Inside Brooklyn Supreme Court House. Nicole Anderson/ The Brooklyn Ink

An eyewitness in a double murder trial testified in Kings County Criminal Court Thursday that he saw the defendant, Sean Steer, shoot three times at one of the victims.

The eyewitness, Mr. Hunt, said he fled, only to discover later that the second victim at the shooting scene in Prospect Heights was his brother, Vance Rock.

“I looked in the ambulance and my brother wasn’t moving,” Hunt said. “His chest wasn’t moving up and down at all.  He was lifeless.”

On July 18^th, Steer was arrested for allegedly shooting Vance Rock and Darrian Delk after a heated verbal exchange at a block party Delk and Rock were sitting in their car at Washington Avenue and St. John’s Place when the defendant walked up and started firing bullets at them said Police.

Responding to questions from Assistant District Attorney Robert Walsh, Hunt said that moments earlier he had pulled up on his motorcycle next to his brother’s Chevy Caprice.  His brother told him that he was “having trouble with some guys” who were standing nearby, Hunt testified, and that his brother said, “looks like these guys are hating on me.”

Hunt learned that his brother had hit a guy he described as the “little guy with glasses” before he had arrived.

As the Hunt stood resting on his bike, he claimed that a guy he hadn’t noticed before came up and shot three bullets at Delk. The witness then took off on his bike.  It was after he returned a short while later that he discovered that his brother had been shot in the head and killed.

Hunts’ two brothers were speaking to police at the scene. Hunt told his brothers, “not to mention the fight to the officers. I wanted to see how I would go about handling things myself—thinking about taking things into my own hands and find out who killed my brother.”

Walsh asked, “Were you thinking of revenge?”

“Yes,” replied Hunt.

Walsh continued to question Hunt about his conversation with the detectives at the hospital.

“I didn’t tell Detective Perez that my brother knocked out the guy with glasses.”

However, a few weeks later, Hunt decided to come clean and tell the detectives everything.

Just as Walsh was asking why, Judge Joel M. Goldberg interjected and warned Walsh not to lead the witness.

“What changed your mind?” asked Judge Goldberg.

“A lot happened at home. Worse to lose another one [another son] and doing something stupid and going away for the rest of my life,” said Hunt.

A few weeks after that conversation, Hunt came to the precinct and identified the defendant in a police line-up.

The prosecution put a photograph of the car up on the screen and asked Hunt to show where he was parked on his motorcycle in relation to the car. Hunt pointed and said his wheel was only a few feet away from the wheel of his brother’s car.

“I had no difficulty seeing the guy with glasses or the defendant,” said Hunt.

Hunt told the court that he was still standing in the very same place when the three bullets were shot.

After the prosecution finished their line of questioning, defense attorney, Mr. Rodriguez, stood up and addressed the witness, “You have two violent felony convictions, correct?”

“Yes,” Hunt replied.

Hunt revealed under further questioning that he had served prison terms for shooting an off duty police officer in the leg and for robbery.

Judge Goldberg cut in to the testimony to explain to the jury that Hunt was not on trial, but that this information is relevant because it speaks to a witness’ credibility.

Rodriquez reminded Hunt that he initially told the detectives that he had left before the shots were fired, and had failed to mention the fight between Rock and the “little guy with glasses.”

As the cross-examination continued, Rodriguez attempted to show the inconsistencies and holes in Hunt’s testimony.  Hunt responded gruffly at times.

It is the second time he has testified. The trial continues.

22-year-old Kyle Decoteau was shot and killed in Bed-Stuy in July. (Picture courtesy of the Kyle Decoteau Foundation)

Kyle Decoteau, 22, was shot and killed in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the early hours of July 20, 2011.

His death and its aftermath, which saw a wave of anti-crime sentiment ripple through the neighborhood, highlighted two facts about Bed-Stuy: though safer than in the past, it’s still plagued by crime; and its residents are fed up with the plague.

“It is time for community members to speak out,” said Kurtis Miller, who tutored Decoteau in math, reading, and writing for six years. “Criminals need to be made to understand that their actions have an effect on people, and themselves as well, in time.”

Bed-Stuy’s reputation as a dangerous neighborhood had even seeped into pop culture. Billy Joel’s 1980 single “You May Be Right” used the phrase “I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone” as evidence against the singer’s own sanity. Jay-Z, who grew up in Bed-Stuy’s famous Marcy Houses, raps about rising from the mean streets of Brooklyn to superstardom, “from Marcy to Madison Square.”

NYPD crime statistics corroborated the gist of the performers’ words and the reality of Bed Stuy’s violent past. There were 120 murders in 1990 in the neighborhood, which is comprised of the 79^th and 81^st precincts. There were also 3,886 robberies—more than ten per day.

But over the course of the next decade, crime rates fell dramatically. In 2001, Bed-Stuy’s precincts reported 43 murders and 1,046 robberies. Between 1990 and 2001, total instances of the “seven major felonies”—murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto—fell by 66 percent.

Ten years later, crime rates are hovering in an uneasy spot: much lower than in the 90’s and still declining, but still too high. Last year, there were 29 murders in the neighborhood. That was enough to give Bed-Stuy, with a population of 161,290, an intentional homicide rate of nearly 18 per 100,000 residents, almost four times the national rate of 4.8 per 100,000, according to FBI statistics.

The rate is more or less on track to remain the same in 2011.

According to Kim Best, president of the 79^th Precinct Community Council and chairperson of Bed-Stuy’s Civic Safety Committee, community concern has been a key factor in the fight against crime.

“It’s very important that the community has taken safety into their own hands,” she said.“The NYPD can’t be everywhere: they can’t put a police officer on every block.”

One way that has been effective has been the establishment of action groups and block associations.

“I oversee more than 200 block associations,” she said. “At night on streets where a lot of crime happens, we have block watches. Certain people will be assigned to monitor the block at night, usually from inside their home. And if anything happens, they have the police on the phone right away.”

According to Best, the number of block associations in the area has grown dramatically since she first became involved with the Civic Safety Committee a decade ago.

Still, 23 people have been killed in Bed-Stuy this year.

One of them was Kyle Decoteau, shot twice on a stoop while trying to cool off on a hot summer night.In the wake of his death, his friends and family set out to galvanize the people of Bed-Stuy.

Ann Decoteau, Kyle’s mother, founded a nonprofit public charity, the Kyle Decoteau Foundation, in the aftermath of her son’s death. It represents just the sort of community-born resistance to crime that Best described as crucial.

The group organizes rallies and is raising money to provide counseling for kids and young men that have participated in or fallen victim to gang-related crime. At a march against violence organized by the foundation and held on Nov. 25, members of Kyle’s family, his friends, and people who had never met him walked through Bed-Stuy, shouting and chanting, their intolerance for crime on full and powerful display.

Decoteau’s tutor, Kurtis Miller, was also moved by his former pupil’s death. He wrote an open letter to the community, published in late August by local media outlets, pleading for peace and sensibility.

“Peace,” he wrote, “is a spiritual rest from within us, an unexplainable feeling far from our own conscious understanding that conquers the very circumstances which cause us to treat one another unkindly.”

Miller is no stranger to people treating each other unkindly. His brother was murdered in Harlem in 1996. He now considers it his duty to use his intimate knowledge of loss and tragedy as a weapon against crime.

“It’s too late for Kyle,” he says. “But there will be so many more like him if we [community members] don’t speak up.”

More Stories on The Brooklyn Ink:

Soccer Inspires Kids in Crown Heights

Brooklynites Cautious as Subway Theft Rises

Brownsville Street Gangs to Attempt Peace Talk

At the site of Alla Kamenev's murder, neighbors left a card of remembrance. Anna Hiatt/ The Brooklyn Ink

Ten seconds after he enters the frame of the surveillance video, he’s gone.

The man on the bicycle pulls himself over the curb and begins to pedal down the sidewalk of West Brighton Avenue, headed toward West First Street. The timestamp reads 11:44:49. He moves past cars waiting for the traffic light at Ocean Parkway, past a restaurant, a pharmacy and a supermarket, their signs all in Russian. The day is October 20, just before noon, in Brighton Beach.

Five minutes later and two blocks away, Alla Kamenev lies dying on the sidewalk. She is bleeding onto the pavement in broad daylight next to the black wrought-iron fence separating Asser Levy Park from Sea Breeze Avenue. She is 65 years old and will be pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital that afternoon.

Later that day, police learned from witnesses that the person who had shot her was a man on a bicycle wearing a white baseball cap, two-toned jacket, blue pants and white sneakers. After shooting Alla three times in the torso, he pedaled away.

Police talked with an employee at the medical supply store who had seen the shooting happen. They talked with Vlad Godin, reportedly her lover—it is unclear whether they are married—who shared an apartment with her at Brightwater Towers at 601 B Surf Ave., just three blocks away. They talked with her son, Vsevolod Kamenev, who lives with his father, Dimitry—Alla’s estranged husband—in what was once her home on Brighton 7th Street. They canvassed the neighborhood looking to talk with anyone who might know something about why a 65-year-old woman had been killed in a safe neighborhood in the middle of the day.

This is a story filled with mysteries set in a corner of Brooklyn where people refer to the Atlantic Ocean as the Black Sea. It is Little Odessa. Whatever neighbors may know about the relationship between Alla and Dimitry Kamenev, they keep to themselves. She was, in fact, so little known that in the makeshift memorial set up at the site of her murder, a card reads: “We never knew you in life but we mourn your passing as neighbors.”

This is what is known. On October 25, police arrested and charged Dimitry Kamenev with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and murder in the second degree. Police allege that Dimitry was the man who approached Alla on a bicycle and shot her three times before riding away.

Bernard Udell, Dimitry’s defense attorney, met his client for the first time last week. Dimitry, he said, was walking with “a couple of canes,” but appeared to be in good health “for a man his age.” They spoke to each other through a translator—Dimitry speaks limited English, Udell doesn’t speak Russian. One thing Udell does know is that Dimitry denies the charges against him.

This is not Dimitry’s first run-in with the law. In 1988 and again in 1991, he was arrested for allegedly committing assault, according to the New York Police Department. The charges were dropped in 1988; the record doesn’t show why. In 1991, Dimitry was indicted on charges of reckless endangerment in the first degree and two charges of criminal possession of a weapon. He pled guilty to the charge of third-degree criminal possession on Nov. 15 and was sentenced on Dec. 6. He spent the next two months at the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island and was discharged on Feb. 14, 1992. That’s where his criminal record ended.

Dimitry lives in the house on Brighton 7th Street at the intersection of Neptune Avenue that Alla purchased in 1994. In 2007, Alla signed the deed for 2851 Brighton 7th St. over to her son Vsevolod Kamenev, and a year later, she bought an apartment on Surf Avenue. The Kamenev house sits on a residential block adjacent to a Pakistani fabric shop and across the street from a laundromat and a day care center.

The immediate Kamenev family consisted of Alla, Dimitry and their two sons, Vsevolod and Alexey. The former lives in the house on Brighton 7th Street. The latter lived in New York and currently resides in Illinois.

The rest of the story remains a mystery.

Since the day she died, police and reporters have descended on the block asking the Kamenevs and their neighbors about Alla’s family and her life. Eleven days after she died, they couldn’t or wouldn’t talk. Detectives told Kamenev’s next door neighbor he couldn’t speak about Dimitry to the press. Those inside the Kamenev house wouldn’t. A blonde-haired woman refused to open the front door for reporters and shooed them away as she peered through the white slatted blinds covering the front window.

Later that day, a man who refused to identify himself but who matched the description of Vsevolod and who was wearing a blue auto mechanic jumpsuit with a patch reading “KAMENEV” on the left breast, spoke long enough to say, “I don’t talk to reporter. This is a private matter.” He turned and walked back toward the house.

Alla had owned a fifth-floor apartment at Brightwater Towers since 2008. She was living there with Vlad Godin at the time of her murder. She had recently retired, and Godin said in a TV interview that they were looking forward to spending more time together. The fluorescent lighting makes the lobby of their building feel like a hospital. A security guard at the front desk monitors security cameras and checks in guests. Down the hall, past the laundry room, sit the elevators.

Vlad Godin had seen his fair share of reporters over the last eleven days. On Halloween, he answered yet another knock on his door to find yet another reporter waiting outside. “You’re the third one today,” Godin said, leaning his head against the door and blocking the view of his apartment.

He was quiet, and his eyes were red. The TV blared in the background and the shades of his apartment were drawn. He sounded tired when he said he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t close the door, but he didn’t volunteer more words.

On the streets of Brighton Beach, even those far removed from the Kamenev family had no answers to questions about Alla, Dimitry, or the day that he allegedly killed her. Stan, the owner of the Pharmacy Anteka on Brighton Beach Avenue, had a little to contribute: Alla had purchased medication once at the store one year ago. None of the staff at Anteka remembered her, though; they found her name when going through their customer database after hearing about the murder. Stan had also seen Dimitry walking in the neighborhood, though they had never interacted. That was the extent of what he knew about the Kamenevs.

“I’m not surprised it could be an ex-husband who did it,” he said, pausing to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. “But I’m surprised someone that age could have a gun or do that.”

At the site of her murder, the makeshift memorial for Alla Kamenev consisted of two wilted bouquets of roses, a candle burnt down to its wick and a Ziploc bag containing the card from neighbors who barely knew her. The factory-printed message read, “In this time of sorrow, please know that you are not alone.” Inside the card for Alla, they bid her farewell and wrote, invoking God’s name in Hebrew, “May Hashem keep you.”

Courtesy DCPI

**

More coverage of Alla Kamenev’s murder by The Brooklyn Ink:

76-Year-Old Coney Island Man Indicted for Ex-Wife’s Murder | Mon., Oct. 31, 2011
Suspect Arrested in Brighton Beach Shooting | Tues., Oct. 25, 2011

Kamenev was arrested Tuesday, Oct. 25 and charged with the murder of Alla Kamenev. Bernard Udell, Kamenev’s defense attorney, said his client denies the charges.

Alla Kamenev was shot dead by a man riding a child’s bicycle at 11:50 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20 at the corner of West Second Street and Seabreeze Avenue in Coney Island. She died on route to Coney Island Hospital.

The window of the Peanut Supermarket has now become a memorial for Zurana Horton. (Cristabelle Tumola / Brooklyn Ink)

Just days before a mother of 13 was killed in front of the Peanut supermarket in Brownsville, a bullet went through the window of the same store, nearly missing a worker inside, according to a staffer at the store.

Four or five days before the mother’s murder, between the hours of 10 and 11 p.m. a stray bullet that came from outside the store pierced through the supermarket’s side window, the staffer said. According to him, an employee was working behind the counter, just in front of the window, but walked away from the counter just before the bullet hit.

A bullet hole is still visible from inside the supermarket, located at 112 Watkins St. on the corner of Pitkin Avenue. No evidence exists to suggest that incident is connected to the murder that occurred later that week.

The outside of that same window is now a memorial to the mother, 34-year-old Zurana Horton of Brownsville, who was murdered Friday afternoon.

Three suspects were arraigned on Wednesday at Brooklyn’s Kings County Criminal Court in connection with the shooting. The violence also left a 31-year-old woman seriously wounded with gunshots to her arm and chest and an 11-year-old girl with a graze wound to her check.

Andrew Lopez, 18, and Jonathan Carrasquillo, 22, were arrested Tuesday and charged with 2^nd degree murder, two counts of felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon. A third suspect, 17-year-old Kristian Lopez, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the same incident, police said.

Daily News reported that, according to its sources, Andrew Lopez confessed to the shootings after his arrest, telling police that the killings were not intentional. According to police, Lopez was a former drug dealer and a gang member who was shooting at rival gang members from his apartment building roof at 1800 Pitkin Ave., the report said.

All three suspects have addresses for that same Pitkin Avenue building, said police.

During the day Wednesday people continued to stop and look at the memorial to Horton just off of one of Brownsville’s main commercial streets.

As some of these people quietly read the words praising Horton, they declined to comment on the shooting.

These words, left on the outside of the Peanut supermarket’s bullet-damaged window, are a mix of calls to end the violence, such as “Stop: put the guns down,” and words of praise for the murdered mother who many are calling a hero.

According to police, Horton and the 31-year-old victim were picking up their children from PS 298, at 85 Watkins Street, just diagonally across the street from Peanut supermarket.

Moments before Horton was killed, she was seen shielding several children to protect them from the gunshots.

Although others didn’t want to discuss their reaction to the arrests, an employee, who was working at the market on the day of the murder, said that people in the neighborhood seem more relaxed now that the suspects have been charged.

Detective Jason Arbeeny arrived in court this morning in blue jeans and a navy blue sports coat having no idea that he was about to catch a break from the judge.

He had been on trial for three weeks during which the prosecution had mounted its case alleging that Arbeeny had not only defrauded the department by filing false documents, but he had known that fellow officers had been planting drugs on defendants in order to boost their arrest reports.

Arbeeny’s wife took her seat in the second row of the courtroom. His lawyer was scheduled to begin making the case for Arbeeny’s defense. But first Judge Gustin Reichbach had a ruling to announce.

Tracy Jarrett / The Brooklyn Ink

“I’m not sure that I see an agreement between the defendant and others,” he said, referring to the connection between Arbeeny and other narcotics detectives on the Brooklyn South Squad who have been accused of planting drugs.

“I’m not sure that there is any evidence that this was an organized practice. People can commit the same crime individually of each other and it doesn’t make it a conspiracy theory,” he concluded.

He then gave the prosecution a chance to summarize its case. Arbeeny’s face turned red and his lips tightened. In a seat behind him, his wife held her hand to her mouth listening intently.

Judge Reichbach leaned back in his chair, poured a glass of water, and continued, “I dismiss counts one and two of conspiracy.”

Conspiracy was the most serious charge against Arbeeny and now he appeared to relax. But Arbeeny was not off the hook–the judge did say that it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt that Arbeeny hadn?t planted drugs on a defendant.

The judge called for a ten-minute break before the defense would begin its case. Arbeeny walked out of the courtroom slightly hunched over, but calm, and signaled for his wife to meet him outside.

The trial of Jason Arbeeny has drawn a great deal of attention in recent weeks, as yet another instance of alleged police corruption. Last week, former detective Stephen Anderson testified that planting drugs on, and then arresting, innocent civilians in order to meet NYPD “buy and bust” quotas is a common occurrence. This practice is known as “flaking.” Anderson’s testimony was followed by that of Melanie Perez, former crack addict and NYPD informant, who accused an officer of giving her crack cocaine in exchange for sexual favors.

Arbeeny is one of eight narcotics detectives under investigation in connection with accusations that a group of detectives in the Brooklyn South Narcotics Squad were not turning in all of the drugs that they confiscated in busts, and instead later planted those drugs as evidence in different cases. While according to a New York Times article, only one witness, Yvelisse DeLeon, has directly implicated Arbeeny in planting drugs on civilians, the testimonies of Anderson and Perez are not being taken lightly.

Gabriel Sayegh of The Drug Policy Alliance issued a statement saying that Anderson’s testimony sheds light on larger internal issues facing the NYPD: “One of the consequences of the war on drugs is that police officers are pressured to make large numbers of arrests, and it’s easy for some of the less honest cops to plant evidence on innocent people.”

In the same statement, Sayegh said, “The drug war inevitably leads to crooked policing and quotas further incentivize such practices.”

Commissioner Ray Kelly and Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne have repeatedly denied that the department implements any quota system for arrests or ticketing. But, in 2008, the same year Arbeeny and the eight other officers were charged, police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers that they had to make a certain number of arrests, even if that meant manipulating crime statistics.

Arbeeny’s trial comes at a moment when the NYPD is under considerable scrutiny. The recent arrest of Michael Daragjati, a Staten Island police officer accused of falsely arresting an African American man and stating “I fried another N****,” has drawn attention to the department’s stop and frisk policy, as well as to questions of corrupt policing.

Such accusations are hardly new. October 18th marked the 40th anniversary of the Knapp Commission, where detective Frank Serpico became the first officer to testify against police corruption. In 1994, 30 officers stationed in Harlem were charged with falsifying arrest records, selling narcotics, stealing cash, and shaking down drug dealers. And in 2004 prosecutors investigated nine current and former NYPD members allegedly involved in drug related scandals.

This year, the New York City comptroller’s office reported that police action claims filed against the police jumped to 3,987 in 2010, from 3,390 in 2009. The report shows that as a result of this leap, the cost of police action claims has increased by 15 percent in just one year, totaling $56.4 million.

In the case of Stephen Anderson, who testified at the Arbeeny trial and who was charged with flaking, the two men who were wrongfully charged settled their suit for $300,000. The Daily News reports that it has cost approximately $1.2 million to settle claims related to “flaking” this year, with each settlement ranging between $1,500 and $300,000; a record high.

Meanwhile, in the Brooklyn Supreme Court Arbeeny, his wife and his lawyer returned to court looking confident. Asked if he was scared, Arbeeny looked at his attorney, Michael Elvaz, who quickly answered “No.”

Arbeeny shook his head in agreement.

“No,” Elvaz said again, and shared a laugh with Arbeeny.

Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, marches with local residents in Crown Heights on October 20, 2011. Neha Banka/ The Brooklyn Ink

Residents of Crown Heights walked together on Thursday evening in a peace march to end gun violence, but also to call attention to increased safety in the neighborhood in recent years.

Approximately 70 marchers congregated on the north side of Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue at 6:00pm. With many young participants carrying posters that said “DON’T SHOOT. I want to grow up,” the march proceeded along Eastern Parkway and concluded with a ceremony in Brower Park.

According to the Crown Heights Mediation Center, which had organized the march, gun violence has been on the decline in the neighborhood in recent years. Project director Amy Ellenbogen said there have been only nine shootings so far this year in the jurisdiction of the 77^th Precinct, compared with 10 last years.  “But it is still nine too many,” she said.

“Over the past 10 years, there has been a 16.7 percent decrease of victims and a 28.6 percent decrease of shooting incidents”, Ellenbogen said. The number of fatalities due to gun violence according to Ellenbogen in the 9 incidents this year and 20 last year totaled 5.

“Gun violence has been at a historic low at the 77^th precinct this year,” said Executive Officer Myrie, a police representative at the event. “New residents coming into to community should be more aware of the situations”, explained Myrie.

Map of shootings in Crown Heights for 2011 (Rheanna Abbot / Save Our Streets)

Danny Dickson, a 41 year old resident of Crown Heights and a shooting victim who uses a wheelchair, said, “I’m trying to save our streets. Trying to talk to the young youth.”  Of his own wounding, he says, “I got shot. I’ve been in the (wheel)chair for 17 years. It didn’t kill me but made me stronger,” he said.  He said the dispute that led to the shooting began “over words”. “It didn’t have to go that far, but it did”, said Dickson.

Ryan Emanuel, a 12 year old resident, said he was in the march “for the safety of the streets and to make peace.” He said a 40 year old man who lived in his building got shot four times in the head on Christmas Eve two years ago.

Bishop Roberto Jemmot, of Nazareth Christian Fellowship, said, “We’re influencing young people in our church. We’re trying to mold their lives and teach them nonviolence, which is the principle of Christ.”

Borough President Marty Markowitz was also present at the event.  “A few anti-social deviants should not bring a lack of calm and respect to the neighborhood,” he said. “There is no question that there has been an increase in gun violence in New York City over the past year or two”, Markowitz said. “Part of it is because of the increase in unemployment rates. Part of it is easy availability of purchasing of guns. In some neighborhoods it is easier to buy guns than books in Brooklyn and New York City and that’s sad.”

Residents at the march want to see positive changes in their neighborhood and many hope that Thursday’s event will help spread the message. The purpose of the event according to the S.O.S team and representatives of the 77^th precinct was spreading awareness about reducing numbers in neighborhood shootings, as well as awareness about streets in Crown Heights becoming safer for its residents.

Other speakers at the event included City Council Member Letitia James and State Senator Eric Adams. There was a strong presence of members of the S.O.S. (Save Our Streets) Outreach Team, whose antiviolence methods focus on making personal contact with at-risk young people.

Many marchers carried S.O.S. posters and the S.O.S. volunteers also distributed plastic badges reading “I SUPPORT S.O.S.”, for participants to pin onto their clothes. One resident waved a placard he had made himself which read, “In violence we forget who we are!!”

Local Park Slope subway station (Chikaodili Okaneme / Brooklyn Ink)

The sexual assaults across Brooklyn have been particularly worrying to women in Park Slope, a neighborhood of soft brick hues and tree-lined streets that seems to be a focal point for the attacks.

“It’s really unsettling,” said Molly Balfe, who has lived in the neighborhood for seven years.

“It’s generally so safe and…there are many families here. I think that a lot of young, single women live here because they think that it’s safe…[but these attacks do] bring an element of danger to the neighborhood.”

As a student, Balfe said she enjoys going out at night every now and then, but because of the attacks she is taking more precautions. “I’m more careful and try to take the more populated routes home, [or] now I take the car service instead [because] it’s just not worth it.”

She feels that the police should increase their presence in the area, too.

Rosa, who declined out of caution to give her last name, has lived in Park Slope for over 60 years and said that it is young women who are especially concerned.

“You have so many young people…and now that it’s getting dark early, it’s getting even more dangerous for the young people, even for the old people” she said.

She called for more police, too, especially near subways. “I just think they need to be more vigilant,” she said.

Remembering a time when Park Slope was a safer place, where everyone looked out for one another, Rosa said that the attacks have affected the entire atmosphere of the area.

“I’ve been in Park Slope all my life…and I’ve never seen it this bad” she said. “Today is altogether different, and it’s sad.”

Police drive up 7th Avenue, Park Slope. (Chikaodili Okaneme / Brooklyn Ink)

Female visitors to Park Slope are just as concerned. Heidi, who also declined to give her last name, said she has lived in Carroll Gardens for 14 years, and feels safer there. Encountered on Union Street in Park Slope, she said that she was troubled by the possibility of more attacks.

“I do see more police cars in the area but I still don’t think it’s safe,” she said, “because it’s still happening. I hope this doesn’t move into my neighborhood.”

An earlier story from The Brooklyn Ink highlighted that there have been at least 12 cases of sexual assaults in the Park Slope and neighboring regions since March. A Sunset Park man was arrested last week and for his alleged assault on an 18-year old woman.

Yesterday police released a 32-year-old man who was allegedly connected to one of the crimes.

According to a statement from The Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, the man was arrested Monday based on a police sketch. He was later chosen out of a line up as a person involved with the attacks, but police said the identification was later retracted.

Police said that the investigations continue.

You may also be interested in:

A map that outlines the rash of sexual assaults in Brooklyn, reactions from Sunset Park and Park Slope, a rape victim bravely speaks about her experience, recent arrests and a community march.

Do you have a story about the sexual assaults? Please share your thoughts at thebrooklynink(at)gmail(dot)com

O’Bar says that he’s not a hero but he reacted because of the recent spat of sex assaults in Brooklyn. O’Bar and several other Samaritans ran after Flowers even though the suspect was armed. The victim’s purse was recovered.

Read more about it here.

Belmont Avenue's stranded streets reflect the commercial district's critical condition. (Photo: Danika Fears / The Brooklyn Ink)

It was only 20 years ago that pushcart vendors paraded along the busy blocks of Belmont Avenue, a four-block commercial strip in Brownsville. Now nearly half of the avenue’s storefronts are listed for sale and not a single eating establishment remains.

The landscape of Belmont swiftly changed in the 1990’s when street vendors and business owners moved out. What was once a neighborhood hub became a stretch of empty storefronts riddled with crime. Most recently, shopkeepers have struggled to stay afloat with high building taxes and fewer customers during the recession.

But now community leaders are stepping in to save the street.

“Belmont has a rich history, but that doesn’t mean that new histories can’t be made,” said Joe Blankenship, a Pratt Institute graduate student in city planning who is assisting Community Board 16 in uniting merchants, improving the appearance of the avenue and trying to attract back shoppers.

The task won’t be an easy one. At this stage Belmont activists are only just beginning to organize their efforts.

The Board’s Economic Development Committee is now holding meetings with Blankenship and Belmont merchants to assess the avenue’s issues and form a merchants association.

“We’re trying to get the businesses to reorganize themselves into a merchant’s association,” she said. “We’ve also been talking with city administration because for a while there most of the street lights were not working.”

Blankenship started working on the project only a couple of weeks ago, but he hopes the association will pool together shopkeepers’ business knowledge and give them a louder voice within the community, he said.

“A community that has a merchant’s association that is active on the street can help new businesses also,” he said. “If you’re a start up business in the area and you have a set of merchants to go to, it’s a more conducive atmosphere for better communication.”

Brownsville’s Community Board is also working with city officials and the 73rd Precinct to stem the area’s frequent robberies and encourage economic growth. The city recently improved Belmont’s lighting, though most businesses still close before nightfall. The Board has made smaller efforts to encourage shoppers, including installing parking meters for easily accessible parking. But shoppers often complained of the high meter prices — 15 minutes for a quarter —Joey Mizrahi, a buyer for Happy Days, said.

For some storeowners the efforts are too little too late. Mizrahi has worked at the Happy Days clothing store for over a decade. The store itself has been on Belmont for over 40 years. With high zoning taxes and few customers, Happy Days’ business has been steadily declining by 20 to 30 percent annually. Robberies are not infrequent either — only last week two teens stole boxes of apparel left unattended by the front door. Happy Days will close in the near future, Mizrahi said.

“No one is willing to come here,” he said. “It doesn’t even pay to open the store sometimes.”

Happy Days’ story is a common one on the block, even for businesses that lasted generations. M. Slavin and Sons auctioned off their 7,500-square-foot fish market in June after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last February. The odor of fish still lingers outside the empty property where the family-owned business stood for 90 years.

Nearby businesses are also affected by the market’s bankruptcy. Greene-Walker called the fish market an “anchor” in the community. Slavin shoppers no longer frequent other stores after stopping by the market, said Michael Winston, an employee at a shoe shop across the street from the market.

Now Brownsville residents who patronized Slavin avoid the block, in part because of high crime on the street. More people prefer to shop on nearby Pitkin Avenue, where police patrol heavily, Idalia Torres, a longtime resident at Seth Lo Houses, said.

“This used to be a place where you could walk at all times of night,” she said. “Now you don’t know who’s around and it’s not easy to be afraid all the time.”

While the community board has been working with local police, several storeowners are dissatisfied with the results. Mizrahi said he “doesn’t see light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Every time we complained we’d have police presence for only one week,” Mizrahi said. “It was a game and after awhile we just gave up.”

In the early 60s and 70s, Belmont was an active part of the community— residents would buy fresh fruits and vegetables from Jewish vendors and few storefronts were unoccupied. Over the years, the area’s demographics changed, Greene-Walker said, and many business owners moved out.

“It just seems as though one store after the other started closing,” she said.

Blankenship is currently creating an inventory about the retail options that remain on Belmont and possible new business ventures, he said. His role will include facilitating conversations with community retailers and creating an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere for shoppers.

“The area doesn’t need to live in the past, it can find a way to rejuvenate itself,” Blankenship said.

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