The South Brooklyn Whodunit

Granted, the total numbers aren't great enough that "Fluke" couldn't be the culprit. Still, Barron's had a piece that confirmed that the Q hasn't been flappin' his digital gums over nothing. The article "Homicides Spike in South Brooklyn" by Danny Gold highlights two things: A: There's a lot of random craziness going on around here that runs counter to the record-low homicides in the rest of the City, and B: the phrase "South Brooklyn" continues to be used as if it has any meaning whatsoever.

Was a time when being from South Brooklyn meant something (before there were fake place names like Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill, which is actually a valley by the way, and even Red Hook and Carroll Gardens were known as South Brooklyn), and that's when the precincts and NYPD started to organize around the idea of North and South. If you check the crime stats, you'll see that the NYPD still considers it worthwhile to cut the borough down the middle. As if those in Bay Ridge, Coney Island, Crown Heights, Mill Basin, Flatlands, Midwood and Sheepshead Bay have something more in common with one another than with East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. But if you spend anytime with law enforcement folks, it becomes clear that the distinction is real, and the resources for things like narcotics and serious investigations often happen at the "Brooklyn South" level, which has its own czar of sorts, which most people know nothing about, me included until I wrote a letter to the head of Brooklyn South last fall (Chief Chan, at that time), and it set in motion a whole chain of events where I was getting phone calls to come down to the 70th precinct, the 71st, talking on the phone with precinct commanders, and getting emails from Ray Kelly's office. All as a result of noticing that there's something called "Brooklyn South."

I guess sometimes it pays to meet people where they are.