Another Day, Another Violent Headline

By a concerned Crown Heights resident

I’ve been wanting someone to write this for a very long time, but months have passed and barely anything has been said, so I guess I will do it myself.

I know I’m not the only one who notices the “occasional” crime update article on this website, titles like:

“Gang Of 4 Teenagers Attack and Harass in Crown Heights”, “Jewish Man Mugged at Knifepoint in Crown Heights”, “Jewish Man Assaulted In Unprovoked Attack”, “Bochur Stabbed Friday Night in Crown Heights”

And the list goes on…

What is extremely upsetting to me is that once I started noticing these articles, I began to realize that these are far more frequent than we would like to admit.

Take notice to how many of these articles you see a month, these antisemitic targeted attacks are happening practically every other week, if not twice in one.

The image attached to this article is merely screenshots I gathered in a couple of minutes just going back a few months of this year (and is not including home invasions, store break-ins/vandalism etc).

I don’t have much to say. But I do have a lot of questions.

How long will we keep on taking this like a bunch of spineless cowards? Can we wake up and realize that these aren’t “one off” random attacks, we are CONSTANTLY being targeted. I do not feel safe, nor do I feel that my family is, living and walking through the streets of our own neighborhood (!!).

I also do not understand why we don’t see the world at large, from corporate to social media, speak of the constant targeting and random brutal attacks we deal with regularly. The only rational explanation I can possibly think of is that they simply aren’t informed about the horrors that go on on these streets, because WE refuse to acknowledge how bad the situation actually is and speak up.

We can continue to pride ourselves in not falling prey to the “victim mentality”, but there’s a fine line between trying to be “the bigger person”, and becoming the pushover.

The reality is that for many years we dealt with knock-out “games”, unprovoked attacks, and muggings, and now we are seeing an alarming increase in stabbings and knife crimes, and just yesterday there was a story involving a gun. What exactly are we waiting for? Will it take another, more drastic form of violence, G-d forbid, to wake us up?!.

Where are all the Crown Heights community activists, with all the important connections with elected officials, constantly filling my news feed?

Are we, the Crown Heights residents only important when it comes to an election? Somehow then, the streets of Crown Heights suddenly become relevant, as they drive their speaker cars filling our blocks with the sounds of targeted Yiddish messaging asking for our vote. What has any of it done for us?

I’m sick and tired of being expected to quietly accept this as the reality.

I want answers, I want change, and I want to feel safe in my own neighborhood [that I pay an arm and a leg to live in, by the way]. Is that too much to ask?

P.S. It goes without saying that we all have tremendous gratitude to the dedicated volunteers of Shmira and Shomrim for their unbelievable devotion to keeping our streets safe. In the name of the entire Crown Heights community, thank you, thank you, thank you, for all that you do.