BLUE BLOCKS
Police presence ramped up after teen fatally shot
THE SAFEST street in Harlem was one of the neighborhood’s most dangerous just two months ago.
Along W. 129th St., cops now stand in pairs on the corners between Fifth Ave. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. Patrols cars — sometime as many as 10 — sit parked with their emergency lights flashing.
“It feels much safer,” said Marah Cody, 33, a 20-year resident and mother of three. “We can sit outside more often now. “They’re cool,” she said of the police. “They've made friends with everybody.”
But the peace of mind came at a heavy price. The June 3 basketball court shooting at the St. Nicholas Houses, where Ackeem (Kasper) Green, 25, was killed and four others wounded. And it only came after hard feelings from residents toward occupying cops in the weeks after the murder. At a June 27 meeting of the 129th St. Block Association, locals complained about barricades on the street, constant ID checks to reach their homes and police disrespect. At that meeting, inspector Rodney Harrison of Harlem’s 32nd Precinct described 129th St. as “somewhat like ground zero for us.”
He provided a grim look at the troubled block and the surrounding neighborhood — home to three local gangs known as GMB, Goodfellas TND and the Lincoln Projects LOE. Harrison — who once watched helplessly as a victim took a bullet to the back of the head on W. 130th St. — said the new crews were ruthless and remorseless.
“I hate to say it, but these territorial crews, they don’t care,” he said.
Two months later, the barricades are gone and the identification checks are over. The cops are still there and the violence is a memory — at least temporarily. The police even picked up local reinforcements when the Rev. Al Sharpton and more than 100 others turned out over the weekend in the anti-violence “Take Back the Corners” initiative.
“We are for law enforcement,” Sharpton said, “We don’t want to be disrespected by law enforcement, but at the same time we must join
hands to bring about peace.”
For the family of Green, the arrival of cops and community came too late. He was a new father and a member of the Harlem Youth Marines, an antigang group. He was fatally shot in the back, cut down by a bullet meant for someone else. “It’s been shootings out there constantly,” Green’s cousin Jennifer Melendez, 28, said.
Melendez, godmother to Green’s 5-month-old son, said she now avoids W. 129th St. entirely. “You never know when you step out the door if you you’re r ever going to step back in,” she said. ““I honestly feel it’s never going to change. These kids, they don’t care. The They don’t have no remorse for anyth thing.”
Councilwoman Inez Dickens was among those initially opposed to the cops on the block. Her constituents quickly changed her mind. “They felt safer,” she said. “They were fearful a about a retribution shooting . . . What was I going to say when when their child got shot?”