By Jennifer Steinhauer and Sherri Day, The New York Times
Ten years ago, at least 30 shots were fired during a single week in the Bronx, killing 12 people. On a single day in that week, 40 minutes apart, two men were shot and killed within a few miles of each other.
During the same week this year, March 29 to Sunday, not a shot was reported in the Bronx, the police said. The quiet continued until Tuesday.
Citing that startling statistic, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that it was the first time a week had gone by without a single shooting in the borough since 1994, when the Police Department first began using a computerized system to measure crime by precinct.
“If I’d told you 10 years ago or even five years ago that I could stand here and read these numbers,” Mr. Bloomberg said to reporters, “you would have all had smirks on your faces and you’d never write it.”
But just hours after the mayor’s news conference, three people were shot and slightly injured in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, offering a reminder that further reducing violent crime will remain a tough challenge for this administration.
Over the last few years, crime in the Bronx has fallen with the rest of the city’s statistical rates on murder, robbery and shootings. Murder is down by roughly 11 percent this year citywide and in the Bronx, and has fallen in all parts of the city except for northern Brooklyn, where it has climbed by 22.5 percent. Crime continues to fall in most categories throughout the city, as it has for several years now, distinguishing New York from other large cities.
For decades, the Bronx has been so synonymous with crime and misery that movies have been dedicated to its neighborhoods. So it is a small but fascinating moment for a city that has spent the last decade clawing and policing its way to among the safest in the nation.
Otis Vincent, 37, who lives in Harlem and works in construction in the Crotona Park section of the Bronx, remembers when he avoided the parks and other public spaces. “If I had my kids with me, I would be afraid for my kids,” Mr. Vincent said. “I noticed that a lot of kids were getting hit by stray bullets. I never used to take them to the park because it was dangerous. Now, they rebuilt the park.”
The borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., said the week without gunfire was indicative of the general direction in which the Bronx was moving. “We have had a tremendous level of development in the borough, and income levels are rising,” he said. “Young families are moving to the Bronx and people are much more involved in their neighborhoods.”
The decrease in crime in the Bronx can be attributed to many factors, experts said, ranging from redevelopment of its most blighted areas, private investment in housing, demographic shifts and improving police tactics. In the South Bronx, for instance, since 1999 a large increase in privately financed development has led to a tripling of the prices of vacant lots that were once representative of a depressed region.
“When people come here,” Mr. Carrión said, “they are shocked at how neighborhoods that 15 years ago were devastated are completely transformed with families and kids and parks and houses.”
Over the last month in the Bronx, there have been four homicides, compared to 13 in the same period in 2003; a nine-day hiatus from gun violence ended when two men were shot and injured on Tuesday, leaving one of them in critical condition.
The city’s police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said techniques like Operation Impact, a tactic that pours officers into areas where crime persists, have contributed to the decrease in crime. “I think it is an example of good police work,” Commissioner Kelly said in a telephone interview. “I like to also think it shows the success of Operation Impact. Shootings are down 50 percent over last year in our impact zones.”
Mr. Kelly also said that reinvestment along the Grand Concourse and other areas of the borough have helped. “Good things are happening in the Bronx for a variety of reasons,” he said. “One of them is the Police Department’s focus.”
These days, Rosario Sanchez, who has worked as a carpenter in the South Bronx for 10 years, feels comfortable taking his lunch break in a small park at Westchester and Hoe Avenues. He said he would never have lounged in the park before.
“Around this park there were drugs and prostitutes,” said Mr. Sanchez, 52. “Now, nothing like that. The police are working with that.”
Still, many borough residents are leery, given the history surrounding their homes. “Wait until it gets a little warmer; wait until summertime,” said Norfleet Beale, 74, of Bronx River, who was also in the park. He said it was hard to assess crime in the borough “because nobody wants to come out.”
“I don’t want to give your mayor too much credit,” Mr. Beale said. “Wait until summer, then come back again.”