Just three weeks ago, Deputy Police Inspector Elias  Nikas, commander of the 40th Precinct in Mott Haven, showed up at the precinct’s monthly Community Council meeting with his shoes polished and a big smile on his face.

“I’ll meet with anybody anytime, let’s have a great year!” Nikas said.”

So community leaders reacted with surprise at the news this week that he is stepping down from his command to take another post in the NYPD. And they said he will be missed.

“He had his officers everywhere, he understood the concerns, he knew the importance of leadership,” said Alex Diaz, the Community Council  president. “He was walking on the beat, he was really out there. You could see him and he was at every public meeting, where he answered all questions he can.”

Nikas, who has declined comment on his departure, leaves as the precinct is embroiled in a wide-ranging investigation into ticket-fixing by officers and union representatives in the Bronx. The NYPD has said he is leaving for personal reasons, and will be assigned to the department’s domestic violence bureau.

Community leaders said they saw no link with the ticket-fixing scandal.

“It actually happened many years ago, a long time before he came here,” said Gloria Cruz, the precinct council’s secretary, who worked closely with Nikas.

She said he was always available to discuss problems with community leaders, his own staff and citizens alike.

“He made them accountable for what they do and always tried to find a solution,” she said. “I am proud to have been one of his partners.”

The long-time chairman of Community Board 1, George Rodriguez, echoed Cruz’s sentiments, saying of Nikas, “In all my years going back to my time in Community Board 2 with Fort Apache, he was one of the best.”

“There are ups and downs in our neighborhood,” said Diaz. “We had spikes in gang activity, but we are not the only ones.

“I don’t have any details but I can’t think of him involved in this scandal,” said City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, whose district includes part of Mott Haven.

John DeSio, spokesman for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., said Diaz did not want to comment on the ticket-fixing scandal. City Councilwoman Carmen del Arroyo did not respond to a request for comment.

Mark-Viverito said that although she has only been directly in touch with him a couple of times, she remembers that he knew the neighborhood very well and knew how to avoid violence.

“I found him very attentive,” she said.

Nikas, who is going to work in the NYPD’s domestic violence unit, has been replaced by Deputy Inspector Christopher Mc Cormack, who had been commanding officer of the 20th Precinct in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

“It’s always hard when there is a transition,” said Mark-Viverito. “It’s what happens everywhere, but here we have a lot of challenges, so the change might be a little disruptive.”

The change comes a day after widespread reports that a Bronx grand jury had begun voting indictments in the ticket fixing scandal that has implicated officers and their union delegates, who allegedly made traffic tickets go away for favored people.

The investigation began in the 40th Precinct in December 2008 when police began looking into the relationship of an officer in the precinct to a local drug gang. Wiretaps caught the officer talking about fixing tickets, and the police and Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson launched a wide-reaching probe.

The NYPD tabbed Deputy Inspector Christopher J. McCormack, A 38-year-old Bronx native, as the precinct’s new leader on Tuesday, Sept. 27. McCormack had been serving at the 20th precinct in Chelsea.

Nikas referred questions to the Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, whose office did not respond to a telephone call and email. The New York Post reported that Nikas had asked to be transferred to be able to spend more time with his family.

As recently as two weeks ago, at the monthly Police Community Council meeting, Nikas spoke about how excited he was about the upcoming school year.

Roy Richter, president of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents NYPD brass from the rank of captain on up said there was no link between the unfolding scandal and Nikas’s departure. He said precinct commanders often work 100 hours a week and Nikas left for personal reasons.

According to press reports, as many as two dozen officers and union officials are likely to be indicted for fixing tickets and hundreds more will be disciplined by the Police Department.

“It’s unfortunate the Bronx D.A. has taken two and a half years with this investigation,” Richter said. “I think it minimizes the incredible commitment that being a precinct commander takes. It takes an incredible toll not only on him but on his family.”

The new commander has worked stints in three other Bronx precincts, including one for a special operations unit in Soundview. The day after receiving word he would be taking the helm in the 40th Precinct, he addressed the community board’s monthly meeting. Addressing the recent increase in stabbings and shootings, he acknowledged, “There are some concerns here,” and added “It’s not about locking people up, it’s about stopping crime.”

Five of the defendants were arrested in a massive raid involving nearly 100 officers from three agencies on Sept. 27. Two were already in custody before the arrests, and another remains at large.

Joshua Meregildo and Melvin Colon are charged with murder and could face the death penalty if convicted on the federal charges. Meregildo is charged with the slaying of Carrel Ogarro on July 31, 2010 around 300 E. 158th St.. He and Earl Pierce are also charged with the attempted murder of a rival dealer in September of last year near 321 E. 153rd St.

Colon is charged with killing Delquan Alson on August 27, 2010, around 285 E. 156th St.

The others were identified as Nolbert Miranda, Lebithan Guzman, Aubrey Pemberton, Felipe Blanding, and Javon Jones. All face a range of weapons and drug charges. Miranda is still at large. 

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the indictments on the day of the raid.

“For far too long, narcotics trafficking and the violence it spawns have threatened this Bronx community,” Bharara said, and added “we have taken another significant step toward cleaning up this neighborhood so that residents no longer feel like they are putting their lives and the lives of their children in jeopardy when they walk out their front doors.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the US Marshals Service and the NYPD collaborated in making the arrests.

Members of the Courtlandt Avenue Crew were involved in selling crack and marijuana, and resorting to murder and other acts of violence to defend their drug turf, according to the indictment. Some of the gang members also are alleged to belong to another gang that calls itself God’s Favorite Children.

The five defendants who were taken into custody and the two already in prison were expected in Manhattan federal court on the afternoon of the raid.

This is not the first takedown of Courtlandt Avenue Crew members, a federal official said, and added that it won’t be the last.

Delano A. Reid of New York’s ATF division said the arrests were “law enforcement’s second strike against this violent gang terrorizing the Melrose section of the Bronx,” and added “We will continue to launch an attack against this armed violent gang, its drug dealers and murderers, in order to give back the streets to the Courtlandt Avenue residents.”

NYPD brass had been on alert to the threat of revenge killings between members of rival gangs, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the indictments would help stop the “retaliatory violence among competing crews that plagued Melrose.”

Event organizers Danny Barber (left) and P.O. Irizarry (right) talking with a local resident at National Night Out on Crime (photo credit: Flonia Telegrafi)

Advocates and police partner at Night Out Against Crime

By Kathy Conkwright

conkwright@motthavenherald.com

The first time Angel Irizarry and Danny Barber met one another six years ago, they butted heads.

”I didn’t really like Danny,” said Irizarry, the community affairs officer for PSA-7, the  NYPD branch assigned to patrol public housing complexes in Melrose.

“I’m not sure why. I think we were just coming from two different positions,” he said, recalling their first tense exchange at a local meeting between community and police.

So he thought at the time.

Barber, an outspoken tenant advocate from the Andrew Jackson Houses in Melrose, had his own less-than-flattering opinion of anyone in a blue uniform with an NYPD badge at the time. To him, Irizarry was no different than the others.

Now close friends, Barber and Irizarry joined forces to organize National Night Out on Crime, an annual event held to strengthen police-community partnerships. This year’s Night Out was held at the Andrew Jackson Homes on Aug. 2nd.

Serving up free food, drink, music, a large Spiderman contraption for kids and the spectacle of police officers break dancing, Barber and Irizarry hoped to help thaw relations between residents of Mott Haven and Melrose and local law enforcement.

Although they represent different sides of the community, Barber and Irizarry have tried to bridge the growing divide between cops and residents by getting the two to talk to one another.

“For some reason we’ve lost that connection,” Irizarry said, “especially here in the South Bronx where there’s a real  ‘us against them’ mentality.”

“We do have officers who get crazy and overreact,” said Barber’s brother, event organizer Russell Alston. “But we also have young men, young women and old men who give police a hard time. It goes both ways.”

Irizarry takes rookies on a tour of the neighborhood when they join the department, to meet shop owners, clergy, elected officials and local organizers – all in an effort to learn the neighborhood and forge bonds.

Irizarry’s path to policing started in an unlikely place. He grew up five blocks from Yankee Stadium, and began his career as a community organizer working for a non-profit organization in Highbridge.  By the age of 21 he was coordinating an anti-violence program in the Dinkins administration.

“I didn’t have opportunities. I didn’t have a father,” he said. “I understand that state of confusion and no sense of direction.”

Captain Erik Hernandez, Executive Officer for PSA-7, line dancing with residents

“I want the community to see that we are people, not just robots,” Captain Erik Hernandez, Executive Officer for PSA-7, explained after finishing an impressive round of line dancing alongside community members and police officers.

“A lot of times, he said, “we are just seen as law enforcement and not helping people. I want them to see the human side of crime reduction.”

While flipping hundreds of burgers for residents and police at National Night Out, a soaked towel covering his head to block the smoke and sweat, Alston pointed out that the event gives police a chance to meet people on neutral ground and learn who lives in the neighborhood.

“It makes me feel safer,” said an Andrew Jackson Houses resident named Gerri, “because any other time when the police are around I don’t feel that safe. We really need this to bring the community together.”

But one young man who wouldn’t give his name said the once-a-year outdoor event didn’t change his mind about police. “This is just one day,” he said. “Tomorrow they’ll be back at it the same way.”

“We won’t be here dancing, kids won’t be jumping,” Hernandez responded, admitting that it’s impossible for the police to have a great relationship with the community every day. “There is crime and it is a necessity to enforce the law. Our biggest challenge is to keep this momentum going after today.”

The day before the event there was a homicide just down the street, he pointed out.

“Violent crime happens every day,” Hernandez said, “particularly in this neighborhood.  Sometimes people can feel helpless. We hope this event can give them a sense of hope.”

An iphone displays a four-way view of the Mott Haven Houses lobby that security cameras keep monitored.

Public housing tenants around the city are feeling nervous about their safety, surveys show, and two new initiatives being pioneered in the South Bronx are aimed at helping them feel safer.

But while both initiatives call for security cameras inside NYCHA buildings to help protect residents, housing officials support one, while rejecting a method tenant leaders say would watch out not only for criminals, but for abusive housing workers and heavy-handed police officers.

There are security cameras in roughly a fifth of NYCHA’s 2,602 buildings around the city, to help police protect residents according to the Housing Authority, but tenants remain on edge about crime.

Three of four residents in public housing complexes are “fearful of crime in their development,” according to a NYCHA survey conducted earlier this year. More worryingly, “55% of respondents reported that they do not leave their apartments due to fear of crime,” according to the report.

Some tenant associations have formed patrol programs, with tenants guarding lobbies in some buildings.But these unarmed guards are vulnerable when they try to deny access to people who can’t prove they live in the buildings.

“When they do get in, they may be belligerent,” said John Johnson, president of the Mott Haven Houses Tenant Association.

To address these worries, City Council member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who serves Mott Haven, is pushing to have security systems installed in all the public housing complexes in her district, and not just cameras.

Arroyo has allocated $3.2 million through 2012 to install comprehensive security systems, at the Jackson, Mitchell, Moore, Mott Haven, and Patterson developments in Mott Haven and Melrose, according to her office.

Mott Haven Houses will get a $250,000 federal grant from the department of Housing and Urban Development, to install what NYCHA calls a “layered access control system,” with new intercoms, electronic keys, and mechanical door locks for all building entrances. It would also allow tenants to easily replace or cancel lost keys, and provide remote monitoring city authorities can use to detect any damage to cameras or doors.

“Securing building entrances is essential to improving the security of our developments,” said a NYCHA representative in an email.

The system will operate on fiberoptics rather than phone lines, so tenants would no longer need a landline connection to use the intercoms in their apartments.

Johnson expects the system to be installed in the Mott Haven Houses by early next year.

But some tenant associations say residents should have a greater say in their own safety, and in choosing the security system that works best for them. They are taking matters into their own hands.

Both the Mott Haven and Moore developments have had security cameras installed through an organization called the Digital Divide Partnership, a collaboration between non-profit and for-profit businesses and the New York State Office for Technology. Using this system, cameras stream live video feeds anyone, including residents, can access over the internet.

In addition to increased safety and oversight, the systems installed by Digital Divide Partnership provide free wifi access to building residents, and are solar powered to conserve energy.

The tenant-monitored system would provide more protection than the NYCHA cameras, which are only consulted after police suspect a crime has occurred, its proponents insist.

NYCHA officials disapprove of the initiative.

“As these systems do not meet our security standards, they are not part of the recommendations for future installations,” a NYCHA official wrote in an email,

Yet tenant leaders insist they are within their rights, citing a statute from the HUD Code of Federal Regulations, which states that “HUD promotes resident participation and the active involvement of residents in all aspects of a housing authority’s overall mission and operation.”

“We want a virtual tenant patrol,” said Lou Torres, president of the Moore Houses Tenant Association. Rotating shifts of residents would monitor cameras from their apartments, and call 911 when an incident occurs, he said.

The tenant-monitored system would allow tenants to watch not only for criminal activity, but for abusive treatment of NYCHA residents by police and housing workers, activists add, addressing what they say is a common complaint of public housing tenants around the city.

“We have police here harassing tenants all the time,” said Torres.

Johnson, who serves on a board of NYCHA tenant leaders, was arrested last September while attending a memorial service in the Mott Haven Houses where he lives. He said he fields complaints from Torres about tenants being harassed nearly every week.

“It’s unfortunate that this has to be part of the conversation,” said Councilwoman Arroyo.

“Why not have both?” says Johnson. Using both the NYCHA security systems and tenant monitoring, “It would be more layers of security,” he said.

Danny Barber and fellow LIFE Camp members

Mott Haven organization works to curb growing violence

Danny Barber has been warned that people are out to kill him because he’s trying to keep young people from a life of crime and violence.

Gang members have targeted him because he helped bring a program called LIFE Camp to the Bronx, he says. They believe his efforts could cut into their profits by reducing their ability to recruit young people to help them sell drugs, according to Barber, the Resident Association President for the Andrew Jackson Houses.

“I don’t want to go out like that,” Barber told a crowd on stage following the annual Mother’s Day March Against Gun Violence. “But they keep me going,” he said, pointing at the teenagers by his side. “They’re my joy, strength and will.”

Surrounding him, wearing brightly colored t-shirts saying “I Love My Life!” were members of the new Bronx chapter of LIFE Camp, a youth organization dedicated to helping young people make good life choices and fight against the plague of violence in their neighborhood.

The program, developed by activist Erica Ford in 2003, is built around young people recruiting their peers.

Danny Barber at the Mother's Day March

Ford tells the story of Ronald Merritt, who says LIFE Camp saved his life. A former gang member, he heard Ford speak at a funeral for one his friends, put down his gun and picked up a camera. Now he’s an established cinematographer who shoots most of the videos and public service announcements for LIFE Camp, as well as producing music videos for well-known artists.

Mott Haven resident Keyauana Ramon heard about LIFE Camp earlier this spring, and decided to attend a meeting in hopes of making a difference in her own neighborhood.

“I’ve already lost more friends than I can count,” said the 15-year-old, “and I don’t want to lose another to gun violence, fighting or prison.”

Her friend Soniannette Diaz, like Keyauna a resident of the Jackson Houses, nodded her head in agreement. At the Mothers Day March, she said LIFE Camp has taught her to respect people, and helped her improve her grades.

The week of the Mothers Day March, the 40th precinct reported seven murders. Violent crime is on the rise citywide, for the first time in more than a decade. In the Bronx, homicides jumped by 34%, while rape was up 22%, and felony assaults 2.7%.

In Bronx public housing the problem is more severe. Homicide claimed 27 victims in 2010, compared 13 the year before. The number of shooting victims on Housing Authority properties skyrocketed by 71%.

According to David Kennedy, professor of Criminal Justice at John Jay College and director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, many of these shootings can be traced to anger flaring over a perceived slight or to vendettas governed by a street code born in the prison system that lays out rules about respect

Mott Haven resident Javiel Riveria and his family know first-hand the danger of mixing guns with conflicts. Nine months ago Riviera’s 21-year old son Luis Soto got into a fight with another young man. Shots were fired. The police who responded shot and killed Soto.

“It’s like the wild, wild West out there,” he said. “When I grew up we settled our differences with our fists. Now, if a young person gets angry he just shoots.” Pleading to young people, he asked them to be more responsible and stop the killing.“

I wish they could see how my family has been destroyed, he said. “When you shoot someone,” Riveria added, “You don’t just take the life of the person you killed but you also take your own life and destroy families and loved ones along the way.”

“Guns make young people think they’re in charge of what others do and in control,” said 14-year-old Mott Haven resident Gabriel Cruz. But, says the teenager, kids don’t talk about how they worry every day about whether they’re going to see their friends or their parents tomorrow.

Cruz has already lost his 4-year old nephew and an older step-brother to gun violence. He says he joined LIFE Camp because he didn’t want to lose any more people in his life.

The program starts with a six-week training that provides classes on topics such as non-violent conflict resolution and health and wellness. Using young people’s interest in film and music, it develops leadership skills and teaches them how to turn their passions and talents into businesses.

Barber is looking for funds to keep the program going in the summer, when young people have time to take part in training—and time to get in trouble.

“My life would have been very different had a program like this been around when I was younger,” said LIFE Camp member Lisa Lorenzi.

Before she joined, she said, she would have been afraid to come to an event like the Mothers Day March. Now, she continued, as Danny Barber stood next to her and cheered her on, “Everybody is united and working together. We’re making a movement!”

A version of this story appeared in the June/July issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

$200 bank cards will be given in exchange for working handguns, and $20 will be given to those who turn in an operable rifle or shotgun. NYPD officials say no questions will be asked of those who bring in their weapons.

Grace Temple at 2401 Marion Ave, Bronx Pentecostal at 1755 Watson Ave and Our Lady of Grace at 3985 Bronxwood Ave are the staging areas for this year’s annual gun buyback day, which will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the intention of getting as many guns off the streets as possible

Last year nearly 1,000 guns were given over to NYPD on buyback day.

Tenants John Johnson and Tyrone Saylor say police need to tone down their treatment of Mott Haven's many public housing residents.

Tyrone “Big Ty” Saylor has had problems with his vision since police sprayed him with Mace, after they handcuffed and arrested him last fall.

Saylor, a resident of the Mott Haven Houses, says he did nothing wrong. According to his friend John Johnson, the Resident Leader at the public housing complex, he was guilty of being too big. Johnson says he heard the officer who arrested him say Saylor was “big and intimidating.

“Residents feel like they’re being targeted and harassed in their own homes,” said Johnson, who was arrested along with Saylor.

Many of their South Bronx neighbors echo that sentiment. They charge that police who patrol New York Housing Authority buildings are overly-aggressive and that they single out people of color for unnecessary questioning and arrests.

“How can you trespass where you live?” asked Danny Barber, a resident leader at the Andrew Jackson Houses. An officer once told him he couldn’t sit outside his building because someone might discharge a firearm. Barber said he felt like a prisoner in his own home.

Similar complaints around the city have become the basis of a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Manhattan by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Legal Aid Society and the law firm Paul, Weiss in January, 2010.

In an attempt to reduce tension between police and residents, the NYPD produced new guidelines and provided an hour-long training workshop for officers working in public housing. Representatives of residents joined police to form the Safety and Security Task Force and to produce the rules.

Since then, the NYPD has tried to get the suit dismissed, saying the changes have addressed the issues. But NACCP attorney Johanna Steinberg says these steps alone are not enough to erase the entrenched police practices that caused violations.

The lawsuit charges that residents of public housing and their guests are questioned and arrested without any basis for suspicion. It focuses on so-called “vertical sweeps” that establish checkpoints in and around NYCHA buildings where people are stopped and questioned. It says police make three times as many stops or arrests in public housing than in surrounding areas with similar rates of crime.

Johnson says what happened in September when police took him and Saylor away in handcuffs is typical. The men were attending a Repass—a memorial service—at the Mott Haven Houses when a police officer came to the door and asked who was in charge. When Johnson appeared and asked her if there was a problem, she told him, “When you people get together, bad things happen.”

Barber says he’s encountered the same attitude toward residents of public housing. At a meeting, a police captain told him, “Nothing good comes from the projects,” Barber said.

Though Johnson was released after a few hours, Saylor had to stay overnight, causing him to miss work and a day’s pay. He was initially charged with assaulting an officer, obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct. The first two charges were dropped, and he was told he’d only have to do a day of community service on the disorderly conduct charge. “I’m not taking that,” he said. “That says I’m guilty of something I didn’t do.”

Many public housing residents recall a time when the relationship between residents and law enforcement was not so strained. They believe the problems started soon after the 1994 merger of the Housing Authority Police Department and the NYPD.

Before the merger community police officers were typically assigned to one housing development. Today, police with little knowledge of the communities they patrol make many of the disputed arrests.

“The police officers are not familiar with the neighborhood and the people, and they automatically assume everyone is a criminal,” says Johnson, who still remembers the beat officer who patrolled his area when he was growing up–Officer Watts.

He says Watts came to community meetings and knew everyone. “If you did something wrong he would put you in your place. Tell your parents. He was a strong disciplinarian, but there was as a level of respect.”

When the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani merged the two police forces, the NYPD also adopted a new policy called zero tolerance policing, which focused on low- level misdemeanors like trespassing, disorderly conduct and possession of marijuana. The strategy was to target small offenses in order to prevent more serious, violent crimes.
Gloria Cruz, who heads the Mott Haven-based Bronx chapter of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, believes that strategy was effective. While she says she understands the criticism of the police, she believes their tactics have “been successful in getting guns off the streets.”

Cruz defends the New York approach even though her son was once arrested for sitting on the stairwell of their building. When an officer asked him why he was there, he responded, “Because I feel like it. I can’t sleep.” The officer thought her son was “getting smart with him,” said Cruz, so he “was arrested for no reason.”

She added, though, “He brought the conflict on, because he didn’t just talk to them and show respect.”

Cruz took a 14-week training course for civilians and studied how police officers are trained.  “I was able to see what they saw and learned a whole different side,” she said.

Barber also emphasizes that he doesn’t want to stereotype all police officers—just as, he says, he doesn’t want them to stereotype public housing residents.

Amar Alseid is one of several local bodega owners considering getting to gun to protect his business.

Would guns promote safety or violence?

By Paul Bufano

Last August a drunken brawl broke out at Sam’s Mini Market Deli and Grocery on Willis Avenue. At one point someone pulled a gun.  The bodega’s manager Amar Alseid decided he’d had enough. He wants a gun of his own.

Alseid is one of a growing number of bodega owners who want to fight back by arming themselves. They’ve found an ally in Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America.

“When you have a gun everyone in the area is going to talk about it and they’re going to respect you more,” said Alseid. “I want people to be afraid to come in and cause trouble.”

Mateo’s call for bodega owners to arm themselves with legal weapons to “even out the playing field” has met mixed response. While some echo Alseid, others worry about unleashing an arms race and about accidents and mistakes.

“What I fear will happen is that the robbers will say ‘Well if the owner has a gun we’ll have two guns,’” said Freddy Perez, owner of FPJ Amusements on East 156th Street. “What happens if the brave owner sees someone reaching for a phone in their jacket and acts without thinking?”

Mateo has begun distributing gun license applications to store owners. He said he expects to give out thousands.

Calling his push “Operation: ‘Guns for All’ Bodega Owners,” he points to the killing of bodega owner Juan Torres, 54, on Oct. 23 at Lucky Grocery & Deli in Laurelton, Queens. He says Torres’ death could have been prevented if he had had a way to defend himself.

“You come in to rob a bodega and your life can be taken just as easily as you can take a life,” Mateo said.

Guns have ravaged the Mott Haven community, respond critics.

“Legal or illegal, guns still kill,” said State Senator Jose M. Serrano. “In the end, the police are the ones best equipped to own guns and protect the bodega owners. More guns will make the community more like the Wild West.”

“I believe that we are taking a step backwards where people just shot each other to settle their difference,” said Gloria Cruz, head of the Bronx chapter of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. “The problem is that although all gun owners are mandated to go through training, it may not be enough for them to act properly in moments of distress.”

Security cameras linked to local precincts and secret panic buttons are better options than obtaining a gun, said Cruz.

Mateo says he understands such concerns, but he doesn’t believe defensive measures such as security cameras are enough.

“Come and operate a bodega during the wee hours of the night, be disarmed and be a sitting duck and see how safe you feel,” he said. “You can’t fight someone with a gun. You have to have your own weapon.”

Mateo said that although the police are doing the best they can, they can’t put a cop in every bodega or every small business that’s handling cash.

Some residents, like Edna Green, who has lived in Mott Haven for 18 years, are concerned about accidental shootings leading to unnecessary deaths.

“Shop owners are going to get suspicious and act quicker because they’re going to feel like they have the authority to shoot,” said Green.

Armed bodega owners trained to use their guns would know when it’s appropriate to do so, Mateo believes.

“If kids steal a bag of chips or cause some trouble you don’t shoot them for that,” he said,  “but you may shoot someone if they come in wielding a gun.”

“Ruthless murderers” who have made the choice to rob a store and jeopardize another’s life, don’t deserve any concern, Mateo contends.

“I wouldn’t mourn for someone like that,” he said.

A LGBT supporter showed his colors at the LGBT rally organized by Bronx for Change on Oct. 26. Photo by: Carmel Delshad

In wake of assaults, LGBT community takes to streets

For Bronx leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, “enough is enough.”

United in anger by the highly-publicized assault on four men by members of a Bronx gang, they marched to the steps of the Bronx County Building on Oct. 26, chanting, “It can’t happen again.”

Police have charged members of the Latin Kings Goonies in the Oct. 3 attack in Morris Heights. The victims were beaten, robbed and sodomized with wooden objects in crimes denounced as acts of “vile bigotry and brutality” by Gov. David A. Paterson.

The crimes, coupled with the suicides of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, 13-year-old Seth Walsh and other adolescents, have motivated the LGBT community in Mott Haven and Melrose and elsewhere in the borough to mobilize.

Organizations including the Mott Haven-based Bronx Community Pride Center, the blog “Welcome2Melrose.com,” Boogie Down Bronx, Bronx for Change and the NYC LGBT Chamber of Commerce have formed a two-pronged strategy: persuading LGBT residents to speak out; and educating straight communities about the LGBT lifestyle.

Rev. Carmen Hernandez, the founder of the LGBT Chamber of Commerce, said it is common to keep mum about issues affecting the LGBT community for fear of a backlash.

Straight family members advise “Whatever happens here stays here,” said Hernandez, a lesbian who came out 15 years ago. “That has to stop.”

“It’s a matter of awareness,” said Dirk McCall, executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center. “We need to create a dialogue and conversation between communities and make sure people know there’s a safe space to come to in the Bronx.”

This awareness should also spread within the LGBT community, according to Ed Garcia Conde, who calls himself “The Mayor of Melrose” on his popular blog “Welcome 2 Melrose.” As a gay Latino man, Garcia Conde said he believes a large problem in the LGBT community is complacency.

“We are far from getting the equality that we deserve in this country,” Garcia Conde said. “We really have to mobilize a lot stronger and not take no for an answer.”

Charles Rice-Gonzalez, 46, another gay Latino, says cultural forces are partly responsible for the bigotry and violence. The executive director of the Bronx Academy of Art and Dance (BAAD) in Hunts Point, he said his ethnicity played a large role in shaping his views on homosexuality and those of his peers at a young age.

“I am a black Latino man in this borough and I know that kind of shit happens on different levels all the time,” Rice-Gonzales said of the assaults on gay men.

“I think our cultures have to come clean with that kind of homophobia. From a little kid I was taught that gay was bad, and you could punish a gay person and that was acceptable,” he continued.

Eric Soto, 44, said he never felt unsafe being a gay Latino man in the South Bronx. That all changed the night he became a hate crime statistic.

“I grew up in the South Bronx when this was a war zone. I never felt that sense of fear,” Soto said. “And I didn’t get attacked until I was in my 40s. When I found out about the crimes, it was a moment of panic. The terror came back again, and it was a moment of total paralysis.”

Soto asked himself the same questions many New Yorkers may have asked after the recent assaults: “How long have these crimes been happening that we haven’t found out about them? Did we open a Pandora’s box in the Bronx?”

But Rice-Gonzalez recalled encountering anti-gay sentiment as a child.

“I was seven years old and one kid smacked me on the head and said ‘You’re a little faggot,’” Rice-Gonzalez said. “That stays with me. Nobody in my neighborhood stopped him. He could’ve been one of those guys in the room doing the torture, because he got a message early on that it was OK to smack the faggot.”

The Bronx LGBT community wants to ensure that no one receives that message again. Various rallies and “Queer-affirming” events are planned, targeting both LGBT and straight communities.

Many Bronx gay and lesbian activists remain hopeful that increased media will do more to create a nation-wide dialogue.

“If anything, there has to be something positive that’s going to come out of this. That’s my hope,” Soto said.

Garcia agreed: “In other circumstances, we usually see a buildup of energy for a couple of days and then it falls off. But I think that we held onto it well and I think it’s getting bigger. These are the seeds of the new queer community in the Bronx being sprouted right here.”

A mid-November “United As One” rally is currently in the works, along with a series of town hall-style meetings and educational programs geared towards students.

“We need to get our community back,” Carmen Hernandez said. “We live here. The Bronx raised me, it raised nine brothers and sisters and it raised my mother, and I feel I owe the Bronx this much.”

In their own words: Voices from the Bronx LGBT community

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.