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Troubled Norwood Intersection Worries Merchants, Residents

By DAVID CROHN

Crime can happen anywhere. And it does, everywhere. But why is it worse near 205th Street and Perry Avenue in Norwood?

The NYPD doesn’t track crime statistics for areas that small, but anyone who’s passed through recently has seen the graffiti covering the walls there. (The Norwood News featured the block in a story about graffiti removal efforts about a month ago. A week after the story ran, vandals returned with a fresh assault.) Business owners and residents familiar with the intersection and the surrounding area can attest to the drug transactions they see on a daily basis, often in broad daylight.

“It’s starting to look like the South Bronx,” said Allan Freilich, of Freilich Jewelers on East 204th Street. “If you’re a resident, there’s a certain pride about where you live and this kind of thing ruins the neighborhood.”

It’s getting so bad that residents and business owners are taking notice, and starting to mobilize. About 50 people met March 18 at St. Brendan’s Church — at the corner of 206th Street and Perry — to address quality of life in the neighborhood. Co-organizer Julio Paneto said parishioners were prepared to take their concerns directly to the 52nd Precinct and to area elected officials. He also said a graffiti cleanup day was tentatively planned for the block. “It’s such a large area with so much graffiti — it sticks out and we want to make it an example,” said Paneto, a local resident.

In the past month, 205th and Perry has seen arrests for vandalism and armed robbery, according to Lt. Jerry O’Sullivan of the 52nd Precinct. Because the vandals were under 16, their names haven’t been released.

But for every arrest, there are many incidents in which the offenders escape, free to attack again along one of their favorite stretches of the neighborhood.

On the night of March 10, Nasir Mia, a cab driver who lives in the area, was attacked as he left a store on 205th and Bainbridge at the end of his shift. The muggers took his money and left him in the hospital with head injuries and broken teeth. They were never caught, said his uncle, Mohammed Hussain.

“We used to have more officers there and crime was really down—now you see no one,” said Hussain, who has owned a grocery store on Perry near Bainbridge since 2001 and has lived around the corner for 12 years.

Hussain, like other people from the neighborhood the Norwood News spoke to for this article, said police don’t patrol the area. He says Mexican gangs such as the Locos and the Bainbridge Boys have made the intersection their own. “I’ve complained so many times,” he said. “Bloomberg is a good mayor but he is taking cops off the street.”

Bill Curran, who has owned McKeon Funeral Home on Perry for six years, said, “Gang influence has run rampant over here.” The writing is literally on the walls nearby, where the word “LOCOS” is featured prominently in much of the graffiti near 205th and Perry. The walls are prime real estate for spray painters looking to mark their territory.

(Police differentiate between violent gangs and rowdy cliques; they consider the Locos to be the latter.)

“Something needs to be done,” Curran said. “It’s a horrible feeling to walk around and think you are going to get jumped.”

According to O’Sullivan, the immediate area surrounding the intersection is one of the few that is still patrolled by officers walking a beat. “We’re out there, but I recognize their frustration,” he said.

But another business owner, who preferred not to give his name, said he sees almost no police presence there, especially after dark. In the past year, he said, “People don’t feel safe. Drugs have moved here to Perry Avenue.”

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