The Bronx Ink

Weekend mornings in Melrose are usually about sounds that help people relax. There’s the bell from the Church of Immaculate Conception, and soft music from shops that have just opened up for business. So when Maximino Rivera heard shots early on a Saturday last November, he couldn’t believe his ears. Minutes later, he walked in on an armored truck that had just been looted on Third Avenue.

Members of the South Bronx Community Congress, a consortium of various community organizations, demand more jobs to control violence. (NASR UL HADI/The Bronx Ink)

The weekend after, Rivera and other members of the South Bronx Community Congress — a consortium of various community organizations — marched down Brook Avenue in Mott Haven, demanding measures to control the violence. “We haven’t seen such heists since the 70s,” said Rivera, who has been involved with welfare work since 1989. “The statistics may or may not show it, but we can see that violence is becoming a bigger problem.”

Rivera’s instincts are fairly accurate. The South Bronx’s 40^th Precinct, an area of less than three square miles, has reported almost 500 incidents of violent crime this year. More than 90 percent of these are felonious assaults, mostly shootings. In October, six incidents of gun violence were reported on a single Sunday.

Violence has climbed steadily, almost straight up, since 2008. This year’s toll — both overall, and individually for murder, rape and assault — is the highest in at least five years. The count so far is at least 20 murders and 23 rapes; that’s about one of each every two weeks, in a population of less than 180,000.

Statistics

Murders in the community have gone up by more than 35 percent since last year. The last time this number was at par with the average across other precincts in the Bronx was in 2008. Since then, the borough’s average has remained below 12, while the 40^th’s numbers have gone up by more than 50 percent.

The 2006 Community Health Profiles rank homicide among the top five causes of premature death in Mott Haven.

The rise in incidents of sexual violence is even more disturbing. Rapes are up by 75 percent since last year. Also, for the first time in five years, the 40^th has registered more incidents than the borough’s average per precinct.

Assaults in the neighborhood remain at a much higher threshold than the rest of the Bronx, and the gap has been widening consistently. There were 445 incidents of felonious assault in the 40^th Precinct this year, 20 percent more than the borough average of 367.

Analysis

Banners at the residents’ march against violence primarily demanded more jobs and less poverty, as a solution to the spike in violence. “It’s all about connecting the dots between our social problems and violence,” said Raymond Figueroa, who runs a development program for incarcerated youth at Brook Park.

“Poverty and unemployment statistics are like canaries in the mine,” he said. “The minute they start acting up, you know that the situation is becoming dangerous. It’s a circle. Violence happens when people are violated.”

Figueroa explained that there are several jobs in the neighborhood that are just not available to locals, mostly because they are not educated enough. “Our schools haven’t been able to help our children, because they don’t have enough human resources to address our needs,” he said.

New York University’s Furman Center found that more than 75 percent of students in Mott Haven and Hunts Point perform below grade level in reading. In math, that number is almost 65 percent. Eventually these students drop out; more than half the residents in this community do not have a high school diploma.

“These unemployed youth then turn to underground businesses,” said Figueroa. “Prostitution and drug/gun running provide something that is very tangible and immediate.”

This reasoning does seem to hold ground. At least two-thirds of those involved in this year’s murders — both victims and perpetrators — were 25 or younger. Also, all the data charts shared earlier in this text show the 2008-09 recession to be the start of the upward trend in violent crime. During the same period, unemployment in this community doubled, going from about 9 percent to more than 18 percent.

“Joblessness feeds poverty in our community,” reiterated Figueroa, “which in turn makes it difficult for our kids to stick to school.” The 2006 Community Health Profiles estimate the poverty level in Mott Haven at 45 percent, twice as much as New York City overall.

“Poor school-age kids eventually turn to friends on the street for support, and that’s how they become gangs. The Dominicans go to the Trinitarios, the African Americans stick with the Bloods, the Puerto Ricans with the Latin Kings, and so on.”

“We call them gangs, but they think of themselves as street families,” he said. “And these families run the underground economy, which is the source of most violence.”

Footage from a surveillance camera shows the two suspects in the robbery (photo via NYPD)

Shots rang out early Thursday morning on the streets of Melrose near the Hub as an armored truck security guard fired at two thieves who ran off with the bag of  cash he was trying to deliver to a local check cashing store.

The shootout happened just before 8 a.m. outside of David’s Check Cashing on Third Avenue and 155th Street. Police said two unidentified men–one wearing a construction hat and an orange vest–approached the security guard in his armored truck as he was unloading his delivery. The suspects sprayed mace at the Rapid Armour Company guard, who then fired at them with his handgun. The suspects wrestled his firearm away before fleeing on foot down 155th Street, turning onto Elton Avenue and escaping with an unspecified amount of cash.

The shootout occurred early Thursday morning outside of David's Check Cashing in Melrose. (Nigel Chiwaya| THE BRONX INK)

“I just started hearing shots, I didn’t know what was happening,” said Abdel Akaaboune, who works at a convenience store across the street from the check cashing store.  ”I didn’t think it was guns.”

Remnants of the robbery could be spotted at the crime scene. A white construction helmet was dropped in front of the store. A single bullet hole punctured the window of a Foreman Mills across the street, and the front door of the check-chasing store was shattered. Another bullet hit the door of an MTA bus. A trail of blood led up 155th Street toward Elton Avenue. Witnesses said the fleeing suspects left behind a handgun.

Neither the driver, the security guard, nor bystanders were hurt.

Residents said that even though they’re used to violence, this wild-west-like shootout defied belief.

“There have been robberies around here before with knives and things, but nothing like this,” said David Luciano, who owns an auto shop across the street that was robbed four years ago. “To try to rob an armored truck, that takes some serious guts.”

Police  have asked the public to help them identify the suspects. One is described as a 5-foot-4-inch black male, between ages 25 and 40, with a “low caesar-cut hairstyle and bad skin.” The second suspect is a 5-foot-8-inch black male, in his 40s, last seen wearing black sunglasses and a tight black skull cap beneath the white construction helmet that was left at the scene.

Violence in the Bronx has escalated in this week with three shootings in a span of three days, leaving a 4-year-old boy in critical condition and Bronx residents feeling rattled. Click on each marker for more details.

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