Gangs and Guns - NY Times - Shootings Jump in Hartford Neighborhood

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Published in the New York Times, Thursday, June 1, 2006

June 1, 2006

A Jump in Shootings in a Hartford District

By STACEY STOWE

HARTFORD, May 31 — The North End is one of this city's most vibrant neighborhoods, and one of its most dangerous.

On a recent weekday, the sidewalks were thronged with people. A flavored-ice seller was ringed by waiting children. The Jamaican bakery was bustling. A line snaked outside a barbershop.

But another reality has been playing out here in recent days. Since last Wednesday, 16 people have been shot in the North End, one of them fatally. The police say they are gang related and have promised to increase patrols, but residents are skeptical.

Last June, after a 54 percent increase in shootings in the city, the State Police supplemented local law enforcement at traffic stops. The Hartford Police Department increased its foot patrols and assigned more detectives, and the shootings declined. But last week, the temperatures rose sharply, and so did the number of shootings.

On Tuesday, at a City Hall news conference, Police Chief Patrick J. Harnett said that seven of the eight shooting episodes stemmed from petty disputes between three loosely associated gangs of young men 14 to 25 years old. The one fatality was a 15-year-old boy, the son of a city firefighter.

Chief Harnett and Mayor Eddie A. Perez made a plea for neighborhood cooperation, offered protection for witnesses and said the State Police would once again assist the Hartford police.

The flags fluttering on Main Street proclaim Hartford "New England's Rising Star," but in this capital city of 124,000 mostly poor black and Latino residents, Chief Harnett proposed another slogan on Tuesday: "It's Your Home, Pick Up the Phone."

"There's a lot of information on the street, and we're asking them to come forward," Chief Harnett said.

Judging from interviews with about two dozen people who live here, all of whom discussed the frequency of gunfire with the mild irritation many suburbanites reserve for their neighbors' Sunday morning lawn mowing, Chief Harnett's plea may end up being wishful thinking, especially given the historic tension between residents and the police.

Nobody is going to "talk to the police; that's snitching," said Jermaine White, 19, who sat under a shade tree on Blue Hills Avenue on Tuesday with five of his friends, who nodded in agreement.

From January through May, 59 people were shot, compared with 38 people in the comparable period last year, an increase of more than 55 percent, according to statistics released by the Hartford police. In 2004, 27 people were shot between January and May.

Katrina Davis, 17, who was born in the North End, was nonchalant about the jump in shootings. "It's like, oh, somebody else got shot," she said as she ate one of the shaved-ice confections outside a crowded stand in front of Rainbow Variety on Albany Avenue. "It doesn't matter."

Her friend, Jenevieve Johnson, 28, the mother of a 5- and a 9-year-old, added, "They shoot over stupid stuff." Ms. Johnson, who has lived in the North End since 1996, said it was routine for young men, high on drugs, to drive through the streets and shoot with abandon over a perceived slight, such as a glance at another's girlfriend.

"Whatever happened to fighting with your fists or walking away?" she asked.

Lack of jobs was one reason offered for the gun violence. Ms. Davis and Mr. White and his friends, all teenagers, said that they were looking for summer jobs but that no one was hiring.

Sarah Barr, spokeswoman for the mayor, said 700 Hartford residents were working on school construction jobs. She said the mayor guaranteed jobs for 26 qualified construction workers from the North End.

Gerald Thorpe, chairman of the Upper Albany Revitalization Zone, said more jobs would bring shootings down.

"There's nothing to do," said Mr. Thorpe, who was sitting outside a barbershop on Albany Avenue with three friends, "so they're just beefing," — fighting, that is.

Mr. Thorpe's friend, a 40-year-old man who declined to identify himself, lifted the legs of his jeans, then his T-shirt, to reveal various bullet wounds suffered two weeks ago: three wounds in his legs, more across his stomach from grazes, and a shot that took off the point of his right elbow.

He showed his wounds as casually as he would a scraped knee. "I was just standing over there," he said, pointing to the shop's facade, "and the young brother drove by and starting shooting." Like some others, he would not give his name because he did not want to answer questions from the police.

Christopher L. Morano, the chief state's attorney, said it was essential for residents to step forward with information about the shootings. "They are allowing their neighborhood to be taken over by thugs," said Mr. Morano, who established two anti-gang task forces that led to numerous prosecutions in the mid-90's. "And they outnumber these individuals. They could band together and do something."

Since 1993, there has been a 9 p.m. curfew in Hartford for anyone 18 years or younger unaccompanied by an adult or guardian. But residents either laughed at the curfew or criticized parents.

"The kids are everywhere at night," said Rayshelle George, 26, who sat on her stoop on Norfolk Street on Tuesday afternoon as her three children gleefully squirted water at each other. "Some kids don't have no home training."

On Wednesday, David Forrester, 41, a construction worker, recalled hearing gunshots earlier in the day from Vine Street, where a group of boys had gathered. He said many of the guns were traded to the younger men by suburbanites looking for drugs, a comment echoed by others. He suggested putting more black undercover officers on the street.

"But at every shooting, there are so many people, until the police arrive," he said in the lilting accent of his native Jamaica. "Then everybody disappears."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/nyregion/01hartford.html?pagewanted=print

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