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The borough that figured it out: how Brooklyn reduced gun violence [theguardian.com]

 

By Chip Brownlee, Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images, The Guardian, June 23, 2022

The street outside the Brownsville Community Justice Center used to be a hub for drug use and violence. A dead-end road, it lacked good lighting, overlooking windows and car traffic – a combination that made it unsafe to walk down. The surrounding neighborhood in east Brooklyn has historically suffered from some of the highest rates of gun violence and other violent crime in the city.

Now, the street is a public plaza: tables and chairs, lush plants and trees, and a colorful mural reading “Brownsville Stronger Together”. It’s a well-lit, largely safe passageway between the Langston Hughes public housing towers and the bustling storefronts along Belmont Avenue. The broader 73rd precinct, which includes Brownsville, has seen murders and shootings fall significantly since last year.

This remarkable transformation didn’t come about by accident. Mallory Thatch, a program manager at the Justice Center, has seen it first-hand: she helps oversee the center’s effort to improve Brownsville’s public spaces, including by organizing resources such as overdose prevention training and clean needle exchanges. The key, she says, is not going to extremes by cracking down too hard. “We don’t want to push these issues further into the neighborhood,” she said. “We want to remedy them at the source.”

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