History > 2007 > USA > Crime, violence (I)

John Odgren, 16,

at arraignment Friday in Framingham, Mass.,

with his lawyer, Jonathan Shapiro.

Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe

Student Slain in School Hall; A Classmate Is Held in Jail

NYT

20.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/20stab.html

DEA busts ring accused of sending tons of drugs to USA

Updated 2/28/2007 10:02 PM ET
USA Today
By Donna Leinwand

Federal agents arrested 66 people Wednesday in a multi-city sweep of an alleged drug ring that is accused of bringing five tons of cocaine a month into the USA, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced.
The Drug Enforcement Administration said leaders of the Cazares drug operation, headquartered in Mexico, have been indicted on charges of laundering money and trafficking in massive amounts of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine from Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico.

The drugs were sneaked into the USA via the southwest border with Mexico, the DEA said. The latest arrests bring to 402 the number of people charged in connection with the drug ring, the agency said.

The DEA said its nearly two-year investigation has resulted in the seizure of $45 million and thousands of pounds of marijuana and cocaine and hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine. Wednesday's arrests occurred in cities in California as well as Phoenix and Chicago.

The investigation began in 2005 when federal agents in Imperial County, Calif., stopped a pickup packed with marijuana, the DEA said. The find led federal agents to Victor Cazares-Gastellum, DEA spokesman Steve Robertson said.

Cazares and his operatives moved cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia through Central America and into Mexicali, court papers said. Traffickers drove the cocaine and other drugs over the border in tractor-trailers outfitted with secret compartments, according to the court papers.

The drugs were stashed in houses in California until they could be repackaged and moved to distributors throughout the country, court papers said.

Cazares controlled regional and street-level trafficking cells in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington, the DEA said.

"Not only are they moving large amounts of cocaine, but also methamphetamine," Robertson said. "We've been seeing meth sources changing from local labs to Mexican superlabs."

Cazares remains in Mexico and has not been arrested, Robertson said. U.S. authorities will ask Mexican officials to execute a provisional arrest warrant, he said.

    DEA busts ring accused of sending tons of drugs to USA, UT, 28.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-28-drug-bust_x.htm

Drug czar reports drop in drug use

Posted 2/9/2007 11:56 PM ET
AP
USA Today

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Illegal drug use in the United States has dropped sharply since 2001 but abuse of prescription drugs remains a problem, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said Friday.

John Walters said that President Bush's anti-drug plan for 2007-08 is to reduce prescription drug abuse by 15% over three years. The administration ranks the problem second only to marijuana.

The plan singled out the pain reliever OxyContin as one of the prescription drugs most abused. It calls for more states to adopt prescription drug monitoring programs to prevent "doctor-shopping" to get prescriptions for more drugs.

Walters said overall use of illegal drugs among young people is down 23% from 2001, with 840,000 fewer teenagers using drugs now. He credited drug testing for much of the decline and urged its expansion in schools. He also said abuse among older people declined.

About 1,000 school districts carry out drug tests, which can trigger an intervention that keeps a young drug abuser from carrying the habit into adulthood, Walters said. Despite some concerns for invasion of privacy, he said, the United States will "look stupid in five or ten years if we don't do this."

Walters said the data came from a survey done at the University of Michigan for the National Institute For Substance Abuse. The report says about 19.7 million Americans reported using at least one illegal substance in the previous month.

In Washington, D.C, Bill Piper, director of affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, called the strategy a "spin on the failure of the war on drugs."

He said in a statement that despite incarcerating millions of Americans, drugs are as available as ever and the related harms of addiction, overdose, and the spread of disease continue to mount.

Piper said drug use rates are less important than whether the death, disease, crime and other suffering associated with abuse go up or down.

    Drug czar reports drop in drug use, UT, 9.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-09-drug-use_x.htm

On streets of Philadelphia, crime is back

Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:40 AM ET
Reuters
By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - On a cold January evening in southwest Philadelphia, a police patrol responds to the latest shooting in a neighborhood that is deadly even by the standards of America's most dangerous big city.

A man in his early 20s jabbers into a cell phone about someone who just shot him in the backside. Several police officers surround him, trying to get a description of the assailant, who fled perhaps five minutes earlier.

At the scene of the shooting a couple of hundred yards (meters) away, police find bullet holes in a wall. A woman emerges from a nearby row home and says she heard three shots. She shakes her head in shock at the latest violence in her neighborhood -- the city's 12th Police District -- where 39 people were murdered last year, the most of any district in the city.

Violent crime in America is on the rise again after a decade of decline. FBI figures for the first half of 2006 showed the number of violent crimes up 3.7 percent compared with a 17.6 percent drop from 1996 to 2005. In 2005, murders rose 4.8 percent to almost 17,000, the highest level since 1998 and the biggest increase in 15 years.

In Philadelphia, homicides rose 7 percent to a nine-year high of 406 last year, giving it the highest murder rate per 100,000 people among America's 10 biggest cities, according to a survey of police departments by the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, which keeps runs a tally.

Philadelphia, with a population of about 1.5 million, also has the highest poverty rate -- 25 percent -- among those cities.

The deadly cocktail of poverty and violence mirrors that of some other major U.S. cities such as Houston and San Antonio, where poverty rates are similar and homicides registered double-digit increases last year. New York City, which has a poverty rate of 19 percent, recorded a 9 percent increase in homicides last year, although its murder rate is a quarter of Philadelphia's.

In southwest Philadelphia, violence and poverty go hand in hand. In three local zip codes covered by a recent City of Philadelphia survey, at least 15 percent of adults are unemployed, almost a third of high school students don't graduate, and around four in ten meet federal poverty standards. Many poverty indicators in the neighborhood, where 78 percent of residents are black, exceed those for the city as a whole.

POVERTY, DRUGS AND GUNS

For police officer Gretchen Flanagan, who has been patrolling the 12th District for nine years, the soaring murder rate is the result of poverty, drugs, guns and the decline of a sense of community that once encouraged local people to cooperate with police but has now been undermined by fear of retribution against anyone suspected of helping them.

There are some 38,000 gun licenses issued by the City of Philadelphia but many illegal guns are on the street, partly thanks to "straw purchasers" who buy multiple guns on behalf of people -- such as those with a criminal record -- who are not legally permitted to own them.

Pennsylvania lawmakers, many from the state's rural hinterland, won't allow cities to make their own gun laws and last year defeated a plan to limit handgun sales to one per person per month statewide.

"Pennsylvania legislators can be blamed for a large share of the homicide rate in Philadelphia," said Professor Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.

On the streets, Flanagan, 31, and her partner Tramaine Montague, 25, do what they can to nurture good relations with a community that is increasingly hostile to the police. As darkness falls, they pull up outside a corner convenience store where three black boys in baggy jeans and baseball caps are hanging out.

"Come on guys, roll off the corner," Flanagan says in a firm but friendly tone, enforcing the district's new policy of cracking down on minor infractions like loitering in an effort to prevent more serious crimes like drug dealing that are more likely to occur when people are allowed to gather in a public place. The boys move on.

Later the same night, the mood sours when Montague handcuffs a driver who gets belligerent after being found with a suspended license. While the car is stopped in the man's neighborhood, his mother shows up and begins abusing the police.

"He ain't one of those drug dealers you ought to be stopping," she yells. She accuses the police of detaining him because he's black, until a passer-by points out that one of the officers, Montague, is also black.

The officers remain calm, and treat the driver with as much respect as they can muster but they are under no illusions that their world is tough and getting tougher.

"Things have gotten much more violent," said Flanagan. "Every year, it seems to get a lot worse."

    On streets of Philadelphia, crime is back, R, 31.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-31T074000Z_01_N25451267_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CRIME-PHILADELPHIA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Police kill sword-wielding South Dakota teen who killed mom and attacked officers

Updated 1/27/2007 3:35 PM ET
AP
USA Today

HURON, S.D. (AP) — Police killed a teenager who they said used a sword to kill his mother and injure three other people, including an officer.

Investigators had not determined the motive for the attacks, Chief Doug Schmitt said Friday.

"We don't have any background or any events leading up to the assault this morning that would give any indication of a motive," he said.

Officers called to the family's home Friday found 14-year-old Rebekah Gilchrist with several cuts on her lower arms and hands. The officers then spotted her brother, 16-year-old Josh Gilchrist, swinging a long sword, Schmitt said.

Schmitt said the boy struck one of the officers several times before the others fired several shots, killing him.

Police then found the body of the boy's mother, 49-year-old mom Betty Gilchrist, and an injured foreign exchange student.

Police said the boy's father, Jon Gilchrist, was not home during the attacks in the east-central South Dakota town.

Schmitt said he believes Josh Gilchrist collected swords.

Rebekah Gilchrist was taken to a hospital in Sioux Falls. The exchange student, whose name was not released, and the officer were treated at Huron Regional Medical Center and released, authorities said.

Four officers were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, standard procedure when police fire a gun.

    Police kill sword-wielding South Dakota teen who killed mom and attacked officers, UT, 27.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-27-sword-teen-killed_x.htm

Cities see crime surge as threat to their revival

Updated 1/24/2007 11:05 PM ET
USA Today
By Haya El Nasser

LOUISVILLE — A minister who regularly conducts prayer vigils against violence and counsels crime victims is beaten by a gang of youths. Five people are shot and wounded at a community festival. A softball player is shot and wounded at a game, in front of 100 witnesses. One person is killed and four wounded in a shooting outside a funeral home as people gather for a wake.

These crimes happened in very public settings here last year — two of them within 2 miles of the heart of this Ohio River city's downtown. Such incidents inevitably give communities the jitters, but cities are especially skittish now because the nation's violent crime rate is rising after more than a decade of decline, and the stakes are higher.

The drop in crime helped spark an urban revival that attracted thousands of residents and billions of dollars of investment to downtowns from Louisville to Miami, St. Louis and Denver. Now, city leaders across the nation are fearful that crime will kill the renaissance.

For a city such as Louisville, where downtown is flourishing, keeping crime in check is paramount. More than $1 billion has been invested in the commercial heart of the city this decade. By 2010, at least another $1 billion is expected to come in. Five hotels are set to open, and the 2000 housing units now downtown are expected to double by 2009.

Rising crime "has the potential of being damaging," says Jerry Abramson, mayor of Louisville from 1985 to 1998. He was elected again in 2002 after Louisville merged with surrounding Jefferson County; he was re-elected in 2006. "We all live day by day in terms of concern of some horrific thing happening in our central business district that would set us back."

Murders and robberies continued to rise nationwide during the first six months of 2006, according to the FBI, and violent crime overall appears headed for a second straight year of increases. Mayors and police chiefs regularly assure the public that violent crimes still are confined mostly to poorer drug- and gang-infested areas, but they are sounding alarms:

•One of the first sessions at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' winter meeting that began Wednesday in Washington tackled initiatives to fight rising crime. Mayors are calling for a federal-local partnership to stem double-digit increases in murders, assaults and robberies in some cities.

•The National League of Cities has put the surge in violent crime on its legislative agenda, calling it one of the major challenges affecting quality of life.

•Mayors and police chiefs from about 55 cities who met last fall identified many factors pushing up crime rates: gangs, drugs, truancy, a growing culture of violence among youths, a profusion of illegal guns, unemployment and a wave of more than 600,000 ex-offenders finishing their prison terms and returning to the streets every year.

Government 'walked away'

Abramson and some other mayors also blame the federal government for cutting funding for crime prevention and phasing out a Clinton administration program that added 100,000 police officers nationwide. They say Washington's focus has shifted to homeland security at the expense of hometown security.

"The consensus is that the federal government walked away from that partnership," Abramson says. "Crime all of a sudden begins to ratchet up but police on the street have ratcheted significantly down. We draw a correlation."

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse disagrees. "The increase in violent crime in some areas does not appear to be related to federal spending for law enforcement," he says. "DOJ spending has never accounted for more than 4% of total spending on state and local law enforcement."

Trenton, N.J., Mayor Douglas Palmer, president of the Conference of Mayors, met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this month. He hopes cities can gain more support now that Democrats control Congress.

"Over the '90s, cities have made great strides in coming back, revitalizing neighborhoods, but we've seen an escalation of violence," Palmer says.

"We have fewer police officers in our cities now than ever, with a greater proliferation of guns on the streets. … It is of the highest priority." Signs of the trend:

•The Police Executive Research Forum, a national police advocacy group, reported in October that murder, robbery and assaults had increased substantially in a cross-section of cities. The title of its report: A Gathering Storm— Violent Crime in America.

"There was a general sense that crime for most communities had dropped to such levels that it no longer was the issue that it was in the '90s and '80s," says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the police group. "We've seen a volatility in crime that we haven't seen in the previous eight years — and not just in the inner cities."

•Preliminary FBI data released last month show that violent crime rose 2.2% nationwide in 2005, the largest annual increase in 14 years and the first since 2001. In the latest statistics available, violent crime rose 3.7% from January to June 2006 compared with the first six months of 2005. Murders went up 1.4%, felony assaults 1.2% and robberies 9.7%. Property crime dropped 2.6%.

•The FBI has directed more than 100 additional agents to help local authorities fight violent crime.

Justice Department teams visited 18 cities in November and December to determine why violent crime is spiking in some cities and not in others. They met with state and local law enforcement "to gain a better understanding of what is causing this increase and determine which efforts had been most effective in helping fight violent crime," Roehrkasse says.

•Orlando had 49 homicides last year, more than double the 22 in 2005. About 60% were linked to drugs. In Memphis, homicides rose from 118 in 2004 to 160 last year. Crime is down in Los Angeles and Chicago. In some cities, homicides are down, but robberies are up.

"We had a general rise in violent crime in not all but most cities in every region," says David Harris, professor of law and values at the University of Toledo College of Law.

'Perception is reality'

Mayors find themselves in an awkward spot. On one hand, they want to publicize their crime problems to get more funding. On the other, they worry that too much crime talk will create a negative perception of cities and scare off people.

"It has a very detrimental effect on what mayors work on each and every day to try to entice businesses to come," Palmer says. "Perception is reality."

Adds Harris: "City officials are quite aware that whatever progress they've made in attracting new residents and bringing people back to live in the city would be at risk if people didn't feel safe."

Cities must deal with crime head-on, says urban historian Joel Kotkin, author of The City. "We all hoped that the days of relatively high crime rates had come and gone," he says. "We now know the problem is not going away."

Many cities are taking action:

•In Trenton, homicides spiked to 31 in 2005 but dropped to 18 last year. More than 70% were gang-related, Palmer says. "We took down the leadership of nine gangs," he says. "They're in jail."

The city is cracking down on truancy and providing job training while redeveloping deserted industrial areas, getting rid of 5,500 deserted properties and building 1,600 homes for working families.

"We're making our cities more livable, but it's all inextricably tied to the whole crime piece," Palmer says. "We need resources."

•In Milwaukee, 1993 saw 160 homicides, a record high. By 2004, it had a record low 88. They climbed the next year to 122, then inched down to 103 last year.

"We did see probably a 20% increase in other categories of violent crime … an increase in armed robberies and shootings," says Mayor Tom Barrett, a former congressman.

Barrett and other mayors are working to strengthen background checks of gun buyers. He launched a fatherhood initiative to address the problem of absentee dads. He cut firefighting staff to start the year with 1,970 sworn police officers, the highest number since 2000, but is struggling to fill almost 200 vacancies, he says.

Downtown is thriving. About 14,000 people live there, 10 times more than a decade ago. Waterfront high-rises are going up. Work is starting on The Brewery, a multimillion-dollar conversion of the 26-acre old Pabst brewery complex into a residential and commercial center. The site borders downtown and inner-city neighborhoods.

"Our downtown is very safe," Barrett says. "I'm concerned about violence that occurs in other parts of the city."

•In Miami, overall crime is down, but homicides are up.

"The market is literally being flooded with assault weapons coming from Eastern Europe, the old Soviet bloc countries," Police Chief John Timoney says. Guns such as AK-47 rifles are selling for $150 to $200 compared with $700 or more not long ago, he says.

"Every jerk who wants one can have one," Timoney says.

Crime, he says, is not affecting Miami's downtown, where thousands of condominiums have been built or are planned. "But I was in New York when there was an all-time record high of homicides," he says. "Three kids were killed. Tourists from Utah were killed in the subway. When you start getting untraditional killings, that's when you get people's attention."

Louisville is proactive

While violent crimes in Louisville have occurred away from downtown, the city has been proactive. Security cameras were installed in high-crime areas and neighborhood watch programs strengthened. Police on horses and bicycles patrol the Fourth Street Live area of clubs, stores and restaurants. The city has razed low-income housing and built mixed-income housing.

"Downtown is one of the, if not the, safest geographic areas in our community," Abramson says.

So far, 70 homicides in 2004 (the highest since 1997 when there were 85), 64 in 2005 and 51 in 2006 have not quelled downtown's resurgence. The Muhammad Ali Center opened in recent years, the convention center was expanded, and an arena is planned. The city soon will break ground on Museum Plaza, a $465 million, 61-story skyscraper that could transform Louisville's skyline.

Police Chief Robert White has reached out to the community since he arrived four years ago. "If we're going to have a long-term effect in fighting crime, we have to get people engaged," he says.

Billboards across town advertise a 24-hour crime tip line, 574-LMPD. The first month in operation, 123 calls came in. Two years later, about 2,000 calls on average led to at least 30 arrests every month. Police credit the tip line with solving 18 homicides and shutting down three methamphetamine labs.

Donnie Morris, who lives in the high-crime West End, runs Prevention 2000 to teach children about gun safety, drugs and other threats. He and his wife, Jefferson County District Court Judge Joan Stringer, encourage churches to report anonymous crime tips they receive from their congregation.

"Areas that are most affected by crime are the ones that don't call the police, but they'll call their clergy," Morris says.

Phil and Kathy Scherer are the kind of empty nesters that many downtowns are attracting these days. The two had always been downtown boosters. After 33 years in the suburbs, they decided to "walk the walk," says Kathy, 58.

They bought a 3,000-square-foot penthouse in Preston Point, a striking modern building with a view of the river. She says she feels more comfortable being alone at night there than she did in her old suburban house.

Young people crowd the streets on their way to a skate park nearby. Joggers run by the waterfront. Mounted police trot past.

"We have always hoped that Louisville would have that 24-hour component," says Phil, 63, a city native and president of a commercial and industrial real estate firm. "I don't see crime as a deterrent."

Mayors hope it stays that way. The police executive association, however, expects the trend of rising crimes to continue this year.

"Robberies are occurring in parts of cities that didn't normally have robberies," Wexler says. "Cities are concerned."

Contributing: Monica Hortobagyi

    Cities see crime surge as threat to their revival, UT, 24.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-24-crime-surge_x.htm

Police in Ind. Search for Kidnapped Kids

January 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:02 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) -- Police searched for four children and their mother after a gunman shot a man and held the woman and children hostage for about nine hours before forcing them into a car and fleeing, police said.

Police on Saturday issued an Amber Alert and said the children and their mother, 31-year-old Kimberly N. Walker, were in extreme danger. The children range in age from 16 months to 9 years old, authorities said.

Police were looking for Jerry D. White, 30, and believed he might be headed to Chicago after the shooting in the northern Indiana city. Detective Sgt. Bill Wargo said an arrest warrant with charges of attempted murder and several counts of confinement had been issued for White.

Police said White had apparently been harassing Walker, his ex-girlfriend, over the last few days, and her sister and her sister's boyfriend had decided to stay with her and the children.

About 2 a.m., White broke into Walker's house and shot her sister's boyfriend, Wargo said. Police said he held everyone hostage until about 11:30 a.m., when he fled and Walker's sister was able to call police.

The boyfriend was in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, police said.

    Police in Ind. Search for Kidnapped Kids, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Indiana-Shooting.html


 

A fire engulfed a home in Fishkill, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City.
A family of five was found slain inside the house. The fire was set “to cover the killing,” said Maj. William Carey of the state police.

Bill Johnson/Hackensack Fire Department

Parents and 3 Children Found Slain in Burned Home        NYT        20.1.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/nyregion/20fire.html
 

Parents and 3 Children Found Slain in Burned Home

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By COREY KILGANNON and NATE SCHWEBER

FISHKILL, N.Y., Jan. 19 — A family of five — two adults and three children — was found slain in its house in a working-class section of Dutchess County early Friday after firefighters responded to a blaze that gutted the home, the authorities said.

It was unclear Friday night how the family had been killed, or where the bodies were found in the house. A Fishkill police official at the scene said there had been reports of gunfire before the fire broke out, but he would not elaborate. “It’s definitely being investigated as a homicide,” said the official, who would not give his name.

Maj. William Carey of the state police told The Associated Press that the fire was set “to cover the killing” of the family. “We’re just starting the investigation at this point,” Major Carey said.

Other officials said the youngest child had been bludgeoned and the middle child stabbed.

The state police identified the victims Friday night as Manuel Morey, 33, known as Tony; his wife, Tina, 30; and their three sons: Manuel, 13, also known as Tony; Ryan, 6; and Adam, 10.

The quiet town of Fishkill, about 60 miles north of New York City, was flooded with reporters, photographers and television news trucks. Police officials said homicides were rare in the community. “This has got to be the biggest thing that’s happened in all my years here,” said a police sergeant, Thomas G. Hurley.

Neighbors said the Moreys moved into a rented rundown Cape-style home on Route 82, a busy two-lane highway, a year ago. Most neighbors said they knew the family members mostly for their raucous summer barbecues and their fondness for riding noisy all-terrain vehicles late at night. The house has a dirt yard, and a woodsy plot in back abuts a 20-foot-wide stream.

Police officers at the scene said the bodies were taken to the Dutchess County medical examiner’s office for autopsies.

The fire, which was reported around 3:15 a.m., gutted the house and collapsed part of the roof. It required at least six fire departments to extinguish, and investigators were sifting through evidence late into the night.

Police officials said they were investigating, in connection with the house fire, a car fire that occurred simultaneously half a mile east on Route 82. They would not specify the connection.

Neighbors described the Morey sons as rough-and-tumble kids who liked to help their father fix their all-terrain vehicles, and played in the woods in the back of the house. Manuel was in the seventh grade. The other sons attended elementary school. Neighbors said the elder Manuel and Tina Morey grew up in the area. One neighbor, Cheryl Bianchini, said Mr. Morey irritated the neighbors by riding his A.T.V. “up and down the block at all hours of the night.”

“It was really loud and annoying, and the police were called on him a few times, but he kept doing it,” she said. A police sergeant said he could not verify that claim on Friday.

“The family had problems, troubles,” said Ms. Bianchini, whose daughter Alyssa attended Brinckerhoff Elementary School with Adam.

The owner of the house, Tom Skaarva, 43, who lives a few houses down, said Mr. Morey worked installing fences and began renting the house last February. Ms. Morey always brought over the rent money, $1,350 in cash, on time each month, but he said they had not paid the rent since Nov. 1, so he had begun eviction proceedings.

“The wife appeared in court, but Tony never showed,” Mr. Skaarva said. “We had not seen him around for a while. I don’t know if he moved out or what.”

Mr. Skaarva said he rented to Mr. Morey without checking his background and soon came to regret it.

“He tore up that lawn with his A.T.V.,” Mr. Skaarva said. In the summer, he installed a wooden stockade fence and began having raucous barbecues every weekend, he said.

“They would pull all the furniture outside,” he said. “There was a lot of drinking. We couldn’t believe how many empty cases of beer they’d put out in the garbage every week.”

    Parents and 3 Children Found Slain in Burned Home, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/nyregion/20fire.html

Student Slain in School Hall; A Classmate Is Held in Jail

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Jan. 19 (AP) — A 15-year-old was stabbed to death on Friday in a hallway at his high school in this affluent Boston suburb.

A classmate was charged with murder after blurting out, “I did it, I did it!” the authorities said.

Investigators would not comment on a motive for the attack.

The classmate, John Odgren, 16, pleaded not guilty in the killing of James Alenson and was jailed without bail.

Mr. Odgren’s lawyer, Jonathan Shapiro, said his client had a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome and had been taking medications for many years.

“The defendant has a history of fairly serious psychological diagnoses and has also suffered from hyperactivity dysfunction for many years,” Mr. Shapiro said. “What is clear is John has a serious disability.”

The boys fought in a bathroom, and it spilled into a hallway at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, the authorities said. Mr. Odgren stabbed Mr. Alenson with a long knife once in the abdomen and once in the heart, said a prosecutor, Daniel Bennett.

“The timing of the stabbing strongly suggests that Mr. Odgren planned this premeditated murder,” Mr. Bennett said.

Mr. Odgren blurted, “I did it!” to the police moments after the stabbing.

He also said: “Is he O.K.? I don’t want him to die,” according to the authorities.

All 1,600 students at the school, 17 miles west of Boston, were sent home after the attack.

    Student Slain in School Hall; A Classmate Is Held in Jail, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/20stab.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Parents of the Princeton, Mass., teen, watch as their son is arraigned in Framingham, Mass.,
where he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of another teenage student on Friday.

By Angela Rowlings, AP

  1 fatally stabbed at Mass. high school        UT        19.1.2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-19-student-dead_x.htm

1 fatally stabbed at Mass. high school

Updated 1/19/2007 10:13 PM ET
AP
USA Today

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — A 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death Friday in a hallway at his high school in an affluent Boston suburb, and a classmate was charged with murder after blurting out, "I did it, I did it," authorities said.
Investigators would not comment on a motive for the attack.

The 16-year-old pleaded not guilty in the killing of 15-year-old James Alenson and was jailed without bail. He was to be tried as an adult.

The teen's attorney, Jonathan Shapiro, said he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, and has been taking medications for many years.

"The defendant has a history of fairly serious psychological diagnoses and has also suffered from hyperactivity dysfunction for many years," Shapiro said. "What is clear is (he) has a serious disability."

The two boys got into a fight in a bathroom, and it spilled out into a hallway at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High in Sudbury, authorities said. The 16-year-old stabbed Alenson twice with a long knife — once in the abdomen and once in the heart, prosecutor Daniel Bennett said.

"The timing of the stabbing strongly suggests that (the teen) planned this premeditated murder," Bennett said.

Then he blurted, "I did it" to police moments after the stabbing, and also said: "Is he OK? I don't want him to die," according to authorities.

All 1,600 students at the school about 17 miles west of Boston were sent home.

At the hearing, the 16-year-old's parents silently consoled each other in the front row of the courtroom and stared at their son, who occasionally looked back.

His father is a cell research biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. His mother is a nurse, Shapiro said.

No one from Alenson's family attended the arraignment at Framingham District Court.

    1 fatally stabbed at Mass. high school, UT, 19.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-19-student-dead_x.htm

1 fatally stabbed at Mass. high school

Posted 1/19/2007 10:55 AM ET
AP
USA Today

SUDBURY, Mass. (AP) — A person was fatally stabbed Friday morning at a high school outside Boston, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The victim was brought to Emerson Hospital in Concord from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Sudbury and pronounced dead at 8:12 a.m., said Bonnie Goldsmith, a hospital spokeswoman. Goldsmith would not say whether the victim was a student or a teacher.

State and local police were sent to the school. Corey Welford, a spokesman for prosecutor Gerard Leone Jr., did not immediately provide additional details.

Fred Smerlas, who has a daughter at the school, told WHDH-TV that parents were told that there was an incident prior to school starting involving two students.

"There's probably about 100 parents congregating outside the school trying to get more information," he said.

Smerlas said parents were told that students were taken to the school gymnasium after the stabbing.

The school has about 1,600 students and is 17 miles west of Boston.

Jodie Greenhouse, whose 17-year-old daughter, Nicole, is a junior at the school, said her daughter told her the school was put in lockdown. Students were initially taken to the cafeteria and later to the gymnasium, she said.

"She called this morning to say, Mom, I'm fine,'" said Greenhouse.

    1 fatally stabbed at Mass. high school, UT, 19.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-19-student-dead_x.htm

Suspect in Mo. kidnappings under scrutiny in '91 case

Updated 1/17/2007 8:21 PM ET
AP
USA Today

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A man arrested after two missing boys were found in his apartment terrorized one of them with a handgun to get him to cooperate, prosecutors allege in new charges filed Wednesday.

Pizzeria worker Michael Devlin was charged with kidnapping Shawn Hornbeck, 15, who had been missing more than four years when he was found Friday. Devlin already had been charged with kidnapping Ben Ownby, a 13-year-old who had been missing four days when he was found with Shawn.

Devlin also is under investigation in the 1991 disappearance of another Missouri boy who still has not been found, The Associated Press has learned.

Michael Devlin is the "most viable lead" in the case of Charles Arlin Henderson, who was 11 when he disappeared in 1991 and has never been found, Lincoln County sheriff's deputies said.

VIDEO: New charges for Devlin

Washington County, Mo., prosecutor John Rupp said in a statement that Devlin, 41, was charged with kidnapping and armed criminal action. The statement does not name Shawn, but uses the initials SDH.

A probable cause statement released by Rupp said Devlin "abducted SDH utilizing force for the purpose of terrorizing the victim. After securing SDH, Michael Devlin flourished a handgun in order to gain compliance of the minor child. Michael Devlin then transported him out of the county and concealed his whereabouts for four years and three months."

Rupp and Sheriff Kevin Schroeder would not discuss evidence in the case beyond the probable cause statement, but Rupp said he wanted to shoot down speculation that Shawn ran away on his own.

"Shawn was abducted against his will," Rupp said. "Period. End of story."

Schroeder called Shawn "very strong" and "very articulate," but said investigators are being careful not to push Shawn too hard because of his age.

"Give Shawn some time and proceed through this thing slowly," Schroeder said. "He's been away from his family four-and-a-half years. We've got to give him some time to rejoin that family unit.

"This is something so bizarre that the normal individual cannot grasp what this then-11-year-old boy went through."

Schroeder would not say whether Shawn was held captive at the Kirkwood apartment for the entire time.

Devlin, who is being held on $1 million bail, faces arraignment Thursday in the Jan. 8 kidnapping of Ben, of Beaufort, Mo. Shawn, of Richwoods, was abducted Oct. 6, 2002. Both boys were found Friday at Devlin's apartment in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood.

Charles Arlin Henderson, known as Arlin, was, like Ben and Shawn, about 100 pounds and from a rural town about an hour from St. Louis. Both Shawn and Arlin vanished at age 11 while riding their bikes.

"If you were to take a photo of Arlin Henderson and you place it next to Shawn's picture, there is a striking resemblance," Lincoln County sheriff's Lt. Rick Harrell said.

Investigators began re-examining the 1991 case after Devlin's arrest. Detective Chris Bartlett said a witness saw a man snapping photos of Arlin before the Moscow Mills boy vanished.

Arlin's uncle, James McWilliams, said the boy came home from school a few months before he disappeared and told his mother a "tall, thin man" had been taking pictures of him.

Asked whether the man's description fit that of Devlin, who stands about 6-foot-4 and weighs around 300 pounds, Bartlett said: "It matched the description enough that we have to pursue him as the most viable lead."

"We've got other indications that cause us to be concerned with this," he added.

Lincoln County deputies have sent their leads to the Franklin County task force that spearheaded the hunt for Ben.

Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said his office and the FBI were investigating whether Devlin might have been involved in other abductions. FBI spokesman Pete Krusing would not discuss whether the agency was investigating a link between Devlin and the 1991 case.

Devlin's attorneys did not immediately return calls for comment Wednesday on the 1991 case or the new charges.

    Suspect in Mo. kidnappings under scrutiny in '91 case, UT, 17.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-17-boys-kidnapped_x.htm

Wisconsin Hunter Charged in Slaying

January 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times

MARINETTE, Wis. (AP) -- A white man was charged Tuesday with murdering a Hmong hunter in the woods in a slaying that rekindled racial tensions in Wisconsin and raised fears among Southeast Asian immigrants that the dead man was the victim of payback.

James Nichols, 28, shot and stabbed Cha Vang, 30, whose body was found Jan. 6 in a wildlife refuge near Green Bay where both were hunting squirrels, authorities said.

District Attorney Brent DeBord gave no motive for the killing, which Vang's family said appeared to be racially motivated.

Two years ago, a Hmong deer hunter shot six white hunters to death after being accused of trespassing in the Wisconsin woods. He said that the whites shouted racial epithets at him and opened fire first. He is serving multiple life sentences.

After Vang's death, members of Hmong community said they feared it was retaliation for the earlier killings.

In court papers, prosecutors said that Nichols claimed that Vang shot him without provocation after Nichols told Vang to leave because he was interfering with his hunt. Nichols said the two then fought, and he killed Vang.

''I know there are many people in the Hmong community and the community at large, that are wondering if this is a hate crime,'' Dick Campbell, spokesman for Vang's widow, said after the charges were announced. ''I'm wondering that myself.''

Vang's body was found covered with leaves and other debris in a depression in the woods after members of Vang's hunting party reported him missing. An autopsy indicated Vang had been hit with a shotgun blast and stabbed five times.

Sheriff's deputies arrested Nichols after he went to a hospital with a .22 caliber bullet lodged in his right hand and an injury to his other hand. He was charged with first-degree murder and other offenses.

Calls to Nichols' lawyer were not immediately returned.

    Wisconsin Hunter Charged in Slaying, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Hunter-Homicide.html

Friends and family mourned at the home of Helen Hill, who was killed recently.
New Orleans, the United States’ murder capital by many measures in 2006,
is well on its way to keeping that distinction in 2007.

Cheryl Gerber for New York Times

 Storm Left New Orleans Ripe for Violence        NYT        11.1.2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11orleans.html

News Analysis

Storm Left New Orleans Ripe for Violence

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10 — The storm of violence that has burst over this city since New Year’s Day can be traced in part to dysfunctional law enforcement institutions, aggravated by a natural disaster that turned the physical and social landscape of New Orleans into an ideal terrain for criminals.

Eight killings have occurred in 10 days. New Orleans, the United States’ murder capital by many measures in 2006, is well on its way to keeping that distinction in 2007. Since July 2006, there have been at least 95 murders per 100,000 residents, and possibly a higher ratio depending on how the city’s depleted population is counted, said Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the University of New Orleans.

Frightened citizens now see their city as a stalking ground, roamed with impunity by teenagers with handguns — an image that may not be far off the mark, experts here say.

There are a variety of reasons for the descent toward chaos. An automobile-bound police department is reluctant to walk the streets and interact with the city’s residents. It is at war with the district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting seven officers for a deadly shooting soon after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Judges in the city’s courts regularly rule in favor of criminals.

Completing the grim picture is an already fragile social structure in the city’s poorest wards that has been all but destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Moving back to town, in many cases, are “kids with guns, and without parents,” said Mr. Scharf, who predicted a year ago that the city was in for a tidal wave of violence.

The police, feared and hated by the city’s poor, get no cooperation from them in solving crimes. “Stop that snitchin!” is the inscription on the T-shirt of a man waiting for a bus on Canal Street. In killing after killing, police officials have begged for witnesses to step up, to no avail.

The result is an unwitting carrying out of the classic Maoist strategy of guerilla insurgency: criminals swim like fish in the surrounding sea, protected by a population that finds no reason to give them up, and is often afraid to.

Frustrated, police officers have been known to lash out at residents. Disturbing police brutality cases — officers beating up, or even shooting, random African-American men — are now competing for headlines with the latest killings.

Infuriating the police agency he must work with, Eddie Jordan, the district attorney, referred to the police as “rabid dogs” after he indicted seven of them last month in the shooting death of two men after Hurricane Katrina.

In this violent city, the Police Department’s arrests are usually not for crimes of violence at all, but for drugs. Such arrests constitute 65 percent of the city’s total, twice the national average, according to a study by the city’s independent Metropolitan Crime Commission. And the problems only continue once an arrest is made. In 2003-4, only 7 percent of those arrested were sentenced to prison, only 5 percent of all convictions were for violent offenses, and only 12 percent of homicide arrests resulted in jail, the study found.

In addition, New Orleans judges go light on sentencing, the study found: they give felons jail time far less often than do judges in other states’ courts.

The last time there was a murder conviction in New Orleans was in August — and in that case the judge later reduced the offense to manslaughter, according to the district attorney’s office. The judge, Charles Elloie, who publicly expressed sympathy for criminal defendants, has since been suspended for returning suspects to the streets with little or no bond.

"There’s a lot of factors converging here,” said James Bernazzani, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge in New Orleans, “based on local institutional dysfunction, a population that wasn’t educated, and a state judicial system that doesn’t mete out consequence for criminal activity. And you’ve got a citizenry that doesn’t cooperate.”

The way out of this conundrum is not easily seen by experts or by citizens weary of pledges by local officials — there was another one Tuesday —to make things right. Checkpoints, sheriff’s deputies, clergy intervention: all were earnestly promised, under the glare of television lights, in an open-air setting in the heart of the New Orleans killing grounds, the Central City neighborhood.

“It’s like Casablanca, round up the usual ideas,” said Mr. Scharf, the criminologist.

The surge in killings is a threat to the city’s faltering repopulation campaign.

“People I’ve never heard talk like this, die-hard New Orleanians, are weeping, talking about leaving,” said Mary Howell, a civil rights lawyer here. “It’s palpable.”

Many people are looking to the federal government for help, and are hoping the United States attorney, Jim Letten, might prosecute a few of the murder cases normally handled by the district attorney’s office. Mr. Bernazzani said Wednesday that “where we can find the federal hook, Jim Letten has agreed to take the case,” adding that additional federal agents were being recruited for New Orleans.

Meanwhile, citizen advocacy, the catalyst for most post-hurricane reform here, will make itself felt again Thursday with a march on City Hall intended to highlight the killings.

Tim Seeman, who runs the kitchen at Parasol’s, a restaurant that recently was held up, sees some hope in this awakening.

“This is nothing new,” Mr. Seeman said. “This has been brewing for years and years. But finally people are admitting it.”.

    Storm Left New Orleans Ripe for Violence, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11orleans.html

S.F. area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says

Updated 1/8/2007 8:22 AM ET
USA Today
By Donna Leinwand

The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA, a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found.

Nearly 13% of San Francisco residents reported using some type of illicit drug, such as marijuana, cocaine or heroin, in the previous month, according to data from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health 2002-05. The national average is 8.1%.

Other areas with drug-abuse rates higher than the national average included Seattle, 9.6%; Detroit, 9.5%; Philadelphia, 9.1%; and Boston, 8.5%. Cities with the lowest drug use: Houston, 6.2%; and Washington, Dallas and Riverside/San Bernardino, Calif., all at 6.5%.

California has decriminalized marijuana for people with health problems. The state's voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996 to allow seriously ill state residents to possess and use marijuana with a doctor's prescription. In San Francisco, police and prosecutors accept a medical-marijuana identification card as proof that a resident can possess and use marijuana.

"The fact that state law allows the use of medical marijuana and that we have a population with a high rate of AIDS that might need to use medical marijuana may contribute to the rates," says Alice Gleghorn, deputy director of community behavioral health services in San Francisco's Department of Public Health. "We do have a cultural regional norm with regard to medical-marijuana use."

The coastal area north of San Francisco, included in the study as part of the metropolitan area, is known as a popular marijuana growing spot.

"Where marijuana is very accessible, you're going to get higher use," Gleghorn says.

San Francisco focuses its prevention and treatment efforts on heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, she says.

Chicago, at 25.7%, and Houston, at 25.6%, have the highest rates of binge drinking in the country. Nationwide, 22.7% of people reported binge drinking in the previous month, defined by the study as having five or more drinks on one occasion. Other areas with rates higher than the national average are Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco and Phoenix.

Nationwide, about one quarter of the population smokes cigarettes regularly. Only Detroit significantly exceeded the national average, with 27.4% of its residents reporting that they smoked cigarettes in the previous month, the study found. California's biggest cities had the lowest smoking rates, with 17.9% of people in San Francisco and Los Angeles and 19.2% in Riverside reporting previous-month use, the study found.

Beverly Watts Davis, senior adviser for substance-abuse prevention for SAMHSA, says local prevention coalitions should use the data to help focus their programs.

"If they can pinpoint what's going on where and why, it really helps them plan better to know where resources should be allocated," she said.

    S.F. area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says, UT, 8.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-07-sf-drugs_x.htm

2 Killed at Red Wing Player's Sports Bar

January 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:05 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DETROIT (AP) -- Two people were found stabbed to death Tuesday morning at a sports bar owned by Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios, police said.

The victims, both employees of Cheli's Chili Bar, were found shortly after 9 a.m. on the restaurant's second floor, said Detroit police spokeswoman Yvette Walker.

''We believe, just based upon the information right now, that it is a former disgruntled employee that may be responsible for these two murders,'' Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings told the Detroit Free Press.

Police were questioning other employees who were in the restaurant at the time. The three-story building sits next to Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers.

Representatives of the Red Wings did not immediately return calls seeking comment. No telephone number could be located Chelios.

Chelios opened the sports bar and restaurant in 2005. The restaurant, which has a banner honoring former Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman hanging from an exterior wall, had been expected to have a busy night Tuesday because of a ceremony at Joe Louis Arena honoring Yzerman.

    2 Killed at Red Wing Player's Sports Bar, NYT, 1.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bar-Stabbings-Hockey-Player.html

Homicides Up in New York; Other Crimes Keep Falling

January 1, 2007
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

In New York City, rapes, robberies and assaults, among other crimes, continued to decline last year, prompting the Police Department’s top official to herald 2006 as a very good year. Homicides, however, climbed 10 percent in the city, reversing a much-hailed decrease.

“We’d like to see no homicides. The reality is we’re going to have them,” said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. “I think this is a very good year.”

He called the increase in killings in 2006 all but negligible compared with 1990, a year with one of the highest homicide rates in recent history. That year, crack-fueled violence soared, and 2,262 people were killed.

Last year there were 579 killings citywide as of Dec. 24, an increase of 52 homicides over the same period in 2005. Yet overall crime last year was down 5 percent. The number of reported rapes declined by 7.4 percent to 1,486, subway crime plunged 13 percent and auto theft fell 11.4 percent.

The police said the year’s jump in homicides was rooted largely in an unusually high number of “reclassified” deaths, deaths linked to injuries incurred in months or years past. There were 38 reclassified homicides in New York last year, compared with 21 in 2005.

New York’s overall fall in crime also contrasts with an increase nationwide. According to a report by the F.B.I., violent crime across the country rose 3.7 percent during the first half of the year. Dallas remained the country’s most violent city, with 3,985 crimes per 100,000 people, according to the midyear report, while New York ranked 10th with 1,1,87 per 100,000.

Myriad factors account for New York’s continuing decline in crime overall, the police and criminologists say. They cited more effective policing, shifting drug patterns and the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years.

Yet what is puzzling, one expert said, is that overall crime is dropping even as New York becomes an increasingly polarized city, with haves and have-nots often living side by side in luxury condominiums and public housing.

“Within a few blocks, people are living worlds apart,” said Andrew Karmen, a sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of “New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s.”

“In theory, that should make the poor more dissatisfied and drive people to commit crimes,” he said. “But that doesn’t seem to be happening in New York.”

One possible explanation, Dr. Karmen said, is that the city is largely populated by immigrants, many of whom are driven by a determination to succeed.

“I think they still maintain a positive outlook and faith in the American dream,” he said. “But if it doesn’t deliver, attitudes could change.”

It has proven difficult to root out violent crime in the city’s toughest corners.

One of the city’s most perilous neighborhoods is in the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn, which includes East New York. There the number of slayings last year was virtually unchanged from 2005 at 28, and 3,239 crimes were reported.

Public housing projects have a disproportionate number of crimes. While 5 percent of New York’s eight million residents live in public housing, Commissioner Kelly said, 16 percent of the city’s homicides take place there.

The Police Department plans to tackle that seemingly intractable problem by redeploying personnel from other areas and opening police substations in the most troubled housing complexes, Commissioner Kelly said.

Both homicide victims and suspects tend to have links to crime already, he said.

Of those arrested last year in homicides, 95 percent had criminal histories; 75 percent of the people killed did.

Such figures point to the department’s need to continue expanding its homicide, shooting and crime databases, Mr. Kelly said.

“The more information we have, the greater the potential we have to prevent crimes,” he said.

New York’s rebirth as a safer-than-average large city since the 1990s has coincided with an increase in tourism here.

According to city officials, about 44 million people visited last year on business or pleasure.

“One overarching reason why people are coming here, in a city that was attacked five years ago, it’s because they have a sense of comfort as far as security is concerned,” Mr. Kelly said.

The department is continuing to pour more resources into community policing, forging bonds between its officials and local leaders, especially those from new immigrant communities.

Yet in neighborhoods where homicide rates climbed, residents seem divided about whether this recent and heightened focus was improving their lives.

Allah B, the director of the Allah in Mecca Youth Center in Harlem, commended officers in its precinct, the 28th, for holding local forums and listening to community concerns.

Even though slayings in the precinct more than doubled, to 11, last year, he said the increased connection between residents and the police fostered a greater sense of ease.

Yet a longtime resident of the St. Nicholas Homes in Harlem said police efforts to rout out criminals were having a divisive effect in her neighborhood.

“They caused a lot of trouble trying to play one person against the other,” said the woman, who would give only her first name, Keisha. She said people in the neighborhood also felt harassed and persecuted by the police, and that such impressions heightened the tension and stress in the community.

Still, despite a slight increase in the number of homicides in her neighborhood, she said the streets felt far less violent than in previous years.

The sense that New Yorkers are increasingly inhabiting two different realities seems particularly strong in places like Fort Greene, Brooklyn, home to a thriving cafe scene and crime-plagued public housing complexes.

Eleven homicides were recorded in the neighborhood last year, compared with none in 2005.

Strolling along a stretch of DeKalb Avenue by Fort Greene Park late last week, Cheryl Pickett, 36, said she had no idea that murders had risen so sharply in the area.

Ms. Pickett, who has lived in Fort Greene for five years, said her perception of the neighborhood had not changed. She still thinks of it as a safe, child-friendly place with charming shops and bars.

“When things happen, it’s really surprising,” Ms. Pickett said. “This year seems no different than last.”

Trymaine Lee contributing reporting.

    Homicides Up in New York; Other Crimes Keep Falling, NYT, 1.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/nyregion/01crime.html