new to ch

Subject: Re: new to ch

maple wrote: A friend and I (both females) are thinking of moving to the area. We found a place on Prospect Pl between New York Ave and Nostrand and were wondering if anyone can tell us what the area is like and how safe as one of us works rather late and would be walking from the subway at night. Thanks for your replies.

I've lived on Park Place bet. Nostrand and NY for 5 1/2 years. I've got a wife and two teenage boys. We come and go at all hours to the 3 train on Nostrand. My sons have had a few run-ins but so did they when we lived in Park Slope. Some people prefer to walk NY Ave to EPW. My preference is Nostrand because there are more people around, even late at night.
There's a great community group based on your block. It's called Crown Heights Revitalizaiton Movement and its headed by Rachel Pratt and Jonathan Snyder who live at 802 Prospect Place.
Good luck!

Circumstances Made Him a Hero, and Then Cost Him His Life
John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Cynthia Allen, center, whose son, Damon Allen, was killed by gunfire in the street, was consoled outside her apartment building in Brooklyn by a friend, Cynthia Gomillion, left, and Karen Tapper, whose daughter, Imani McCovery, Mr. Allen saved during a fire a year ago.

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By MARC SANTORA
Published: September 5, 2006
A sanitation worker who caught a 4-year-old girl last year as she was thrown to safety from a burning building was shot in the head and killed early yesterday on a Brooklyn street, the police said.

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Damon Allen

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John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Damon Allen's Sanitation Department valor medal and work boots outside his Brooklyn apartment.
The man, Damon Allen, 33, was once again trying to help others, the police and witnesses said, urging them to take cover from the crossfire of a gun battle that erupted around 2 a.m. in Crown Heights.

In homes and on streets across the neighborhood, thousands of revelers, some in costume, some playing steel drums, were celebrating J’ouvert, a celebration held every year on the eve of the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade.

“Nearly one year ago, Damon Allen was the city’s hero for saving the life of a little girl,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said to reporters at the parade yesterday. “Today he lies dead, the victim of an apparent random shooting.”

Three others were shot, and two of them remained in critical condition at Kings County Hospital Center, according to the police, who did not release their names.

The violence may have been sparked by a dispute over a robbery nearby; by all accounts, Mr. Allen had nothing to do with the dispute.

There have been no arrests in the case, but the police said they believed that at least two people fired shots because two guns were found at the scene, one a .40-caliber automatic weapon and the other a pistol.

Mr. Allen had been attending a birthday party for a friend on Prospect Place, the street where he was shot, witnesses said.

Because of past problems during J’ouvert, which originated in a commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies in the 19th century, the police presence in the area was heavier than normal. During the parade itself, someone was shot in the leg and another person was stabbed at a different location, the police said. Both were expected to survive.

Before the violence in the morning, police officers stopped by the house on Prospect Place where the birthday party was taking place around 1:15 a.m. to warn the people there of suspicious activity nearby, including a robbery on Nostrand Avenue, according to a witness who declined to be quoted by name, expressing fear of becoming a target. Shortly after the police left, the witness said, several strangers approached the house and tried to get in. They were told to leave and they did, but they lingered outside. The host of the party was growing anxious and tired and asked all the guests to go home.

The guests, including Mr. Allen and other neighbors and family and friends, filed into the street just before 2 a.m.

A cousin of Mr. Allen’s, Debbie Griffin, who lives a block from where the shooting happened, said that as everyone was leaving, she heard sustained bursts of gunfire.

“I ran around the corner,” she said. “They are yelling out names. ‘He’s hit! She’s hit!’ ”

Other witnesses said that Mr. Allen reacted quickly, telling several young women near him to hit the ground.

A similar account was given by Vito A. Turso, a deputy sanitation commissioner, who was briefed about the death.

“He cautioned everyone to get down,” Mr. Turso said. “And as he was doing so, he was hit in the head.”

Ms. Griffin said that almost immediately after the gunfire, more than a dozen police officers were chasing after people.

“I have never seen a sea of blue like that,” she said. Then she heard someone scream: “A man is down. A man is down.” The next thing she heard was someone else shout: “It’s Damon. It’s Damon.”

As the ambulance took Mr. Allen to the hospital, his mother, Cynthia Allen, ran after it, screaming for her son, witnesses said. Mr. Allen was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

Yesterday there were pools of blood on both sides of Prospect Place. Smashed glass littered the street and cars sat on airless tires, punctured by bullets.

Mr. Allen lived a block away with his mother. Yesterday, she was inside during the parade, wailing uncontrollably. Her daughter, Natasha Allen, 26, a student at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, tried to comfort her.

“From what I understand, he was looking out for others instead of looking out for himself,” she said, before taking a reporter up to her brother’s room.

There, hanging on the wall, he kept a blue-and-gold medal, a citation for valor he was given by the city last year after saving the 4-year-old, Imani McCovery.

Last Sept. 14, Mr. Allen and his partner, Michael Kalinowski, were returning to the sanitation garage around 4 a.m. when they noticed smoke pouring out of a nearby building and heard frantic cries for help.

They made their way to the building, where the girl’s panicked father was holding her over a third-story balcony. Mr. Allen had the father toss the girl down to him and caught her. His partner then helped the father down.

Mr. Kalinowski, in an interview yesterday, recalled that they both just reacted on instinct. “We didn’t think like we wanted to be a hero or nothing like that,” he said.

Mr. Kalinowski, who continued to work with Mr. Allen picking up trash in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn several days a week, said that Mr. Allen often talked about his two daughters, who are 5 and 13.

“He was basically just a real nice guy,” Mr. Kalinowski said. “He wouldn’t put himself around bad people, and that is why this is so devastating to so many people. We couldn’t believe it.”

Karen Tapper, 35, the mother of the young girl Mr. Allen saved from the building, said that she had kept in touch with him ever since that day. She reflected that without Mr. Allen, she might not have a daughter today.

But while he was there to save her life, she said, “Nobody was there to save his.”

Diane Cardwell and Ann Farmer contributed reporting for this article.

You ever see "Do The Right Thing?"

As some of the other posters stated, Nostrand is fairly safe to walk down. It is well lit and it does have a consistent police presence. Using the 3 train to Nostrand and then walking down is the best way to go IMO. If you want to catch the bus, you can catch the B44 at New York Avenue and Eastern Parkway. It would probably be about 2 stops and that bus is fairly consistent in it's running times.

The shooting of Damon Allen was truly a sad thing for the community. If I remember correctly it happened just before Labor Day. I did have the privilege of speaking with his mother one day when I was in the neighborhood and realized what a powerful force this man was in the neighborhood even after the tragic events. His shooting was not the norm in the neighborhood though, as it has become a lot safer over the years that I have lived in Crown Heights.

mr. met wrote: crown heights is not safe compared to the upper east side of manhattan. it is safe compared to east new york and brownsville.

Real compared to what?
If you are a cop who spends his days responding to 911 calls, then you probably would think Crown Hts was mad dangerous, because that's all you see.
On the other hand, if you're an average citizen who doesn't spend his days listening to the police radio....
As noted earlier I've lived a "normal" life in Crown Heights for over 5 years and haven't witnessed anything out of the ordinary. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let some over ripe cop drive me out of my new n'hood because he has spent his entire life pouring over crime statistics! Nor am I going to be frightened by some guy who reads the crime reports in the local papers but has never set foot in the n'hood and thinks he knows something about what it's like to live here.

Apparently you havent seen the Mural of Death on the corner of Park Place and Nostrand ave.

Capt. Planet wrote: As noted earlier I've lived a "normal" life in Crown Heights for over 5 years and haven't witnessed anything out of the ordinary.

as with the concept of "safe", "out of the ordinary" is rather subjective.

personally i find the number of impromptu memorials for people who have been killed on our streets quite "out of the ordinary" at least by "safe neighborhood" standards

face it, ch wouldn't have an impact zone if it didn't have a relatively bad crime problem but that doesn't necessarily preclude having a "normal" life here

i don't find anything wrong with identifying the issues, that's the first step to change, but kwac, com'on, crazy sh*t happens everywhere in this town

King without a crown wrote: Apparently you havent seen the Mural of Death on the corner of Park Place and Nostrand ave.

I've been walking by the mural since 1987 when my company started selling condos in the area. But it never fired a shot at me. Nor stabbed me in the groin, for that matter!

Sure I've heard about all of the horrid stuff that KWAC cites. But I was also living on 10th St and 5th Ave when some local thugs from Windsor Terrace murdered the nice shoe repair guy on the corner of 10th St and 4th Ave just for the few dollars in his cash register. As Neene says, nasty stuff happens all over Brooklyn, not just Crown Heights. Just read the police blotter in the Park Slope Paper or Courier. It's filled with all kinds of foolishnes.
KWAC, what's the point of dumping on Crown Heights. To scare the residents to death? Do you think that if they stay indoors, crime stats will go down? I would argue just the opposite. The more we withdraw, the more the bad guys take over the place.

Anonymous wrote: King without a crown is a cop who makes it his personal mission to insult crown heights and spread fear..

Um...If I'm not mistaken, this thread was about the safety of a certain block in Crown Heights. I simpley replied with a recent article of an incident that occured on that block. Capt planet responded with an attack on Police and cited that he lives a normal life and nothing happens around him. So I cited another article of a person murdered on his corner and made mention of a Mural that has members of the community that have been murdered in that area in the past 20 years. I don't think I insulted any Crown Heights residents nor is it my "personal mission" to spread fear. I spread information, if the result is fear, and a need to attack the poster, so be it.

lilbangladesh wrote: KWAC, that's ALL you do. Plus construe any sort of criticism of your approach as an "attack". You are one of the more thin-skinned posters on here.

That said, your post was unusually relevant in that it had to do with the block under discussion, rather than say, warning me off going to Q by posting about another bar in a totally different part of the neighborhood.

I stand by my logic

Subject: Re: It has character

queenalijean wrote: I get called some sort of white slurr at least five times a week.

Huh. Maybe I'm ignorant of slurs directed toward me, or maybe people are less likely to be outright in their slurs toward a pretty big guy like myself, but I don't know that I've been the subject of (m)any smears...

Sorry to hear that some people have a rough time in Crown Heights. For another perspective, I have not seen much crime where I am located and life is not cheap to the people that I know. I don't see a lot of arguments and it is generally a nice place to live.

March 5th -- 1 dead in Brooklyn...
An unidentified 31-year-old black male was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in the lobby of a building at 1338 Sterling Place in Brooklyn, police said yesterday. No arrests, no motive.

yea, where on st. marks did that guy get killed?