77th Precinct

Monday, April 7, 1997

Once notorious for corrupt cops and bloodshed, Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct has a tough new reputation — tough on crime.

It leads the city with a 40% decrease in major felonies — nearly triple the city’s average decline of 15.5% for all five boroughs.

“This place is like a sponge, and we’re still wringing more crime out of it,” said Capt. Ronald Wasson, commander of the 77th.

This turnaround in Crown Heights is among the success stories found in the Police Department’s crime statistics for the first quarter of the year. Throughout the city, an assault on drug-related crimes is credited with the continual drop in crime, quarter after quarter.

It happened in the heart of Brooklyn North where the department a year ago mounted an intensive narcotics campaign intended to make streets safer and to reduce shootings.

A decade ago, 13 cops from the 77th Precinct were charged with ripping off drug dealers. Shootings were so common that one minister recalls the sound of gunfire interrupting his Sunday morning sermons.

Now the area has calmed, both inside and outside the Utica Ave. stationhouse. Instead of constant complaints about gunfire, Wasson said, people call to gripe about loud music.

He credits the change to a crackdown on quality-of-life crimes. His 10 plainclothes anti-crime officers — so effective that all were recently scooped up by the citywide street crime unit and dispatched to other hot spots — took 67 guns off the streets last year. Beat cops shut down more than 80 alleged storefront drug spots for simple administrative violations.

“It’s really the cops, they are doing some job,” Wasson said. “A guy stopped for urinating in the street was found to be carrying two guns. If you keep the pressure on, it really quiets things down.”

The Rev. Frederick Foy, pastor of the Mount Zion Baptist Church on Ralph Ave., has lived in the neighborhood for 38 years and says he feels safer seeing more cops on the streets and in patrol cars.

“I know at one time back in the ’70s there were some people who stopped coming to this church because their cars were burglarized during service,” Foy said. “I haven’t heard of a car being burglarized for quite some time now.”

Each of the five boroughs saw double-digit drops this period, but Brooklyn North led the way with a 21.3% nosedive. Inspector William Taylor of Brooklyn North credits the success to a laser-beam focus on drug trafficking, the engine of most crimes.

“People involved in narcotics either did the crime [or] they know who did it or have the ability to find out, and if they are asked the appropriate question and we have them under arrest, they are more inclined to be cooperative,” he said.

Expanding into upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, the anti-drug push has driven down crime across the city, officials said.

Fourteen precincts have yet to log a slaying this year — and nine haven’t recorded a single shooting. Gunfire cases fell by almost 30% throughout the city and, at this rate, New York this year will record the fewest slayings and robberies in a generation.

There were also impressive drops in fatal shootings on the street and in lobbies or hallways — the most common places for strangers to attack. These plummeted by 53%, from 113 in the first quarter of 1996 to 53 during the same period this year.

Still, crime rose in some areas: Rockaway, 9%; Bayside, 3%, and Forest Hills, 3%, in Queens; the lower East Side, .3%; Central Park, 3%, and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, 5%.

Car thefts dropped by 20.4% citywide, leading the seven major felonies in declines.

But Queens remains the migraine for auto crime cops. Eight of the worst 10 precincts in the city for car thefts were in Queens, topped by a surprise No. 1 — the leafy streets of Forest Hills.

The 112th Precinct in Forest Hills led the city with 486 cars stolen, yet officers there haven’t made a single arrest for auto theft so far this year.

“The 112 is like the bank — that’s where the cars are,” said Capt. Daniel Carlin, head of the department’s auto crime division.