Gentrification is transforming Brooklyn into the “Next Manhattan”, but for many long-time residents the housing boom sparked by urban renewal has become a nightmare.

Produced and Filmed by Michael V’inkin Lee, Sarah Munir, and Vikram Patel.

Neighborhood watch groups have drawn public scrutiny in the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy–New York is home to several of these groups. Reporters Frank Runyeon and Tania Rashid take an inside look at the Bronx County Safety Patrol.

In its’ short existence hip-hop music has found a way to captivate people of all cultures. Now Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn has bred a Bengali rapper named Brooklyn Shanti. Although he’s gained the respect of his hip-hop peers, his family has not been as open to the idea of him becoming a hip-hop superstar.

While prom is a rite of passage for many teens, the cost of the tradition can be too much for some families. But thanks to the  L.A.C.E. Leading Ladies prom dress giveaway some Brooklyn teens can afford to show up in style.

Census numbers show the dwindling numbers. In 1980, 307,044 (13.8 percent) of people in Brooklyn had Italian ancestry. By 2010, it was 168,420 (6.3 percent).

Though the Italian population is decreasing, its cultural imprint remains. Here are two businesses that are keeping the Italian alive in Brooklyn.

Serving Sicilian One Panelle at a Time

Ferdinando’s Focacceria, in Carroll Gardens, is a family business that has included three generations of the Buffa family. Today, Frank Buffa oversees the restaurant, and his sons, Christian and David, help manage it. The restaurant is popular with everyone from locals to celebrities who come to taste its Sicilian specialties. The most famous and popular item on the menu is the panelle special. Panelles are chickpea fritters, and they are put on a sandwich with ricotta and Pecorino Romano cheese. Here, Christian shows how to make them.

Parlate Italiano, Bambini?

Alberta Gulotta started Little Language Playhouse about eight years ago. It’s the only language school in Brooklyn to exclusively teach Italian to children. Classes start as young as 6-months-old and go up to 12-years-old. Located in Dyker Heights, around where Gulotta grew up with her Italian parents, she knew the school would do well in the neighborhood. Still, she says, for an Italian-American area, there should be more parents who sign their children up for her classes. She wishes more people of Italian decent would pass the language through the generations. Here’s a look at a class of five- to seven-year olds.

Brooklyn-based Aereo lets users stream live broadcast channels on iPads, laptops, and iPhones. (Aereo.com)

When Phil Toronto moved into an apartment in the East Village last summer, he tried going without cable television. Eventually, after missing a few Jets games, he caved and ordered a subscription. Then in March Toronto, who is 25 and manages emerging technology at Vayner Media, heard about Aereo, a service that lets New Yorkers watch broadcast television live on some laptops and mobile devices for $12 a month. Toronto knew he had found a great deal.

“I was paying about $80 a month for something I used about twice a week,” he said. “I realized I could spend that money better.”

The entrepreneurs — and the investors — behind Aereo are hoping that the rest of New York realizes that too. Since launching in March, the Brooklyn-based startup lets viewers watch television on a web browser. They only have access, however, to the basic broadcast channels – the same ones they’d get if they owned a television set and a pair of rabbit ear antennas. In other words, no HBO, no Showtime, no AMC. And the potential to grab cord-cutters, like Toronto, is strong. According to the Nielsen Company, the number of families that don’t own a cable subscription in the past year has risen by more than 22 percent.

An array of antennaes that Aereo assigns to users (Aereo.com)

“They don’t have an antennae that they beam out to everyone,” explains John Bergmayer, an attorney who works for Public Knowledge, a group that advocates for digital rights and might write a brief on Aereo’s behalf. “Instead, each individual person essentially gets their own antennae.”

Over pizza and beers at Columbia University last month, executives at the company explained to business students that the device might change the way consumers think about television. As David Cann, the vice president of operations, put it: “They’re not thinking on a park bench in Central Park, I can watch ‘The Master’s’ right now.”

But more Americans are watching television programs later than they air, using DVRs. Almost 106 million did so in the last quarter of 2011, according to the Nielsen Company, up from 7 percent from a year ago. So the company’s main selling point – watch television live, wherever you are – may not be that big of a draw.

“Consumers want their shows on all their devices at any time,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst for Forrester Research. “But not necessarily in real time.”

Aereo obviously hopes that they will. “We saw the wide-scale adoption of internet-connected devices, the growth in bandwidth speed, and the growth in consumer consumption in video,” said Nick Sallon, director of business development. “It was really a massive opportunity.” And they based the company in New York, he added, because New Yorkers often adopt new technology earlier than the rest of the country. Toronto, who works in the media industry, said that ten of his friends have already signed up for a free 90-day trial, which ends soon, though he plans to re-new it.

But not everyone is enthralled with the new idea. In fact, most of the major broadcast networks filed lawsuits against the startup, claiming copyright infringement, after investors announced plans to launch Aereo in March — the most prominent is Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp.

“This case is not about stifling new video distribution technologies, but about stopping a company from violating our copyrights and redistributing our television programming without permission or compensation,” said some of the broadcasters in a statement.

Bergmayer thinks that Aereo should prevail under the law. “They’re not giving people access to anything they don’t have a right to,” he says. “You can already watch all of this stuff, if you have a good enough antennae, for free.”

In the short term, Bergmayer says, Aereo is hardly a threat to the broadcast networks’ bottom line. “If they’re still dependent on ads as their primary revenue stream, then what threat is Aereo at all?” he asks. “All it’s doing is increasing the number of viewers.”

Though the company won’t reveal how many members it has, when asked about its growth Aereo’s Sallon described it as, “prolific,” though he chuckled after. But Ettman, the research analyst, is more skeptical. “The segment of consumers that still watches live television tends to be an older demographic,” she says. “It is not very convenient to have to tune in at a very specific time in consumer’s busy lives.”

But when must-see cable TV airs, — this year on Sunday nights — Aereo members are at a disadvantage since a limited number of channels are offered. When the fifth season of AMC’s “Mad Men” premiered in March, for example, Toronto had to head over to a friend’s house to catch up.

For the most part, “Aereo fit my bill,” he says. But on occasion, he concedes, “It’s a bit of a gamble.”

In Williamsburg, everybody knows her name (Purvi Thacker / The Brooklyn Ink)

Trenton Stein walked by North 6th street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg and stopped to look at the vintage jewelry displayed on the sprawling table by the sidewalk. His tall frame loomed over the trays of neatly arranged earrings, rings, pendants and necklaces. He started talking to the white haired, bespectacled lady manning the table and suddenly let out a loud guffaw.

“ I told you,” she said, “Women always lie except when you are good in bed.”   Stein started laughing again. She waved him goodbye and told him that she would see him the following week.

The wisdom-dispending vendor, Lidia Swiatkowsai, 63, has sat at the same corner on this sidewalk almost every day for the last 5 years, becoming a fixture in the neighborhood. She speaks Czech, Polish, Russian and German and seems to know everyone—and they flock to her. “They come from all over- whether it is the Bronx, London or France, I have regulars who come back to buy what I have gathered over many years,” she explains,

The artistic community in Bedford appeals to her and she trusts them. “They are loyal customers and if they stand on the other end of the table, I don’t even need to look, because they never steal anything,” she says. “These arty people dress badly in scruffy, hipster clothes. But they are nice on the inside.”

Originally from Sandau (Germany), which later became Pszczyna (Poland), she immigrated to Massapequa, Long Island 30 years ago, with her Polish husband, then in the air force, and an array of antique jewelry she had collected throughout the years. She still regularly vistis antique auctions in New Jersey to build her stock. “I have no two pieces of anything!” she says.

She started selling her collection as a way, she says, to interact with people. “I have two daughters and a son and they all are married and live in different cities,” she says. So when her husband got a veteran’s license, she decided to take charge so she could meet people and spend her time. “ I love people and I believe in relationships,” she says. And from the traffic at her sidewalk stall, it’s clear she has many of them

Another regular, this one from Queens, stops and inquires about her health. “I am a heart patient, but I also have poor vision. So I need good light when I have to fix the stones on my trinkets,” she says.

A typical day ends for her around 5 p.m. where she delicately wraps up her paraphernalia and puts it into boxes in her van and drives back home. Her husband sometimes accompanies her and the drive back usually consists of arguments about what they will eat for dinner.

“I’m going to have salmon tonight,” she says. “ But either Atlantic or Alaskan, I don’t like the regular farm packaged salmon.” She has also made up her mind to have a glass of whiskey with her supper. “ Johnnie Walker is the only way to go. Remember, it is all about quality,” she says as she cheekily winks.

We hear a lot about the New Brooklyn these days, about the great swaths of the borough that are enjoying the fruits of gentrification. We love that Brooklyn. But in this special package we focus on stubborn problems that are not so new and receive little attention, on quiet human dramas in less economically vibrant parts of the borough. A woman trying to reconnect with her children after prison; another brave woman’s battle with a form of breast cancer that disproportionately affects African-Americans; a blue-collar day care center struggling to keep the doors open; an employer sweating bullets about whether or not to hire; homeowners wasting endless days and years in foreclosure hearings; cops and citizens wresting with a plague of guns. Welcome to Brooklyn Under the Radar.

Source: New York Police
Department

The Guns of Brooklyn

by Frank Runyeon, May 4

Law enforcement recovered 1,469 guns in Brooklyn, a number that is proportionally higher than in any other borough, in 2011, according to the New York Police Department…

Read more »

Source: Women in Prison
Project

Resurrection: A Mother in Prison, and Out

by Khadijah Carter, May 4

There were almost 80,000 children with a parent in New York prisons, including 5,240 with an incarcerated mother, in 2009, according to reports by the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York…

Read more »

Source: Realty Trac

The Three-Year Wait: Surviving Foreclosure in Brooklyn

by Gillian Mohney, May 4

The timeline for a New York foreclosure case opened in the fourth quarter of 2011 is an estimated 1,019 days, according to Realty Trac…

Read more »

Source: New York State
Department of Health

A Positive Woman With Triple Negative Cancer

by Cristabelle Tumola, May 4

The average annual breast cancer rate for African-American women living in Brooklyn was 28.5 per 1,000, higher than any other borough, from 2004 to 2008…

Read more »

Source: Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce

A Job Grows in Brooklyn: How One Employer Decided to Hire

by Vikram Patel, May 4

Brooklyn added more than 50,000 jobs, including more than 9,300 in the food service industry, between 2000 and 2010, according to a report from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce…

Read more »

Source: National Association
of Child Care Resource
and Referral Agencies

Day Care: A Tale of Two Neighborhoods

by Rebecca Ellis, May 4

New York is the second most expensive state in the nation for childcare, where full-time child care can cost more than $10,847, according to the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) 2010 statistics…

Read more »

Sofia, Gloria and Macario Reinoso outside their store in Bushwick. (Photo by Gillian Mohney)

On the third floor of the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the list goes up every morning. The daily record of scheduled foreclosure mediation meetings lists each case, along with the corresponding plaintiff, defendant and the past number of conferences.

The list is posted outside two rooms where the meetings are held — ordinary courtrooms that have become battlegrounds. Inside, homeowners and mortgage lenders wrangle over the future of the brownstones, pre-war co-ops, warehouses and lofts that make up New York City.

By 9:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, many of the people on the list had already arrived. Lawyers and residents on opposing sides of foreclosure cases calmly occupied the same hallway. Many checked their phones or their paperwork. They rarely made eye contact with one another. Some homeowners had brought their children, who slumped sleepily against their parents.

Toward the end of the hallway, Sophia Reinoso sat on a bench with her mother, Gloria, as they waited for their name to be called. It was their 13th time going into a conference.

Both of the buildings owned by Sophia’s father, Macario, have been in the foreclosure process for nearly two years. “It’s never-ending,” Sophia said.

***

For New York residents dealing with foreclosure courts, that feeling isn’t just hyperbole. New York leads all 50 states in the amount of time it takes to go through the foreclosure process.

Foreclosure lawyers and housing advocates say that part of this long wait time is due to the rise in the number of foreclosure settlement conferences, which have been steadily increasing over the last four years in New York. Now cases are taking 10, 12 or even 14 meetings — which translates to months and years deciding the outcome of a single case.

According to Realty Trac, the timeline for a New York foreclosure case opened in the fourth quarter of 2011 is an estimated 1,019 days.

While part of the wait is due to New York’s congested foreclosure courts, new studies suggest it is also indirectly tied to new regulations that were passed to help New Yorkers in foreclosure.

To combat “robo-signing” in 2010, the New York court system started requiring that lender attorneys attest to the accuracy of foreclosure summons and complaints by filling a Request for Judicial Intervention, or RJI. Basically lawyers had to verify that a human was behind the initial foreclosure filing. However, while foreclosure notices were being filed at the same pace, lender attorneys often neglected to file the newly required RJI that kickstarted court proceedings between the defendant and plantiff. Without the necessary paperwork, homeowners could be caught in a kind of limbo or “shadow dockets.”

For the ordinary homeowner facing foreclosure, even those not in “shadow dockets,” the three-year period between the start and end of a foreclosure case means three years of stress and anxiety.

***

Sophia’s father Macario is from Ecuador. Macario’s story originally was a positive one of an immigrant making it on the streets of Brooklyn.

He opened the Superstar Deli and Grocery on Irving Street in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1985. Sophia and her brother grew up in the apartment at the back of the store, its entrance hidden behind the soda machines and stacks of potato chips. Macario bought the first building 25 years ago and a second one, two doors down, 11 years ago.

With a full head of hair, Macario can look decades younger than his 74 years. But he moves stiffly and his hands are rough from years of making change and lifting boxes. When he talks about his finances, he gives the appearance that he is bracing himself for bad news.

During the recession, Macario’s profit from his market dropped 70 percent. In addition, two of the four tenants from his building stopped paying rent, as they ran into problems themselves. On top of that, Macario was paying taxes on the building originally valued at $850,000, but now worth $400,000 in the current market.

While much has been made of homeowners borrowing far more than they could afford before the housing bubble burst, in person many homeowners describe a complicated scenario that led to the foreclosure. Macario thought he did everything right.

Sophia, now 34, looks nearly as tall as her father but has the wide almond eyes of her mother. She has been assisting her parents as they try and sort through the foreclosure process and keep their buildings. During the dire period after his income started to drop, Macario met with a lawyer who assured him he would be able to modify his mortgage to a more manageable sum.

But Sophia says the lawyer was no help. “‘Don’t pay your mortgage; don’t pay your taxes. You need to show you need the help,’” said Sophia, recalling the lawyer’s advice. After working with the lawyer for approximately six months, Macario was surprised to receive his first foreclosure notice.

“Then I get the panic because how come it is like that?” Macario recalled. Macario asked that the law firm refund him the $4,000 he had paid them, but only received $750 back.

Housing advocates say that Macario’s story is a familiar one of homeowners taking bad advice and ignoring potential problems, all on the word of someone not actually invested in the building.

***

Approximately seven miles from Macario’s market is the quiet neighborhood of Mill Basin. On 55th Street off Avenue O, Alex Perdia lives in a two-level brick home with his wife Nomanda and his daughter. When Perdia talks about the foreclosure process, he does so after sighing in relief.

Alex says he got in over his head after his brother-in-law suggested buying his home with little money down and an adjusted-rate mortgage. “With family you didn’t think you have to look out, but you do,” said Alex. “It’s business.”

During the downturn, Alex asked his local bank to help him refinance his mortgage when his payments started to balloon. However, since his house had lost value in the housing bubble, he was told there was no equity in his home, and that the bank would not let him refinance.

With payments looming, Alex became increasingly desperate until he saw a sign for legal assistance at the Erasmus Neighborhood Federation. At the center Alex was given a lawyer who assisted him throughout his case free of charge. He was one of the few who are able to go through the process with legal help.

According to the Brennan Center of Justice, court officials reported 70 percent of homeowners facing foreclosure in New York lacked legal representation in 2009, Alex believes he would have lost his house if he hadn’t found help.

His lawyer’s first suggestion was to actually stop paying his mortgage, since he was eligible for the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which would facilitate the mortgage modification process and help him keep his home.

Alex said the lawyer estimated that he would be done with the foreclosure process in approximately four to six months, instead it took 18 months.

Alex and Nomanda went to 10 settlement conferences. The pair describes the meetings as frustrating exercises in repetition. Since the lender sent a new lawyer to each meeting many times, the new representative would attempt to argue points that had been dealt with in previous meetings.

“It’s like one hand wasn’t talking to the other hand,” recalled Alex. He said even the court moderator told the lawyer once, “We’ve moved past this.”

Many foreclosure lawyers and counselors say that finding a different lender lawyer at every conference has become commonplace. This practice can often result in delays as lawyers attempt to argue cases they have just received. One foreclosure lawyer said he had to give the bank’s attorney his file to read, because the case information sent to her blackberry came up scrambled.

Mark Ladov of the Brennan Center for Justice said that although lenders are required by law to send someone knowledgeable about the case, and with the ability to settle, it rarely happens. “It’s certainly an indication of how, even this many years into the foreclosure crisis, the financial industry hasn’t taken the steps needed to help homeowners and get us all out of this financial mess,” Ladov wrote in an -mail.

The Perdias say their first inkling that they might face a real battle was after they attempted to send a payment to the bank. In order to qualify for the Home Affordable Modification program, the Perdias had to send three trial payments to the bank after the foreclosure process started. Although they sent the check overnight with a FedEx receipt, their bank claimed they never got the first payment.

“She told us to resend it. We resent it,” recalled Nomanda. “When we went back [to the settlement conference], we had to start all over again.”

While the Perdias were going to court once every six to eight weeks, the bank was still attempting to contact them at home in spite of their lawyer’s request that the bank speak only with her directly. “They said they never knew our lawyer! How do you not know about our lawyer and we’ve been in court six times already?” said Alex. “This is the games that they play.”

***

Those who have worked for the banks see things differently. Patrice Harris is a former mortgage banker turned housing counselor at the Neighborhood Housing Services of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He says that the mortgage lenders were overwhelmed with the number of foreclosures and have been playing catch-up ever since.

“They personalize it,” said Harris of residents facing foreclosure. “It’s not personal; it’s business.”

Harris recalled that at the beginning of the downturn, many banks only had a single dedicated fax line for foreclosure cases. Thousands of cases would get sent to one fax line resulting in the banks receiving incomplete paper work.

Harris says things have gotten slightly better after those initial hectic months.  Now he uses an online server created by the Treasury to upload paper work. However, he says clients still have to be fierce to win the foreclosure fight.

“You have to be willing to fight. You have to be willing to defend what’s yours, and you have to pray,” said Harris. “Prayer, faith, patience are the three key ingredients in this entire process.”

***

For the Perdias, the fight finally is over. After the bank repeatedly claimed it didn’t receive the initial payment and its representatives insisted they didn’t have the authority to offer modification deals, the court-appointed mediator signed a document accusing the mortgage lender of not negotiating in good faith, which was then presented to the judge.

At that moment the Perdias said they perceived a change in how the case was going. The judge ordered that the lawyer fly out a representative who would be able to offer a mortgage modification.

“You can see the expression on the judge’s face,” said Perdia. “You can see [the bank's lawyers] are nervous, but they’re trying to play hardball.”

During the 10th settlement conference, the judge finally gave the lender’s lawyers an ultimatum: They had 10 minutes to come up with an acceptable mortgage modification or he would rule.

After a year and a half of fighting over the brick two-level home, the case would be decided in a matter of minutes. Alex Perdia’s lawyer explained that he would be able to make a statement to the court about his experience going though the foreclosure process.

“I’m thinking about all of these things and trying to keep it in order,” recalled Alex. “I’m preparing myself mentally and I’m a little nervous too getting up there in front of the judge.”

Minutes before the judge’s ruling, the bank came back with a final modification that Perdia’s lawyer recommended he take. Alex and Nomanda said all they could do was sigh in relief and sign the papers.

After nearly a year and half of worrying, Nomanda said the most shocking moment was the realization she was actually going to get to keep their home.

“They ignored the mediator and whatever — you’re a nobody,” recalled Nomanda about the bank’s representative’s demeanor. “‘You’re not keeping this house’ is the attitude they have. ‘You’re not keeping it, no way.’” But they did keep it.

***

In Bushwick, Macario is still holding his breath.

He fired a second law firm that he found untrustworthy. Macario says they brought bank representatives to his property and neglected to tell him about every scheduled settlement conferences. “It’s not right; he’s supposed to work for me,” said Macario. “I start thinking he’s working for somebody else.”

Macario says he began to question his lawyer’s dedication to his case when he was asked why he wanted to keep his buildings.

“You asked me how long I’ve lived here, I tell you more than 25 years working 17 hours a day,” said Macario. “I give half my life to keep this running. When you spend all that time and work and money, how I can say ‘I don’t care?’”

Macario’s problems have also been exacerbated by his role as landlord of the eight units in his two buildings. Even though some tenants were not paying rent, since the building was in foreclosure, Macario was unable to evict them. In addition, with the building in foreclosure, the court designated a third party to collect rent, while Macario still had to pay taxes and other utilities to keep the apartments habitable.

This meant for the first time in 25 years, Macario and his family had to pay rent. Macario’s lawyer recommended that he ignore the order and continue to collect rent from his tenants just to “have something” to fall back on. As a result, he was nearly evicted from his store by sheriff deputies. A last-minute letter from his lawyer proving that he would and could pay his rent stopped the eviction.

Currently Macario is working with a new lawyer who was suggested to him by his pastor. He expects that the building he bought 11 years ago, where his wife lives, will be out of foreclosure in the next few months. The other building, which houses his store and was his first home in America, remains in peril.

***

New regulations have been passed to help combat the lengthy foreclosure process time. In the federal settlement reached earlier this year with five of the major banks involved in foreclosures, loan servicing standards were addressed. Now banks must provide a single point of contact for the borrower. In addition, there is a pilot program in Queens that will have each mortgage servicer provide a dedicated representative for a week who has the power to make decisions in the case, in order to avoid the problems of having different lawyers for every meeting.

For Sophia, the new regulations and aid seem more theoretical than practical. “It just seems far off in the distance,” said Sophia.

At age 74, Macario says the only thing he can do is keep his head down and continue to fight for his buildings. “I have to leave them something,” said Macario of his family. “This life is very difficult.”

This story is part of a series of stories that focuses on the less economically vibrant parts of Brooklyn. For more, check out the rest of our Under the Radar series.

A selection of the 354 guns surrendered on June 4, 2011 as part of a cash-for-guns event in New York City. (AP Photo/NYPD)

Brooklyn has the rest of New York City outgunned.

Law enforcement data indicates that the borough has a disproportionately large number of the city’s guns. It’s a tough statistic to nail down, says Rory O’Conner, Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the ATF’s New York Field Division. Due to the large numbers of unregistered and illegally purchased guns, he says, “it’s obviously impossible to give an exact figure.”

But overall, law enforcement recovered nearly twice as many guns in Brooklyn as in any other New York City borough in 2010—1,614 guns were recovered in Kings County that year, according to data released by the ATF. While that number decreased to 1,469 in 2011, according to the NYPD, this number remains proportionally higher than other boroughs. These totals include those guns recovered via stop-and-frisk as well as arrests and other means.

In an effort to get illegal guns off the street, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD have employed two major campaigns—one that many people love and another one they hate. Gun buy-back events held by police have earned praise and support from local clergy, citizens, and politicians. The other method, “Stop-and-Frisk,” has infuriated many and drawn criticism from government officials—including State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who recently began examining the policy for signs of racial bias.

The Brooklyn Ink analyzed gun recovery data for a perspective on the unique set of costs and benefits associated with both stop-and-frisk and the gun buy-back program.

Stop-And-Frisk

While nearly 1,500 guns were recovered in Brooklyn last year, only 300 were recovered via stop-and-frisk—and it took nearly a quarter million stops for police to pick up those 300 firearms.

There were 228,354 stop-and-frisks in Brooklyn alone and 685,724 stop-and-frisks citywide in 2011, according to the NYPD data provided to The Brooklyn Ink by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Of the people stopped and frisked in Brooklyn last year, only 0.13 percent of all of them were carrying a gun, a recovery rate that continues a largely stable trend seen in data over the last decade, according to NYPD data provided by John Jay College’s Center for Race, Crime and Justice.

While Brooklyn is the city’s largest borough—home to 31 percent of the city’s population, according to 2010 census data—it still has a slightly larger ratio of guns recovered per capita by borough. In 2010, Brooklyn had 37 percent of the guns recovered citywide. The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island meanwhile had a combined stop-and-frisk gun recovery rate of 0.11 percent.

That’s 13 guns for every 10,000 people frisked in Brooklyn, and 11 guns for every 10,000 frisked outside of Brooklyn.

From an efficiency perspective, this is what bothers many stop-and-frisk critics.

“The issue with stop-and-frisk is that the number of guns that are confiscated during that procedure is so miniscule compared to the number of people that are stopped, questioned, frisked, and had their liberty interfered with,” says Professor Jones-Brown, founder of the Center for Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College.

“One of the big issues is, if police seem to be doing better with the buy-back programs, why do they continue to interfere with so many innocent people—people who are not carrying guns?” Professor Jones-Brown asks.

Buy-Back Programs

Since the gun buy-back program began in October of 2008, the NYPD has recovered 7,642 guns citywide, with 2,442 collected in Brooklyn alone—an average of more than 600 guns a year in Brooklyn.

It is true that the NYPD gun buy-back events bring in far more guns in far less time, but it comes at a price. The amounts offered have varied slightly, but anyone willing to return a handgun typically walks away with $200 and those surrendering a shotgun or rifle get $50. In a series of six Saturday events in 2009, the city shelled out $637,572 dollars for 3,551 guns—about $180 a gun.

Despite the hefty price tag, some would say that the gun buy-back program gives the NYPD more “bang for its buck” than stop-and-frisk. And while putting a dollar amount on the time and resources spent to employ the stop-and-frisk policy is difficult, measuring the political capital spent in continuing the controversial program seems simpler.

This calculus is not lost on Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. He was not always supportive of stop-and-frisk himself.

The New York Times reported that Kelly publicly criticized stop-and-frisk tactics back in 2000, saying that they “sowed new seeds of community distrust” and said that the community policing programs in the mid-nineties had been abandoned too soon.

But in recent years, the commissioner has been a staunch advocate for stop-and-frisk. And while Kelly has also regularly praised the buy-back program, Capital New York reported that he seemed to belittle it in a heated exchange this March. In the City Council meeting, Kelly defended the use of stop-and-frisk to Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito, and questioned what leaders in communities of color were doing to stem violence, adding, “What is their tactic and strategy to get guns off the street? Don’t tell me ‘a gun buy-back program.’”

Police insist that they must employ a variety of strategies to eliminate illegal firearms in New York City and routinely point to the city’s illegal gun market as a source of violence.

Guns that were purchased by undercover NYPD police officers are displayed during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2010. (AP Photo)

The Brooklyn Gun Market

Even as law enforcement and city officials remain locked in a bitter debate over stop-and-frisk, there’s a 38 caliber Smith and Wesson for sale somewhere in Brooklyn—only $600. Black market gun dealers feed demand for illegal guns by smuggling them into the city as they have for decades, says ATF Agent Rory O’Connor.

They buy from gun stores in Pennsylvania and other states with more relaxed gun laws down the I-95 corridor and drive them into Brooklyn. So while O’Conner says the source of guns is outside the city, “New York is a market area.”

“Say an undercover agent is going to negotiate for a pistol from a bad guy in the street,” the agent explains. “It’s probably going to be like 500 dollars—500 to 700 dollars for a handgun, for a pistol, for a revolver.”

Automatic pistols are the most recovered firearms from criminals, according to ATF statistics, with 2,497 recovered citywide in 2010. While the .38 Smith and Wesson revolver remains the single most recovered make of gun, only around 180 were recovered in New York.

“On the street a revolver is looked at like an antiquated piece, as opposed to a glock pistol,” because there’s a certain “sexiness” associated with semi-automatics—likely from being featured in films and video games, O’Conner says.

So far, there have been 128 shootings in Brooklyn in 2012, according to crime tracking website SpotCrime. Last year, there were 138 in Brooklyn during the same timeframe and 300 in 2011 overall. The NYPD reports that there were 298 homicides by gunshots citywide in 2011 and 119 in Brooklyn alone—nearly 40 percent of all shooting deaths in New York City. The Bronx was the second-most-lethal borough with 94 deaths or 31 percent of the city’s total shooting deaths.

Police haven’t escaped the danger either—eight NYPD officers have been shot in the last 5 months.

And while federal agencies like ATF continue to run undercover operations to eliminate small arms dealers selling out of the trunks of their cars, local law enforcement continues their own efforts to seize those illegal guns that do end up in New Yorkers’ hands.

But law enforcement has no illusions about the scope of the problem.

“What we do, what the local police do, its effective,” says ATF agent Rory O’Connor. “But its not going to stop the problem of illegal handguns. They’re going to be used in crime.”

This story is part of a series of stories that focuses on the less economically vibrant parts of Brooklyn. For more, check out the rest of our Under the Radar series.