Taking aim at kill zones
Cops focus on trouble areas amid rash of shootings
It was a typical murder in New York’s era of low crime — a young man killed on the street by a gangbanger.
“I didn’t think it would happen to me, and it did,” said Lasandra Powell, the mother of 18-year-old Davion Powell, shot dead in broad daylight last Tuesday in Brooklyn.
Powell’s death and the nonfatal shootings of three other young men that day are the types of crimes the NYPD focuses on in “precision policing,” which targets the relatively few criminals, usually gang members, who drive most city violence.
Though the city crime rate is down 6% this year, the number of murders is up — 81 so far in 2019, compared to 75 in the same period of 2018. Shootings are up by 8%, with 223 people shot this year compared to 204 during the same period in 2018.
Only one arrest has been made in last Tuesday’s cases, and all four suspected shooters are still on the loose.
Powell was shot dead at 5:10 p.m. on St. Johns Place in Crown Heights.
He wasn’t in the NYPD gang database, but investigators believe Powell belonged to Folk Nation, a gang started in Chicago 40 years ago.
Powell’s mother laments that after he graduated high school last year, he moved to the city from North Carolina. “I told him to stay down there because the streets are dangerous,” Powell said. “He said, ‘No, Mom, it’s boring.’”
About 50 minutes after Powell was killed, Michael James, 32, who served two prison sentences and is on parole for a gun conviction, was shot at the the Ravenswood Houses in Long Island City, Queens.
James, hit in his abdomen and left arm, said he was shot waiting for a bus. But an offduty cop said after the shots were fired he saw James grapple with a 23-year-old member of the Out That Mob gang. He is being sought.
Around four hours later, Jamel Jefferson, 30, was shot on 131st Ave. in Jamaica, Queens. Police busted Cecil Dowdell, 24, for allegedly helping hide a .40-caliber gun handed to him by the unknown gunman.
Jefferson, on parole after serving time for weapons possession, and Dowdell, who has at least two prior arrests, belong to the Backstreet Crips, sources said.
Police still don’t know where the day’s fourth shooting happened. The victim in that case, Jonathan Sharrock, 29, showed up around 11:35 p.m. at Jamaica Hospital seeking treatment for a gunshot wound to his left knee.
Deputy Commissioner Phil Walzak, the NYPD’s top spokesman, said the details of each shooting are no surprise to detectives.
“These cases showcase the nexus between gangs and guns that the NYPD is working tirelessly to break,” Walzak said.