Welcome to Salemtown - Which way are we tipping?
Pictured: Norman's market on Garfield and 7th.
In Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book, 'The Tipping Point', he eloquently presents the thesis that neighborhoods encourage crime and violence by allowing grafitti to remain without timely removal and buildings with broken windows to remain in place, because the surrounding environment strongly effects how people behave. In East New York, a project-filled neighborhood in which I lived in the late 1970s, crime dropped by more than half after the police and public works refused to allow grafitti to remain more than 24 hours without being 'scrubbed'. Abandoned building owners were given official notice, summoned and fined if broken windows weren't fixed.
Crime was pervasive during the years we lived in East New York. Crime became rampant and practically viral in the early 80s during the 'crack years'. The appeal of crack diminished in the late 80s, and crime diminished somewhat. In the mid to late 90s, the anti-graffiti policy was put into place. Crime dropped to the lowest point in East New York since the early 60s when the projects began to be placed in East New York.
The projects still exist in East New York. Population growth has been steady, but the crime rate continues to drop.
It is time for the people of Salemtown in conjunction with city officials and business owners to get the grafitti REMOVED. Abandoned houses need to be torn down or fixed up. A neighborhood that allows the kind of garbage written on the side of the popular market pictured above (along with other Salemtown businesses and abandoned houses) is a neighborhood enabling criminal activity.
I hear talk about the way Salemtown used to be. I'm pretty sure that one of the former charms of Salemtown was the lack of tagged buildings and fences (despite the fact that spray paint was on sell during the 'good' years). Salemtown is still a good place to live, but it can be made better, and I have a pretty good idea of how to start doing just that...
