The Bronx Ink

A 61-year-old woman died after a livery cab driver lost control and the car plowed her through a Bronx storefront Thursday, cops and witnesses said.

Carmen Ahmed just stepped out of Cee & Cee Department Store on E. Fordham Road and Bainbridge Ave. when the car, trying to make a turn at the intersection, slammed into her about 2:45 p.m., cops and witnesses said.

“She screamed when she saw the car,” said witness Sergio Mendez, 60, who works at an electronic store across the street.

“She was thrown backwards through the glass,” he said. “I just heard people screaming and yelling. It was terrible.”

Emergency workers rushed to the scene and freed Ahmed, who was pinned under the car after the crash, authorities and witnesses said.

“There was glass everywhere,” said Luis Perez, 38. “People were running from all directions to help.”

Six others were also injured – a 50-year-old man and 4-year-old girl who were in the car’s backseat; three customers inside the store, ages 35, 40 and 47; and the 46-year-old driver – cops said.

All of the victims were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where Ahmed died later. [NYDailyNews]

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Fr. A. K. Cherian is the vicar of the St. Mary's Orthodox Church. Photo: Yiting Sun

Every four years, Passover, Orthodox Easter and Easter all happen together.  This past week, the reporters of the Bronx Ink fanned out across the borough to report on how the sacred week was celebrated.  We visited churches of all faiths, covered processions, services, and a seder supper at a senior center in Riverdale. Click here for highlights of our coverage.

Edited by Ethan Frogget

By: Ethan Frogget, Umar Muhammad, and Semhar Woldeysus

When “American Idol” featured a dismal portrait of the Bronx in a segment about one of its contestants earlier this year, the borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. wasn’t exactly thrilled.

The Bronx where contestant Travis Orlando grew up was portrayed as a borough full of crime. “They disrespected us in the Bronx,” Diaz said. “They erased two and a half decades of hard work by elected officials, by community leaders, and community organizations. We are so tired of being depicted in a negative light.”

The recent fatal shooting of two young men at West Fordham Road and University Avenue  prompted the Bronx Ink team to take a closer look at the available crime data to see who’s right, the Bronx BP or AI.  The team looked at CompStat gathered by the New York City Police Department.

The results were startling.

Diaz was dead-on when he said that the Bronx had improved in the past two decades. The fact is the crime rate in the Bronx has decreased by 75 percent since 1990. But in three precincts (43, 44, and 52) where crime has also dropped, the share of overall violent crimes remains the same.

These precincts fall within the neighborhoods of Soundview, Norwood, and Morris Heights. Last week’s shooting of two young men (a suspect, Yenfri Ramirez, 16, has been charged with murder and attempted murder)  happened  in the 52nd precinct.

In 1990, 27 percent of murders and 34 percent of rapes reported in the Bronx occurred in these neighborhoods. Even after two decades the proportion of overall remain at 31 and 33 percent, respectively.

What does that mean?

Of the 643 murders reported in the Bronx in 1990, 177 took place within the above-mentioned neighborhoods. Of the 644 rapes reported that same year, 225 were within the same three neighborhoods.

Today, the percentage of the borough’s overall crime remains the same in these neighborhoods. Of the 127 murders reported in 2010, 39 were within the 43rd, 44th, and 52nd precinct. And of the 293 rapes reported, 96 took place within these neighborhoods.

According to a crime report from neighborhoodscout.com, you are twice as likely to be a victim of crime in the Bronx than anywhere else in the country. The crime rate indexes, gathered by various groups on spotcrime.com and clrsearch.com confirm the statistics.

Some say the picture if actually worse. Crime statistics in New York City have come under fire by some who say they do not present an accurate portrait.   The department  has been accused of downgrading offenses to make crime rates appear lower. In January, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that a committee of lawyers and former federal prosecutors would review the crime reporting system. However, the  department claimed that in in more than 500,000 crime reports reviewed annually, its Quality Assurance Division  identified an annual misclassification rate of approximately 1.5%.

“By empanelling experienced, independent, objective experts to review our crime reporting system and the quality control mechanisms we have in place,” Kelly said in a statement to accompany the announcement. “I hope to establish the overall reliability of our statistics and identify any areas in need of improvement.”

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Graphic by Ethan Frogget

The city giveth, and the city taketh away. So it was that Edward I. Koch received a bridge on Monday, and Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff lost a boulevard.

Dr. Kazimiroff, to the unacquainted, was a dentist, naturalist, amateur archaeologist and the first official historian of the Bronx. He once, legend has it, extracted a tooth from the mouth of a live lion in the Bronx Zoo.

Until Monday, he was also the namesake of a few scenic blocks of Bronx thoroughfare running along and through the New York Botanical Garden, a stretch officially known as Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff Boulevard since 1981.

Three decades of posterity came to an ignominious end when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, hours before he added Mr. Koch’s name to the Queensboro Bridge, signed a bill that stripped Dr. Kazimiroff, who died in 1980, of his street and restored the historic name of Southern Boulevard. [NYTimes.com]

A Bronx teen is under arrest following a triple shooting Thursday that left two people dead.

Yenfri Ramorez, 16, faces numerous charges including second degree murder, attempted murder, and manslaughter.

Police say he shot three people near West Fordham Road and University Avenue in University Heights at around 8 p.m. Thursday.

Edwin Liz, 17, Allan Matos, 22, both died after being shot in the torso. A 40-year-old man was also taken to the hospital after being shot in the leg. [NY1]

The Bronx‘s Community Board 7 has been crowned as the borough’s “rat king,” according to numbers released by the city Health Department.

Out of 4,027 buildings that were inspected throughout Norwood, University Heights, Jerome Park, Bedford Park, Fordham, and Kingsbridge Heights last year, 564 of them – 14% – had signs of the rodents.

“We’ve known about [the rat problem] now for three years and we’ve been trying to work with the Health Department to solve it,” said Community Board 7 District Manager Fernando Tirado. “They have cut their pest control inspectors so it makes it very difficult when we have an obvious problem to address when the city doesn’t consider this a priority.”

Sixty-three pest control jobs have been terminated under the city’s budget cuts.

And fears of rats running wild have been fueled in recent days by YouTube videos of them scampering through subway cars. [NYDailyNews]

More than 50 people were killed in pro-democracy protests in Yemen last week. For some in Bronxdale, the conflict is personal.