Residents, elected officials and family members gathered at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene this week to remember Shem Walker’s life – an innocent Clinton Hill resident fatally shot by an undercover police officer – and discuss the implications, policy and the prevention of tragedies like this one.
A shot was fired on Dean Street between Bedford and Nostrand Avenues in Crown Heights last night around 9pm, striking a victim in the chest. According to officers at the precinct reached by phone today, the victim survived and was taken to Kings County Hospital. The motive was unclear and an investigation is pending.
In spite of the menial attention garnered by Brooklyn’s violent and pervasive drug trade in the local news media, borough residents are making sure you’ve heard about their loved one, or even strangers, senselessly gunned down – but they’re not snitching.
Tom Folsom’s new book The Mad Ones keeps the author on the safe side of history. You won’t believe the tales he has to tell about Crazy Joe Gallo, a gangster from Red Hook who took on the establishment – the Costa Nostra – in the 1960s.
Chanequa Campbell, 21, grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant. The now-infamous Harvard senior, linked to a drug-related homicide on campus, is back in Brooklyn, awaiting the arrival of her possessions.
Whether Ms. Campbell’s involvement in the murder was criminal or not – the main story line in the coverage of this tragic event and subsequent charges of racism on Harvard’s part – is somewhat beside the point.
Around lunch time last Friday, 18-year-old Chad Wilkens was standing in China City, on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Dean Street in Crown Heights, when he was shot. An ambulance arrived and took Mr. Wilkens to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The media was nowhere to be found.
I finally got a bike. It’s a vintage Fuji, and it belonged to my dad. I took it out for a spin through Prospect Park over Memorial Day weekend. I zoomed around the park, stopping to enjoy the lake for a bit, and again to listen to a drum circle where a large group of people were dancing. I sat on my bike, one foot on the curb, and took in the scene.
