After Crime Wave, Greenpoint Residents May Form A Neighborhood Watch
With local crime rising and local police presence actually decreasing (as well as the encouragement of a couple of local politicians), a group of Greenpoint residents is forming what is essentially a neighborhood watch group, Brooklyn Paper reports. After a decade of plummeting crime, it’ll reportedly be the first such group the neighborhood has seen in years.
At a community forum last night hosted by city council member Stephen Levin, assemblyman Joe Lentol, and 94th police precinct commander James Ryan, residents signed up for a new neighborhood group that would have them taking shifts patrolling the area, and also registered a few complaints (one resident who sounds tailor-made for a neighborhood watch group griped, “I sit out front of my house for hours and no police cars go down my street.” Well, sure.)
For their part, Levin, Lentol, and Ryan did their best to assure residents that the spike in crime hasn’t actually been so bad—a disproportionate number of scary statistics apparently come from within a new neighborhood homeless shelter, for instance—with Lentol also promising to introduce a bill classifying violent home invasions as a more serious crime than burglary. Which all seems reasonable enough and appropriately proactive. Just know that if you’re walking around Greenpoint and feel like an old woman is weirdly eyeing you from her porch, you’re probably not wrong.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
