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As New York’s Fear of Crime Grows, a

Neighborhood Lives With Its Reality
Cypress Hills in Brooklyn is among the areas that lead the city in
serious crimes. Krystal Chimelis is looking for a way out.

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Krystal Chimelis feels hemmed in by violence at home and priced out of other parts of
New York. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Chelsia Rose Marcius by experts. $4.25 $1 a week Cancel or pause anytime.
Oct. 8, 2022 for the first year

In the shadow of the elevated train tracks along Fulton Street in

Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, an 8-year-old boy held up his small fingers
and made the shape of two tiny pistols.

It was a summer afternoon, and his mother, Krystal Chimelis, had

just picked up the boy, Logan, from child care. As they trudged
through the sweltering heat toward home, Ms. Chimelis asked her
son what he thought of their neighborhood.

The boy flicked his wrists and fired two imaginary bullets. “People
shooting people,” he said.

Cypress Hills is part of the 75th Precinct, which through mid-

led all others on the New York Police Department’s
accounting of the most serious categories of crime. After 13 years
in the neighborhood, Ms. Chimelis, 35, a full-time mother, wants
out.

“My son says to me, ‘Mom, are we not good enough to live
somewhere else?’” she said. “But how do we get out? Where do we
go?”

New York City’s crime rate touched record lows before the
pandemic, but it has been rising. In August, so-called “ serious
offenses” — murder, rape, robbery felony assault, burglary, grand
larceny and auto theft — rose by 26 percent overall compared with
the same month last year, although the city remains far safer than
it was in the 1990s. Murders are down — the murder rate in New

York remains well below that in many other cities — but there has
been a surge in property crimes.

Just a few New York neighborhoods contribute disproportionately

to the city’s crime rate: Ten of the 77 precincts this year have
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accounted for about a quarter of those serious crimes. The mood of
the city has shifted since the city emerged from lockdown. For the
first time in ages, polls suggest , New Yorkers are wary of crime as Our Garbage,
Ourselves
they walk down the street or ride the trains. But for those who live
in the 75th Precinct, a large swath of southeastern Brooklyn that
Rick Martínez’s
encompasses the neighborhoods of Cypress Hills and East New Essential Mexican
Recipes
York, there was only the briefest of lulls.

At least 16 shootings this year have taken place near or along

Joan Didion and the
Fulton Street, where Ms. Chimelis lives. The bodies of two Western Spirit
dismembered women have been found in the precinct this year
alone. Ms. Chimelis’s 14-year-old son, Ean, saw a severed limb as
police investigators collected evidence.

Fear of violence prevents Ms. Chimelis and her family from staying
out after 5 p.m. She never talks on the phone while running
errands, and she keeps her money in a sandwich bag tucked in her
shirt to avoid being seen carrying a wallet. She often takes Logan
and her 2-year-old daughter, Dakota, to playgrounds in Lower
Manhattan instead of to the one near home. She tells her children
to stay away from the windows for fear that a stray bullet will
strike them.

A memorial to a crime victim at the Louis Heaton Pink Houses. Benjamin Norman for
The New York Times

It was March 2009 when Ms. Chimelis moved to the neighborhood

from Harlem, looking to open a new chapter in her life. She worked
nights at a now-closed burger restaurant in the South Street
Seaport and would walk home from the train around 1 a.m. She felt
safe enough until the next summer, when a few men snatched her
handbag.

“I used to walk around like I was Superman,” she said. “Then I was
robbed and realized I’m not unstoppable.”

Now, on most weekdays, Ms. Chimelis wakes at 4:30 a.m., worried.

She watches as her partner, a plumber who is the father of her two
youngest children, gets ready to leave for his two-hour commute to
the Bronx, when it’s still dark out. Don’t you feel bad, she has asked
him, that we are raising our children here?

The neighborhoods of the 75th Precinct sit in the southeastern

corner of Brooklyn, about 15 miles from Midtown’s high-rises. In
Cypress Hills, early 20th-century homes built in the Queen Anne
style are steps away from small storefronts and corner bodegas. In
East New York, homes with neatly trimmed lawns sit near a
church where, in the evenings, the melody of Ave Maria can be
heard from blocks away.

But there are also poorly lit streets, vacant lots and the chaos of
Atlantic Avenue, a thoroughfare that some residents avoid after
dark. Nearly 30 percent of residents are living below the city’s
poverty line, according to city data . Ms. Chimelis and her family
rely on a single income and pay about $1,700 a month for a two-
edroom apartment. She said finding another affordable, safe place
to live for her family of five is nearly impossible.

Three hours after her partner leaves for work, Ms. Chimelis walks
along Fulton Street to drop off Logan at school and Dakota at day
care. Ean rides the train to his high school in Williamsburg. He
returns in the late afternoons. “Be home before you have to chase
the sun,” she tells him.

This year, while she was at the laundromat, a man was killed two
blocks away at an intersection that is home to a Kennedy Fried
Chicken, one of two places on Fulton Street that Ms. Chimelis had
designated as safe places for her children. Months ago, she asked
Louis Hernandez, who works at the restaurant, to offer Ean shelter
in the event of a shooting.

Louis Hernandez promised Ms. Chimelis her children could take shelter in his chicken
shop. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Mr. Hernandez promised he would. “We want everyone to be able

to come here and feel safe,” he said. “We just have to defend
ourselves.”

The Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for

comment regarding the challenges crime presents in the precinct,
and what it has done to meet them.

Local politicians say they are trying to drive down crime with more
amenities. The Prince Joshua Avitto Community Center, named
after a boy who was stabbed to death in 2014 , has a state-of-the-art
basketball court and a recording studio. The East New York Family
Academy was also rebuilt . And there’s Linden Park, about 10 acres
in East New York with yellow basketball courts, exercise
equipment and a pristine red rubber track encircling a vivid green
field.

Yet such resources are not close to everyone who lives within the
precinct. Linden Park is a two-mile walk for Ms. Chimelis, and she
says it’s not always safe to travel on foot in a place where safety
varies block by block.

At Drew Street and Loring Avenue, three men were shot inside a
deli on July 4, just before midnight, and two died. A 19-year-old was
arrested and charged with murder. Three blocks from the deli are
the Louis Heaton Pink Houses, a New York City Housing Authority
complex with a history of violence. It is where, in 2014, a city police
officer killed Akai Gurley , an unarmed Black man whose death
reverberated throughout the city.

Eddie Williams has lived in the Pink Houses for most of his 59
years. In early August, Mr. Williams sat outside on a bench below
the unit where his mother raised him. He said there have been
shootings in this area for as long as he can remember.

Eddie Williams, who has spent his life in the Pink Houses, said gunshots are a constant
part of life there. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Through Sept. 18 of this year, 71 people had been shot in the 75th
Precinct, compared with 67 people during the same period in 2021,
according to police statistics. By comparison, five people have been
shot this year in the precinct that includes Park Slope.

Mr. Williams says he barely notices gunshots.

“Violence has always been here. And it’s still here. And it’s getting
worse,” he said. “You can’t fix it. They’re not going to stop. No one
can stop the violence.”

When Ms. Chimelis and her family return home, she gives her
children a snack — Goldfish crackers, blueberries and peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches are favorites — and lets them unwind
for about half an hour before they begin their homework.

It’s around dinnertime that Ms. Chimelis has a moment to reflect.

She wants to walk to the store or the laundromat or the train
without being afraid. She wants to live in a place where Logan does
not make guns with his hands.

“When he put his fingers up like that, that was his innocence
slipping away,” Ms. Chimelis said. “That’s what his memories of his
childhood will be.”

Chelsia Rose Marcius covers breaking news and criminal justice for the Metro desk, with
a focus on the New York City Police Department.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 9, 2022 , Section NJ , Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Crime Is Up. Cypress Hills Is Used to It. . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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