This is in response to several stories I've been reading and event's I've witnessed in the Franklin Avenue vicinity of Crown Heights recently.
I am a born and raised resident of Brooklyn as I often state, I grew up blocks away from Franklin and three weeks ago as I walked through the area on a tree lined street, I was jumped by several guys.
Basically I got mugged.
It was early Sunday morning, I was coming from a popular spot and what I thought was one guy lurking around turned out to be several and they rushed me. Like I have dozens of times I walked past some guys eyes straight ahead and this time these random people decide to grab me. There was nothing I could do at this point but accept my powerlessness. My injuries were not major but they were enough. My belongings were stolen and so was the sense I foolishly allowed, that my neighborhood had improved.
I dont know where to start on this. It's been three weeks, and thankfully I have a enough of positive going on in my life so that I don't have to think about what could have been, but let me say this, I've explained to friends and family what happened with seriousness and jokes and the fact is a group of guys with nothing better to do decided to exert power over my life for a few moments and of course looking at it personally, I can't help but think crime is what's up in the Franklin Avenue section of Crown Heights.
This is what I've observed my timeline, there was the story of the girl hopping out of a car to slash another girl on Franklin near Lincoln Pl. There was the shooter who fired from a roof top on Franklin near Union in the middle of the day as high schools let out a few weeks ago there were several local robberies I heard about through word of mouth more recently, and then I was mugged and just a few days ago a man shot five times on Franklin and Lincoln.
Because Franklin has it's well worn history of being a rough crime ridden avenue people may think recent events are no big deal. The converse is because of the new businesses and new people and general tone of new-ness on some parts of the ave, people may have a more extreme reaction that everything is going to hell in the neighborhood. My opinion is the that while there is probably no overt relation to all these and other crimes, the frequency of the crimes indicates a general disregard among some local residents for the lives and welfare of the rest of us.
To put it plainly there is a crime wave in the area.
We can debate and theorize why this is, I have my own opinions, but let's table that discussion because recently some people in the area have become more brazen and lawless and we need to figure out what to do to get make it clear that there are penalties for these lawless actions. If that means the giant Star Wars AT-AT looking tower comes, back, if that means more cops standing on corners, so be it. Because it's clear there's a growing level of lawlessness going on, and if we don't start doing the little things like calling 311 for our street lights to be working, the bigger things like pressuring our 77th Precinct and local politicians to be active then we are letting the thugs, the cowards and the lawless win.
Note: For details on other recent crimes in the neighborhood check the "
I Love Franklin Ave" Blog. My thanks to the writer of that blog as well for getting those stories out.
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