3a. When gun violence barely matters (stray bullets)

After three days of searching for info online and speaking with a few area cops (who knew nothing about the shooting), I found this bit about Monday night's shooting deep within a Daily News article:

On Monday, a 57-year-old woman was wounded by a stray bullet during a shootout by youths at 116th St. and Fifth Ave. Less than an hour later, a 17-year-old boy was shot in the face at E. 109th St. and Second Ave.
 

And here's the Post's brief account:

A woman was struck in the back by stray bullet yesterday in East Harlem, cops said.The 57-year-old victim was wounded at around 5 p.m. on East 116th Street near Fifth Avenue.
“I heard one shot, then two shots,” a witness said.
“People were screaming and everyone was running on the street."
 

Bullets bouncing around the sidewalk right when most workers head home for the day. How do you prepare for that shit?

The Daily News' article describes a recent survey of 1,100 East Harlem residents conducted by Hunter College's Silberman School of Social Work and the Union Settlement Association, in which 77% of those surveyed listed "crime reduction" as "extremely important." Residents cited the rising crime rate more than any other issue affecting El Barrio.

This morning, I went online and saw this headline: "2-year old girl watching cartoons is hit by stray bullet in Tennessee."

The Year of the Gun continues.

We do not accept it in suburban areas. We should not expect it in urban areas.

3. When gun violence doesn't matter

Malcolm X's Mosque No. 7 at 116th St. and Lenox Ave

116th St. is an artery pumping energy through Harlem from Morningside Park to the East River. It's a hundred-foot wide multicultural belt across the island.

I like walking along 116th St. I like watching men and women in ornate dashikis head to evening prayers in 'Le Petit Senegal,' I like reading the celebrity sandwich names in Amy Ruth's and checking out the glow-in-the-dark dunks at the sneakerhead shops. I like passing the Mexican tiendas and the lady making elote out of a shop window. There's a Target inside a giant shopping complex on the East River at East 117th St so I walked on 116th to get there last night.

Who's that little dashiki in the window?

When I got to 116th and Madison, I noticed a platoon of cops surrounded a yellow-tape corral that stretched from a check cashing site (more about that scourge of the low-income neighborhoods in future posts) in the middle of the block to the MetroNorth overpass above Park Ave. I approached and saw reporters scribbling notes, police officers interviewing shop-owners and passersby rubber-necking from the street. I asked one cop what was going on.

"There's been a shooting," he responded.

I cautiously continued to Target, now much less interested in the eastern transition from African Muslim to Latino Roman Catholic culture. At 2nd Ave, I ran into one of my tenants waiting to cross the street. He told me he always takes 116th to get to his mother's, even though she lives a few blocks north, because the street is lined with lively businesses. The other nearby streets are secluded and, therefore, dangerous

I told him about the shooting I had just passed.

"Aw. Shit. This was supposed to be the safe street," he lamented.

On Friday, a lunatic murdered children in a Connecticut elementary school. A week before, a businessman was shot dead in Columbus Circle and a Kansas City Chief killed his girlfriend then himself. Gun Summer 2012 featured a massacre at a movie theater, a shooting outside the Empire State Building and a terrorist attack at a Sikh temple. Finally, as Americans' support for logical gun control grows, every respectable news outlet is flashing FUCK GUNS across its website or broadcast.

Despite the rundown of shootings that the Huffington Post featured on Saturday and the Newtown/gun control coverage that dominates WNYC and The Daily News, I found nothing about the crime scene I passed on 116th St./Park Ave. except for these three sentences. And that information is wrong!

But this was just another shooting uptown, right? Couple of gangstas with beef and anger? We expect that shit and don't even pay attention to it, even in the midst of anti-gun fervor.

Let's care about guns and violence more consistently.