood are not responsible for the shuttering of urban factories, shipping, loading docks... These jobs have been falling away for years and you can take your gripe up with the people who have outsourced all of this work overseas. You should also note that the residents in Farragut who are out committing crimes are not usually out trying to steal a loaf of bread for their family -- they're looking to steal the things that law abiding people work and save up for, or simply do without if we can afford them.

Farragut is a wasteland and we should hold the city and the NYCHA solely accountable for the ruins their failed housing projects have become. There is no infrastructure at Farragut. No video cameras. No security guards to keep out the tenants who have committed serious crimes that void their lease. The locks are routinely broken. The decent people who live there have to put up with gangs, drug dealers, and numerous quality of life crimes.

Affordable housing for the city's working class is a great thing. I'm all for it and I'd be happy to live next door to it. That is wholly different from subsidized housing for the city's unemployed, criminal poor. The latter folks are going to wind up displaced, and they have only themselves to blame.


P.S. this statement is completely negated by your opening line:

"you are only a tool of the real estate developers out to destroy neighborhoods and drive the poor and working class from the borough and to destroy affordable housing."

"why did you move next door to poverty ridden housing projects a ghetto full of every know social problem in the known universe?"

-- sorry? this is a description of a "neighborhood" that the new residents have destroyed? Are you joking?