On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Christina Rodriguez entered the B/D subway station on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse looking to buy a MetroCard. The problem was, she only had a $20 bill and the MetroCard machines were not accepting cash.
Rodriguez scanned the station for assistance, but no one was in sight. Rodriguez’s experience at the Kingsbridge Station was not unique. Since the MTA discontinued all of its Station Customer Assistants (SCAs) at all New York City subway stations
An explosion of street violence upended three Bronx communities in recent days, taking the lives of two teenagers and severely injuring a girl, all of whom appear to be ordinary kids guilty only of crossing paths with errant gunshots. (On Thanksgiving, three people were shot on the Grand Concourse, near Fordham Road.)
Crime is indeed down, but that doesn’t change the realities of these tragically truncated lives or the neighborhoods that have not benefited equally from otherwise welcome statistical trends.
There is no single answer to solving this problem, but there are many things that can help and we should try them all and more.
Here are just a few:
• Whatever your opinion of Mayor Bloomberg, he is a national leader on the gun control issue. We should support his efforts any way we can.
• As stated above, there are neighborhoods where the city’s statistical drop in crime has not been felt on the street. When the inevitable budget cuts are proposed to cope with the economic downturn, cuts to youth programs and police should be a last resort, especially in neighborhoods where crime has gone the opposite way of the citywide trend. In fact, we need to find a way to increase funding for youth programs, whether that comes from the city, state or federal government.
Crime is indeed down, but that doesn’t change the realities of these tragically truncated lives or the neighborhoods that have not benefited equally from otherwise welcome statistical trends.
There is no single answer to solving this problem, but there are many things that can help and we should try them all and more.
Here are just a few:
• Whatever your opinion of Mayor Bloomberg, he is a national leader on the gun control issue. We should support his efforts any way we can.
• As stated above, there are neighborhoods where the city’s statistical drop in crime has not been felt on the street. When the inevitable budget cuts are proposed to cope with the economic downturn, cuts to youth programs and police should be a last resort, especially in neighborhoods where crime has gone the opposite way of the citywide trend. In fact, we need to find a way to increase funding for youth programs, whether that comes from the city, state or federal government.