My NYC Crime Rate’s Perspective From Mid 80’s-Present

As a native born Bronx girl, who had lived in this Borough most of her life I know all too well the changes that have come about due to the NYPD.  I have lived in a building where crack heads lurked the hallways, drug dealers peddled on every street corner within the neighborhood, and murder and burglary was at an all time high.  Let’s just say a body was snuffed or dropped every single day, and the police response time was at a turtles pace.  By the time they arrived at the scene the victim whether drug dealer or innocent bystander was dead at the scene, and then it took another half hour to an hour for the ambulance to arrive and cart the body away.  

The crack epidemic changed our lives and neighborhoods for the very worse around the mid 80’s to most of the 90’s.  It seemed every other person on my street was enslaved by this new drug and with it a lot of families were separated due to child endangerment, and the hustle to always have that next hit, which prevented a once devoted mom from buying groceries and exchanging her food stamps for cash in the local bodega.  That next high was much more important than feeding and clothing their children.  It was somewhat of a crime movie in motion, but this was your life.  The drama unfolded before you on a daily basis and their seemed to be no escape.

At the time I was just a teen, but by then I was very street savvy.  I knew which blocks were safe and which ones to avoid.  Block parties were at a minimal due to rival drug dealers trying to establish a spot in others territories, which resulted in more shootings and more innocent lives lost, but I persevered.  I knew this wasn’t the type of neighborhood I would grow old in, and I knew to do better educationally so I wouldn’t stay stuck as others I grew up with have. 

Currently, the drug scene is still there, yet better camouflaged.  Dealers no longer have pushers in corner’s but set-up in apartments, and escape routes in case infiltrated are so high tech these days it truly astonishes me.  In one particular scenario, a weed spot, where they had a key hole removed for easy access to money and the purchase was easily put back in place after each sale, and inside they had cut a hole through the floor leading to the apartment below, which the dealer either paid the tenants to stay quiet, or rented it as well if the cops ever came knocking.  It has become pretty easy for dealers to evade the police by now, and they are just getting a lot smarter.