This is an unpublished, original beat story written for the Reporting and Writing I class of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Like any three-year-old, Jayla Taylor has a fondness for candy. But an evening trip to fulfill her craving at a Brooklyn candy store a week ago nearly ended her life.
Little Jayla and her cousins were crossing the courtyard in front of the Kingsborough Houses, where her great-grandmother lives, when a stray bullet grazed the toddler’s head. Though the bullet – an errant shot of a 25-year-old man firing at another person near the public housing complex on the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant – left Jayla with a scar and an overnight stay at the hospital, it was a sinister warning sign that violent crime is far from eliminated in the troubled neighborhood.
“It’s combat, every day, and no one is helping us. Nobody,” said Jayla’s mother, Nekisha McClain, to reporters from her daughter’s room in Kings County Hospital. “It takes my daughter, three years old, to get shot for somebody to come out here. Come on, help us. Help us. That’s all we need is help.”
While the number of murders in Bedford-Stuyvesant today is far less than the “Do or Die” days of the early ‘90s – when the neighborhood had one of the fastest-growing murder rates in the city and area precincts counted more than 100 homicides between them in a single year – the neighborhood is once again deviating from the steep city-wide decline in violent crime by keeping steady pace with last year’s figures, to date 27 murders across the 79th and 81st precincts.
But for residents, the stories tell a considerably more harrowing tale, reading like a police blotter from 1992:
In early January, a male customer of the Happy House Chinese takeout restaurant on Malcolm X Blvd. leapt over the counter and shot a cashier in the face before fleeing. For months, the main walkway of the Tompkins Houses public housing project was spray-painted with the words “WELCOME TO DEATH ROW” in foot-high red letters. Three weeks ago, 15-year-old Fort Hamilton football team lineman Christopher Williams was shot nine times inside his housing project, leaving him with an amputated right leg. And only two weeks ago, a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old were charged with attempted murder after police saw someone squeezing off shots on Fulton St., leading to a wild chase that ended with a flipped car near Lewis Ave. and Decatur St.
The Bedford-Stuyvesant-Brownsville-Crown Heights triangle is still a haven for gun-related violence, said Jackie Kuhls, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
“That’s certainly an area where we see a high number of shootings,” she said. “Like the rest of New York City, it’s mostly illegal guns involved.”
Many guns land in the hands of people that are too young to possess them, Kuhls said.
“Kids in neighborhoods with high shooting rates feel afraid and feel they need a gun for protection,” she said. “It’s a deadly, vicious cycle.”
Police officer William Jenkins said little can be done to combat random violence once shots are fired.
“There’s really no way to stop gunfire,” said Jenkins, a community affairs officer in the 81st precinct. “In general, there’s really nothing you can do. Gun violence is a random thing.”
Jenkins, who has been on the force for ten years, said his precinct uses plainclothes officers who stop and frisk people and detectives who question suspects as the primary tools to battle street violence. However, the precinct’s effectiveness is limited by the day-to-day availability of officers, he said.
“There are less officers since last year,” Jenkins said. “Just less people signing up for the force.”
Kuhls said the gun problem is beyond one precinct or one city and crosses state lines.
“We need to look at where the guns are coming from,” she said. “If young people can run out and buy an illegal gun in a half an hour — which most kids in the city are able to do — you’ve got a problem.”
Preventing gun violence in Bedford-Stuyvesant starts on Capitol Hill, Kuhls said.
“There’s no one solution to gun violence,” she said. “The thought that you can put everyone in prison together and stop it is a fantasy. We need to go to the source.”
Bullets fly in Bed-Stuy
This is an unpublished, original beat story written for the Reporting and Writing I class of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Like any three-year-old, Jayla Taylor has a fondness for candy. But an evening trip to fulfill her craving at a Brooklyn candy store a week ago nearly ended her life.
Little Jayla and her cousins were crossing the courtyard in front of the Kingsborough Houses, where her great-grandmother lives, when a stray bullet grazed the toddler’s head. Though the bullet – an errant shot of a 25-year-old man firing at another person near the public housing complex on the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant – left Jayla with a scar and an overnight stay at the hospital, it was a sinister warning sign that violent crime is far from eliminated in the troubled neighborhood.
“It’s combat, every day, and no one is helping us. Nobody,” said Jayla’s mother, Nekisha McClain, to reporters from her daughter’s room in Kings County Hospital. “It takes my daughter, three years old, to get shot for somebody to come out here. Come on, help us. Help us. That’s all we need is help.”
While the number of murders in Bedford-Stuyvesant today is far less than the “Do or Die” days of the early ‘90s – when the neighborhood had one of the fastest-growing murder rates in the city and area precincts counted more than 100 homicides between them in a single year – the neighborhood is once again deviating from the steep city-wide decline in violent crime by keeping steady pace with last year’s figures, to date 27 murders across the 79th and 81st precincts.
But for residents, the stories tell a considerably more harrowing tale, reading like a police blotter from 1992:
In early January, a male customer of the Happy House Chinese takeout restaurant on Malcolm X Blvd. leapt over the counter and shot a cashier in the face before fleeing. For months, the main walkway of the Tompkins Houses public housing project was spray-painted with the words “WELCOME TO DEATH ROW” in foot-high red letters. Three weeks ago, 15-year-old Fort Hamilton football team lineman Christopher Williams was shot nine times inside his housing project, leaving him with an amputated right leg. And only two weeks ago, a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old were charged with attempted murder after police saw someone squeezing off shots on Fulton St., leading to a wild chase that ended with a flipped car near Lewis Ave. and Decatur St.
The Bedford-Stuyvesant-Brownsville-Crown Heights triangle is still a haven for gun-related violence, said Jackie Kuhls, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
“That’s certainly an area where we see a high number of shootings,” she said. “Like the rest of New York City, it’s mostly illegal guns involved.”
Many guns land in the hands of people that are too young to possess them, Kuhls said.
“Kids in neighborhoods with high shooting rates feel afraid and feel they need a gun for protection,” she said. “It’s a deadly, vicious cycle.”
Police officer William Jenkins said little can be done to combat random violence once shots are fired.
“There’s really no way to stop gunfire,” said Jenkins, a community affairs officer in the 81st precinct. “In general, there’s really nothing you can do. Gun violence is a random thing.”
Jenkins, who has been on the force for ten years, said his precinct uses plainclothes officers who stop and frisk people and detectives who question suspects as the primary tools to battle street violence. However, the precinct’s effectiveness is limited by the day-to-day availability of officers, he said.
“There are less officers since last year,” Jenkins said. “Just less people signing up for the force.”
Kuhls said the gun problem is beyond one precinct or one city and crosses state lines.
“We need to look at where the guns are coming from,” she said. “If young people can run out and buy an illegal gun in a half an hour — which most kids in the city are able to do — you’ve got a problem.”
Preventing gun violence in Bedford-Stuyvesant starts on Capitol Hill, Kuhls said.
“There’s no one solution to gun violence,” she said. “The thought that you can put everyone in prison together and stop it is a fantasy. We need to go to the source.”