I work in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is predominantly lower class black, along with lots of French speaking blacks from Caribbean area, with a smaller, but very visible community of Hasidic Jews. Unfortunately it's not one of the safest neighborhoods in New York City...
I'm sometimes a bit nervous walking from the subway station to the office. It's about five or six blocks, but I go through the sort of edge of the neighborhood where I see the ethnic mix pretty strongly.
This New York Times article from early December last year mentions that there had been 66 shootings up till that point in the year in Crown Heights. Later in December there were at least two more murders that I know of, both on the same block as our office. One was a body the police found in the empty derelict building directly across the street. The other was an armed robbery gone bad in the laundromat in the same building as our office.
After the laundromat one a coworker of mine recognized the victim as someone he hadn't met but saw in the same Russian immigrant synagogue he went to, so he bought a bullet-proof vest that he wears everything he comes in and out of the office, even for lunch or a quick walk to the office of our biggest customer, two doors down from us...
Now that my apartment lease is almost finished I mentioned at work that I'm about to start looking for a new apartment. One of my coworkers, who lives a few blocks from the office asked, "why not move ot Crown Heights?".
I told him I don't feel very safe there. He said it's safe, there's nothing to worry about. I mentioned I feel a bit uncomfortable walking to the office from the train station and he said "well, that's just the fringe of Crown Heights where it's a bit rough, other parts are much nicer." I mentioned the two murders in December and thought about it and said even his wife doesn't feel safe there, but he hadn't really taken her seriously before, but now that I brought it up she might actually have something...
In any case, I'm more interested in the Park Slope neighborhood for now...
I'm sometimes a bit nervous walking from the subway station to the office. It's about five or six blocks, but I go through the sort of edge of the neighborhood where I see the ethnic mix pretty strongly.
This New York Times article from early December last year mentions that there had been 66 shootings up till that point in the year in Crown Heights. Later in December there were at least two more murders that I know of, both on the same block as our office. One was a body the police found in the empty derelict building directly across the street. The other was an armed robbery gone bad in the laundromat in the same building as our office.
After the laundromat one a coworker of mine recognized the victim as someone he hadn't met but saw in the same Russian immigrant synagogue he went to, so he bought a bullet-proof vest that he wears everything he comes in and out of the office, even for lunch or a quick walk to the office of our biggest customer, two doors down from us...
Now that my apartment lease is almost finished I mentioned at work that I'm about to start looking for a new apartment. One of my coworkers, who lives a few blocks from the office asked, "why not move ot Crown Heights?".
I told him I don't feel very safe there. He said it's safe, there's nothing to worry about. I mentioned I feel a bit uncomfortable walking to the office from the train station and he said "well, that's just the fringe of Crown Heights where it's a bit rough, other parts are much nicer." I mentioned the two murders in December and thought about it and said even his wife doesn't feel safe there, but he hadn't really taken her seriously before, but now that I brought it up she might actually have something...
In any case, I'm more interested in the Park Slope neighborhood for now...
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