With her salon located in an area with approximately 15.3 percent unemployment, Deivin Jemmott helps unemployed women with free hair styling to make them feel more confident about how they look. Produced by Khadijah Carter and Gillian Mohney

Four people in Monsey, New York are facing hate crime charges after allegedly targeting a man during a robbery because he was Jewish. Police said three of the suspects had discussed finding a Jewish victim prior to the committing the alleged robbery. The victim, a Yeshiva student from Brooklyn, spoke to CBS 2 New York about the alleged hate crime saying “If you want my money because you want to attack me because I’m Jewish, that’s something else. I think that’s a little, it’s called racism.”

Read more at CBS 2 New York.

“You gotta clap when he comes out, clap!,” the crowd of 50 to 60 people chanted, gathered outside the corrections entrance on the side of the Bronx Supreme Court Criminal Division on Tuesday morning.

Reed's mother, left, and aunt, right, speaking to press outside the Bronx Supreme Court before his release (Rebecca Ellis / The Bronx Ink).

The group was waiting for Jateik Reed, 19, who was released on bail, after he had been picked up in the 42^nd Precinct on marijuana and cocaine possession charges on Jan. 26. Neighbors and witnesses said they saw four cops beat him with batons. Jateik denies he had any drugs on him.

“He was beaten in a most unfathomable fashion,” said Gidion Oliver, Jateik’s defense attorney from the Legal Aid Society, speaking to reporters after the court adjourned.

The police, however, say Reed resisted arrest. The prosecution indicated that the teen has outstanding robbery and assault charges and petitioned the court to increase his bail by another $30,000. Oliver and his client denied the charges, maintaining that they were tacked on the day after Jateik was beaten. The judge struck down the application for an increase and kept Jateik’s bail at $10,000 cash or $30,000 bond. An anonymous donor footed the $10,001.00 bill for Jateik’s release.

The crowd patiently waited until about 2 p.m., when Jateik’s attorney told Jateik’s father to pull his car around the back and get ready for a homecoming.   “I am so happy you don’t even know!,” Jateik’s mother, Schuan Reed, exclaimed outside the exit.

The excitement about Jateik’s release has not clouded the somber reality that young people like Jateik face in the context of escalating tensions between the police and working class neighborhoods of color in New York City.  While the NYPD cites the need to step up intervention and surveillance of communities like the 47^th Precinct of the Bronx to curb  violence, youth like Jateik live in a“target area” for the NYPD’s Stop and Frisk policy, where officers can randomly stop people based on suspicion of carrying drugs or weapons.

What many view as mistreatment of youth at the hands of police in these areas has sparked a resentment of law enforcement that not only affects the arrestee, but also his or her friends, family, and the surrounding community. Reed’s family has not been immune.

“His four-year-old brother cries for him,” said Jateik’s mother. She said she tried to keep the harsh reality from this youngest son, Jayaire, but that he could still sense what was going on. “Kids still know what’s going on. They feel the tension,” she said.

After Jateik was arrested and witnesses saw the officers continuing to beat him in the van, his mother, worried for her son’s safety, took Jayeire and Jateik’s other brother Jashawn, 17, to the 42^nd  Precinct to speak to the captain.  She says she and and Jashawn were harassed by officers, and they were not allowed to speak to the captain.   The precinct has not yet replied to comment on this incident.

Jateik’s mother says she’s been so shaken that she had to turn off the videos of her son’s beating that were posted on youtube.   “I couldn’t watch the rest of it,” she said.

When Schuan went to visit him at Riker’s Island correctional facility, Jateik told his mother that he has had nightmares that the officers will come back to kill him. They hugged goodbye after visiting time was up. “He wouldn’t let me go,” she said.

At Jateik’s arraignment on Feb. 1, his mother cried when she saw his injuries. He had four stitches in his arm and in the head, and his back was black and blue. Schuan was also concerned that Jateik had not received proper medical care while in custody.

On the same day, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly put the four cops on desk duty and initiated an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation. Melvin Hernandez, assistant to the public information at the district attorney’s office, confirmed the internal police investigation of the beating but would not comment further. The NYPD’s Department of Public Information has not yet replied to requests for any further comments as to how they are proceeding with the investigation.

Meanwhile, the courtroom, filled to capacity, was packed on Tuesday with family, supporters, and clergy members. Both Jateik’s aunt, Latifah Reed, and father, Bernard Walker, are Baptist ministers. Patrician Edwards, a minister at the Gosemite Baptist Church on Prospect Avenue, said that Jateik came to church regularly and sang with his brother in the choir.

Walker explained that Jateik was on the way to meet him in order to register for an alternative school the day he was arrested. Both of Jateik’s parents are concerned that this arrest may hinder his enrollment, and hope that the school will understand the circumstances.   While Walker knows his son isn’t perfect, he insisted that Jateik wanted to turn his life around. “He wants to get out of the community,” Walker said, meaning out of a rough neighborhood. “When he gets out, I want to keep him away from bad influences. I want to make sure he gets back and forth to court and get him back in school.”

His mother said that while Jateik may have been in trouble before, he is innocent of the robbery and assault charges, citing that he has an alibi for the day the crimes occurred.   “Even if he did do these other crimes, which I know he didn’t, that does not justify the beating he received,” Jateik’s mother said. “The police need to be retrained.”

As to whether this unfortunate situation has inspired her to become more active in the community, Jateik’s mother said yes, definitely.   “I’ve heard of these things going on in our community all the time. I’m just sorry that it took this to happen to see what’s what. I’ll be out there,” she said. “I only pray that the truth comes out.”

As the hour of Jateik’s release approached, his mother and aunt choked up, speaking to a small group of community members and clergy surrounding them.

“When he gets out, I’m going to feed him! Doctor him up. He can have anything he wants. I’ll take him out,” his mother said.

Jateik came out of the side door in a flash of orange, still in his orange prison suit. Cameras snapped, and in an instant, Jateik was in the SUV, reunited with his family, hugging his mother. He reappeared briefly to thank everyone for their support. After a number of flashes went off to capture the moment, a man stepped up to the car and said to Jateik, “Now get your rest. You still have a lot to do. The struggle ain’t over.”

In fact, the release is just the beginning of Jateik’s journey into the legal system.  Jateik is due to reappear in court on Feb. 24 for the robbery and on March 17 for assault.   “I hope justice prevails,” his mother said.

Jateik Reed hugs his mother before he gets in the car after he is released (Rebecca Ellis / The Bronx Ink).

Police have arrested and charged a Brooklyn man with stabbing his mother to death in Prospect Heights yesterday. Andrew Bell, 28, is accused of killing his 43-year-old mother inside her second-story apartment at 487 St. Marks Ave.

Read more: http://www.news12.com/

A gigantic blue rat with a menacing look, a vibrant yellow baby holding onto to a cigarette, a background of agonized skull heads and ill-looking subjects—these may not be the most pleasant of sights, but they certainly capture the attention of passers-by at Berry and South 4th street in Brooklyn.

The Ashes to Ashes mural painting on the wall of a south Williamsburg side street was produced in 2000 by Joe Matunis, a 53-year-old artist and a teacher at the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. At the end of each school year, Matunis gathers a group of his students and sets out to “redecorate” the “bleak” walls of Williamsburg, with art focused on the designated theme for that school year. He and his students have produced more than 10 murals in Williamsburg over the last decade, all addressing social issues that range from smoking, to abortion and asthma.

The school, on 250 Hopper Street, was created in 1993 by the chancellor at the time, José Fernandez, with the help of a former ballerina, Frances Lucerna. The idea was to combat the problems that come with very large high schools, and to motivate students to participate in their community. The school’s average student body is 500 students, and teachers point out that El Puente boasts an impressive 90 percent graduation rate.

El Puente takes a rounded approach to education, thanks to a syllabus partially created by Matunis, who has been a teacher there for more than 18 years.  “We take a yearly project and work on it in every subject. We explore the same theme in the arts, investigative, and science classes,” he explains. “The advantage is that it allows our students to become immersed in the subject.”

“Some of our murals are really aggressive,” Matunis explains. “We work on topics that are socially important, like sweatshops and smoking. But the most important part of our murals is actually the process”. The students, he explains, leave pieces of themselves in every mural.

“I remember one student, Stephanie Robles, She wasn’t the best painter or artist in the group but she was a great organizer and it was really powerful to watch her grow from this shy, unsure ninth grader to someone who was speaking in public,” he said. “She is part of the police force now and that makes me very proud… It is exactly what we want to have happen here.”

“When we see the things our kids go through, you realize how strong and resilient, but also how hard life is. Some of them are single parents, have parents in incarceration, live in homeless shelters. But they are all so funny and smart, every one of them.”

On the corner of South 4th street and Hewes, an asthma-themed mural that Robles helped to create in 1999 is the backdrop to the Southside Community Garden. Layered with bright colors and billows of dark polluted smoke, Living With Asthma recreates the theme of the evils of smoke, this time both in cigarettes and in the high levels of pollution in the community. “Toxic emissions in Williamsburg are 60 times greater than the US average,” it reads.

Ashley Davis, passing by on the street on her way to work, says she is too busy to absorb the meaning of the mural. But for others, such as Steven Tavares, the owner of the Williamsburg Deli across the street, the mural does not go unnoticed. Tavares has seen the asthma mural everyday for the past two and a half years.  “I’ll be honest: it’s easy to start and hard to quit” smoking, he says. “When I see television ads and murals like that it makes me feel very guilty. I haven’t been able to stop, but I have cut down. I smoke half a cigarette at a time instead of one now.”

“As a community artist you do want to reach out to your community,” Matunis stresses. But, after 10 years, the artist claims to have learned a more important lesson from working with students. “The funny thing is that I don’t really think that there is a lot of internal analysis going on when people see our murals” Matunis admits. “I remember when we created the smoking mural, we kind of expected people to be disgusted by the images they saw but instead, people would pass by and many of them would actually stop, look at the mural and take out a cigarette. The power of nicotine is just so strong that even our images reminded them to smoke.”

Where does one draw the line between vandalism and community art? “That’s an easy one,” the artist responds. “Vandalism is about scribbling on a wall. Community art is all about nurturing the community.”

Matunis’s love affair with public art began a long time ago. As a young graduate student at the Art Institute in Chicago, Matunis studied studio art and maintained his own studio where he catered for corporate clients and galleries. After spending a semester in Scotland at a public art program however, Matunis decided that it was time for a career change and abandoned the corporate “wine and cheese” art scene. “Cities in the 1980s were a big playground,” the artist says with a smile, “before gentrification you could out at night and paint on abandoned buildings and construction sites. If you wanted to make art there you could just go out and do it because no one owned the buildings.”

Inspired by the whiff of “revolution in the world of street art,” Matunis began and completed his first piece of public art in the summer of 1987. “I would go out painting at night,” he says. “It wasn’t legal, but I started painting earlier and earlier and after a while just started painting in the day time. That was when I fell in love with public art.”

“People don’t realize what you can achieve this through the arts,” Matunis says.  “I try to motivate everyone to move onto college and follow their talents. But some of our kids have never even left Brooklyn, they haven’t even seen Manhattan, so it isn’t easy for them. Some of them don’t make it. If there is anything I reproach myself about, it is not pushing some of them harder to go onto university.”

Sitting in the teacher student lounge on a Monday afternoon, Eric Acevedo, a senior, says he is confident that Matunis changed his career path. “The reason I ended up coming to El Puente was due to one of my poetry idols, named Lemon Andersen,” Acevedo explains. “During a lunch period in November or October in 2008, Joe asked me why I had come to the academy; I told him that I wanted to meet Lemon Anderson and Joe invited me to visit Andersen at a reading with him. I was able to attend the show and speak to Lemon. Joe made my dream come true.”

Acevedo never participated in the mural paintings. “I was too busy writing poetry,” he says. Four years after meeting his idol, Acevedo has completed his first project, a book of poems, El Rice is Cooking that features more than two dozen poems. He hopes to get it published soon.

A teacher’s aide at a Brooklyn school was arrested again Monday by the FBI and charged with making child pornography videos of students he was assaulting at the grade school where he worked, authorities said today. It is the second time in the last two weeks that FBI agents have charged Taleek Brooks with offenses linked to illegally possessing films of underage children engaged in sexual acts.

Associated Press- A Brooklyn police officer has pleaded guilty in a smuggling case that involved guns, cigarettes and slot machines. Officer William Masso pleaded guilty to four conspiracy counts. He could face roughly five to six years in prison when he’s sentenced on June 15.

Read more at http://online.wsj.com/

All pet owners know that saying good-bye to a beloved animal companion is a painful and difficult process. The Hope Veterinary Clinic in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn helps local and out-of-borough residents come to terms with their loss through hospice care and on-site counseling.

Produced by Michael V’inkin Lee and Rebecca Ellis

An entrance to the city's first Slow Zone in the Claremont section of the Bronx. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

A turn off the busy lanes of Southern Boulevard in the Bronx promptly takes a driver off that roadway onto the mostly residential streets of Claremont. Two months ago, drivers barely took their feet off the gas pedal as they made the turn. Now, however, they are greeted by hard-to-miss 20 mph signs and large white numbers painted on the street’s asphalt. If those signs don’t catch drivers’ attention, the speed bumps will.

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) launched a Neighborhood Slow Zone program this fall that reduces speed limits from 30 mph to 20 mph and adds safety measures, such as speed bumps, within a select area. The first and currently only existing Slow Zone in the city was created in the Claremont section of the Bronx in late November. A 20 mph zone program in London has already proven to reduce vehicle speeds and accidents by as much as 40 percent. Now several neighborhoods in Brooklyn are applying for their own Neighborhood Slow Zones, hoping for the same results.

“Apparently there is a practice among drivers to drive more than the speed limit suggests is legal. One of the ideas is that if we lower the speed limit to 20 then maybe people will adhere to that or at least recognize that they’re in a residential area,” says Ben Petok, communications director for Brooklyn Councilman Stephen Levin, who is supporting the Slow Zone applications of three Brooklyn neighborhoods—Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.

The New York City speed limit is 30 mph, but reduced speed zones exist directly in front of schools. The Slow Zone program, however, creates a whole area, around a quarter of a mile (approximately five by five blocks), where the speed limit is 20.

Drivers know they are entering a Slow Zone with standard speed limit signs, as well as gateways. Speed bumps also decrease vehicle speed, calm traffic and remind drivers that they are in a 20 mph zone, says DOT press secretary Scott Gastel.

In addition to 20 mph signs, Slow Zones also feature speed bumps, like this one in front of a Claremont elementary school. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

New York City has reduced the number of traffic fatalities by 35 percent compared to 2001, according to the August 2010 New York City Pedestrian Safety Study & Action Plan. But the city wants to lower them even more.

In order to make its streets even safer city officials looked towards another major international city, London. A study that measures the effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London from 1986 to 2006 found that 20 mph zones led to approximately a 40 percent reduction in road accidents and fatalities, and the number of serious injuries or deaths in children were reduced by half.

Using the British program as a model, the DOT selected an area in the South Bronx as its first Slow Zone because of its crash statistics, community interest and easily definable borders, says Gastel. He adds that at this time it’s still in an evaluation period.

But in a little over two months, residents are already seeing its impact.

Joanne Morales, who has a young daughter and lives in a building just inside the zone, says the Slow Zone is definitely making a big difference, and now cars slow down and stop instead of speeding.

“It helps since we’ve got kids crossing and coming out of schools,” says Ruben Cadet, who also lives in the Claremont Slow Zone. But he adds that the speed bumps are the measure that is really slowing down drivers rather than the 20 mph signs.

Anna Rivera, a driver who resides in the Slow Zone, admits that she is now driving slower because of the speed bumps, and notices that there are fewer accidents and speeding cars.

Her friend Jimmy DeJesus agrees with her, but adds that the zone hasn’t stopped every driver from speeding. Still, he is happy with the results.

Other areas in the city, including four in Brooklyn, submitted applications last week for their own Slow Zones. Any neighborhood can apply, and the DOT will consider factors such as crash data, proposed borders, presence of schools, senior centers, daycare centers and small parks in the zone, and letters of support.

“Why these specific neighborhoods would be good homes for Slow Zones is really because they are family neighborhoods with a lot of parents with small children, with school-aged children who walk to their local schools and it’s a safety hazard to have cars speeding through,” says Petok.

The aim of Slow Zones, in addition to lowering the number of accidents, is to reduce noise and traffic in residential neighborhoods, says Gastel. Cut through traffic—cars taking short cuts to avoid busier streets—have plagued some Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Prospect Heights, which are near major Brooklyn roadways and the Atlantic Yards construction site, the future home of the Barclays Center.

A busy Atlantic Avenue intersection that borders several residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

“Given our location surrounded by major arterial roads, Prospect Heights experiences substantial cut-through traffic and, with our long blocks, drivers often speed in order to make it through the next traffic light before it turns to red,” says Tom Boast, vice president of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council and head of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Slow Zone Application Committee.

Strong support for these zones from residents, community groups and local politicians was evident at a January 21 informational meeting held in Park Slope ahead of the DOT’s Feb. 3 Slow Zone application deadline.

Eric McClure, president of Park Slope Neighbors, one of the community groups that sponsored the meeting, says that “overwhelming the people [at the meeting] who thought it was a good idea felt that it would make the streets safer and that they consider vehicle speeds an issue of concern in the community.”

The Brooklyn Paper recently reported that some residents in Greenwood Heights are against a Park Slope Slow Zone because they believe once vehicles leave the 20 mph area and enter their neighborhood they will start speeding. But the earlier mentioned study on London’s 20 mph zones found that no evidence of road fatalities migrating to adjacent areas, and that traffic deaths in those places fell by an average of 8 percent.

McClure has encouraged Greenwood Heights to apply for their own 20 mph area. “It would be nice if we were just on big contiguous neighborhood Slow Zone,” he says.