As job developer at Exodus Transitional Community in Harlem, her mission has been helping ex-cons find the work essential to their reentry into society.  Crucial to that function is her ability to build ties with employers.

In many ways, Ortiz’s biggest asset is herself – her warm, personable manner, her eloquent speech. Well put together and attractive with unlined, caramel skin and long straight hair, she is 44 but easily looks 10 years younger.

She also spent 22 years in prison.

Diana Ortiz offers closing comments at an East Harlem breakfast meeting given by Exodus Transitional Community. (Photo by Suzanne Weinstock)

Ortiz presents herself as evidence that people who have served time are not the thugs depicted on television.

Bright and early on a Thursday, Ortiz stood in front of a room full of community leaders at an East Harlem breakfast meeting and introduced speakers, including Exodus founder Julio Medina and City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito. Ortiz had brought them all together to explain the Exodus program and build cooperation between local organizations.

“That was so awkward for me,” Ortiz says afterwards. Her prison time has left her a self-described introvert who struggles for comfort in social situations. But standing in front of the audience in a charcoal gray suit and patent leather pumps, her confident demeanor gave no hint of unease.

Ortiz was arrested at 18 as an accomplice in an armed robbery turned deadly. A high school dropout under the influence of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin, she was dating a 36-year-old who planned the robbery with two other men. Ortiz stopped a man on the street in Coney Island, where she lived in the projects. After she stopped the target, her three accomplices approached and Ortiz left the scene.

“The robbery was supposed to have gone easily but the victim was killed,” Ortiz recounts. The shooter was sentenced to 25 years and the other three participants, including Ortiz, to 17 years.

“I went through all of the appeals and at 18 I was thinking, ‘This is it, my life is over,’” Ortiz says. She was angry. She was a young, first time offender, not carrying   a weapon, under the influence of a much older man. How could the court not take her circumstances into consideration? It took her nearly five years to mourn what happened and accept her lot.

“Once I went through that process and took responsibility for me, I was able to say, ‘Now what do I do with my life?’”

Ortiz threw herself into education, earning her GED, associate’s and bachelor’s degrees and finally a master’s in English literature. She did advocacy work helping female inmates reconnect with their children. Being educated and employable are the keys to success upon release, Ortiz says. “Even if we do think we’re facing life in prison, we have to make ourselves productive in prison, and that’s what we did.”

Around her 15th year behind bars, the possibility of going home started to become a reality. Ortiz hung back after a job readiness workshop to show the facilitator her resume. “I did the sell,” Ortiz said. “This was a once in a lifetime opportunity.” Impressed, the woman told Ortiz to contact her when she was released.

Ortiz was rejected for parole but stayed in touch until she was finally granted her freedom after more than 22 years’ imprisonment. That same facilitator gave Ortiz her first job. It initially paid only a $50 stipend per week, but a month later led to a case manager position in which she could continue the advocacy work she began in prison.

“I always took initiative, I always came up with ideas and I always extended myself, even for $50,” says Ortiz. Another agency soon hired her away to oversee programs for kids with parents in prison. Ortiz then joined Exodus several months ago.

“This is where the work is,” Ortiz says. “This is where I belong. Being formerly incarcerated, we can help each other and make sure the recidivism rate is lowered and that we don’t go back to prison.” In the last 10 years, Exodus has helped more than 5,000 men and women get back on their feet.

“It’s kind of hard for ex-offenders due to having a record. There’s a lot of places you go to find a job and they frown on that and the application doesn’t go anywhere,” says Exodus client Alex Pierre-Pierre, who served a year and a half for mail theft.

The statistics for people like Ortiz and Pierre-Pierre are grim. Among 272,111 prisoners released in 15 states in 1994, an estimated two-thirds were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years, according to a study by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. Of those rearrested, nearly half were reconvicted and a quarter resentenced to prison for a new crime. Recidivism rates were particularly high – more than 70 percent – for those with robbery convictions, like Ortiz.

Programs like Exodus aim to keep people from landing back in the prison system through support services ranging from interview preparation to counseling. “Employment is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reducing recidivism,” says Christy Visher, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, coauthor of the Urban Institute study, “Employment after Prison: A Longitudinal Study of Releasees in Three States.”

Ortiz is lucky to have a strong support system she built within the prison system as well as family. She lives in Washington Heights with her long-haired Chihuahua,  named Beans, her Maltese, Mimi, and her 74-year-old mother, who is too ill to live alone. Her five sisters are scattered around the country.

“It’s not just having a job, it’s having a good job,” adds Visher. The better the job, the lower the recidivism. Her employment study showed that the probability of re-incarceration in the first year was eight percent for those earning more than $10 per hour, 12 percent for those making between $7 and $10, and 16 percent for those making less than $7. The probability jumps to 23 percent for the unemployed. Having health insurance and potential for advancement also lowered the chances of re-incarceration.

Exodus offers a one-year program, after which participants are expected to be self-sufficient, armed with a job and coping skills. “Part of the plan is, we put people to work – and if that doesn’t work, then the agency doesn’t work,” Ortiz says. The program maintains ties with others that supply everything from job training to legal advice, many of whose representatives attended the Exodus breakfast Ortiz convened. And each participant gets a week of training in interviewing, resume writing and accepting rejection.

“There was a lot of little things that they helped me with,“ says Pierre-Pierre. “My eye contact probably wasn’t too good.“ Ortiz showed him how to smile and speak more properly and helped him trim his resume to a single page. He ultimately put his new skills to work in an interview he got through a friend. Pierre-Pierre now works setting up cones for street work.

Ricardo Cisneros credits Exodus’s advice on sending thank you notes for helping him land two job offers. He had worked in such kitchens as the Park Avenue Country Club and the Tribeca Grand Hotel before being convicted of selling cocaine. He served 18 months, plus 90 days for violating curfew in transitional housing. But Cisneros then came to Exodus every day for two months until he accepted a job cooking at a new burger joint, Fresh-N-Fast.

“The job developer has a very difficult and interesting job as intermediary between the employee and the individual,” Visher says. Job developers need relationships and the credibility to vouch for the people they send. To achieve this, Ortiz uses her agency’s standing, the participants’ commitment and herself as selling points.

The recession compounds the difficulty of her task. “I’m sure it’s more difficult to place people in jobs,” Visher says although there is no supporting data yet.

Working to place her program participants, “We tell employers that they’re ready to work, they’re so ready, they’re so hungry for this. They will take minimum wage, they’ll work whatever hours you want them to work,” Ortiz says. “The people that are coming from us want second chances, so they’re going to do a better job than any one else that’s never been in prison because they want that job so bad, and that’s the truth.”

Ortiz still gets some no’s from employers but when she gets an opening she takes it and runs. If a company asks for one person to interview, she sends three. The employer gets an option or, as happened recently with a moving company, the employer hires them all. But after she does her job, it’s up to the Exodus participants to make things happen. “She’d tell me, ‘Rick, this is what I have for you. Go. It’s on you now. I’ll find the connections. You put in your own legwork,’” Cisneros says.

Services aside, the support of people like Ortiz who understand what they’re going through is essential. “Exodus is a good support base. They was ex-offenders also,” Pierre-Pierre says. “Diana is a very, very good person.”

Ortiz is now shifting from a job developer to a community liaison. During her time as job developer, employers responded well and continually expressed surprise that she had a prison record, so Ortiz is moving into a role where she can build an image of the formerly incarcerated that others can relate to.

Being the public face of Exodus is not easy for Ortiz, who missed out on 22 years of normal social interaction. “It’s still not that comfortable for me and I just hope it comes more naturally as time goes on,” Ortiz says of dealing with new people. “I feel like I’m always part of the system.”

But she tries to lead her life as an example to her program participants. “I can’t tell them to do it if I don’t push myself to do the same.”

To date, there have been 232 robberies in Washington Heights, a part of the 34th Precinct, down from 256 in 2008, according to New York Police Department reports. Robberies have declined rapidly since 1990 when 1,919 robberies were reported in the area.

However, this community still has the highest rate of robberies in upper Manhattan.

The suspect, caught on surveillance video, demanded money after revealing a semi-automatic weapon.

On Wednesday, Dec. 9 at 9:40a.m. an unidentified man entered the Bank of America, approached a teller and displayed a semi-automatic handgun and a demand note, according to police reports.

The teller complied with the demands and handed the suspect an undetermined amount of money. The suspect than ran from the bank, headed east on Dyckman Street.

Officials are still investigating the robbery and no arrests have been made, a police spokesman confirmed.

Olga Tello worked hard to rid her neighborhood of pesky problems but she says the 34th Precinct did little to help. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

Bridget Best loves her Inwood apartment on the second floor of 1 Arden Street that overlooks the building’s front entrance. Not only is it a beautiful space with “absurdly cheap” rent, it is close to the No. 1 subway line she rides to the Manhattan School of Music.

Best looked at the apartment last fall when the roads were empty and the neighborhood noise was minimal. She saw nothing suspicious. But as the temperature rose this past spring, she fell victim to the cacophony created by teenagers who took to the streets. Over one two-week period, Best says the noise was nonstop between 4 p.m. and 3 a.m, something she couldn’t handle despite growing up in urban Toronto and living in New York for three years.

The situation quickly escalated. A few fights broke out in front of her building, then a 50-person brawl another night – the two sides distinguished by their white and black beaters. On a different evening, people threw bricks from her building, smashing a car window. Best called for police in both cases, but no one responded.

Many residents of the 34th Precinct, which covers Inwood and Washington Heights, complain of the same thing. At community meetings this fall, they voiced their frustration with inadequate responses from the people who are supposed to serve and protect their communities. Although murders have declined, three last year versus 103 in 1990, quality of life issues bother these residents – problems they say the police don’t care about because a body isn’t on the ground.

Best thinks social demographics plays a role. “You see these kids,” she says, “They have no future and nothing to do. And nobody cares about them because they’re poor and Dominican. If these were white kids from a good neighborhood, you’d have police there every night.” Taking matters into her own hands, she befriended the people she says deal weed and crack on her street so they would know her when she walks home from the subway at 2 a.m.

After a few months, however, they stopped talking to her. Best soon discovered someone started a rumor that her boyfriend, a 6-foot-6 opera singer, was a cop. She isn’t worried. “Truthfully, I’ve never feared for my own safety,” she says. “They don’t want to hurt me; they want to kill each other.” She simply wishes she did not have to put up with the resulting noise and the drugs.

Olga Tello has similar problems. She lives in 640 Fort Washington Avenue and constantly complains about noise and nuisances like drunks sleeping in her building’s lobby, something new tenants have to adjust to when they first move in. “We pay too much rent” for that, she says with a thick *Argentinian accent.

Her battle, which she has been fighting since 1997 when she first moved in with her husband, Tom, is akin to a war of attrition. Before moving uptown, she was a live-in housekeeper for a family on 72nd Street. She was excited to have her own place and her new building looked nice from the outside, but she soon found out it was full of parties and drugs, and the elevator was in bad shape. She and Tom often complained to the superintendent and eventually held tenant meetings. Tello also asked the landlord if she could make a small garden; he obliged and contributed some money. He also fixed the elevator.

But some tenants didn’t appreciate the changes. They heckled Tello and played games with her. One night when Tom was away driving a bus to North Carolina, she came home to glue stuck inside her keyhole, preventing her from getting inside. In another incident, someone dumped bleach in her garden.

She turned to the police but she says they offered little assistance. Despite her constant calls to the precinct, officers rarely showed up. “Tommy went so many times to talk with Inspector Monaghan,” the previous commanding officer, she says. “They were not helping us.”

Tello turned into a community activist, morphing her building meetings into community gatherings in 1998. Her efforts proved successful. “We cleaned the buildings, but it was not easy,” she says.

These community meetings have become popular uptown, drawing the interest of public officials. Once a year, Tello manages to bring together officers from the 34th Precinct, Councilman Robert Jackson, representatives from transit and sanitation, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

She also attends the 34th Precinct’s monthly community meetings, which she says are especially ineffective because the police listen to public complaints but rarely follow up on them. She thinks the meetings are all for show. “I see people complaining over and over about the issues, and they don’t fix them,” she says.

She urges neighborhood residents to make Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly aware of their concerns. “Write to the mayor, write to Kelly,” she says. “Let the officials know that we’re not going to put up with this nonsense no more.”

Her frustration has reached a tipping point. “There are wonderful police officers who do their job and are nice,” she says, “but I cannot say that about the 34th Precinct… They never helped me with the problems I had here.” On the rare occasion they responded to one of her calls, she says “the police would come, and they would always have an attitude. And they would never do anything.”

Deputy Inspector Andrew Capul, the 34th Precinct’s commanding officer, sat on the panel at Tello’s Oct. 26 community meeting. Most residents voiced problems outside his jurisdiction (overflowing garbage cans, for example), but he briefly addressed quality of life issues, acknowledging noise complaints and such problems as a flurry of vehicle break-ins on Cabrini Boulevard (15 autos were stolen in a 28 day period this fall).

Capul tried to assuage the crowd by citing his officers’ efforts. For the vehicles, the precinct now parks a car with an embedded camera on the street. He also said the police try to respond to all noise complaints but have trouble doing anything because the volume often dies down before they arrive.

He used the same defenses at the 34th Precinct’s monthly meeting just before Thanksgiving. Unlike Tello’s community gathering, this night focused on police issues and a slew of officers attended, including Executive Officer Jose Navarro and traffic Officer Steven McManus.

On this occasion, Capul addressed quality of life issues first, noting a rise in complaints and growing community outrage. Upfront, he said: “If I had to give us a grade, I wouldn’t give us an outstanding. We can do better.”

Elizabeth Porter certainly believes that. She lives with her daughter on West 181st Street across from Cabrini Boulevard in an apartment she calls the “investment of my life,” but is constantly bothered by noise late into the night. Her living room, complete with VHS movies like “My Cousin Vinny,” overlooks 181st, a popular thoroughfare.

Mexican restaurant Agave Azul and cigar shop Fumee, both owned by the same man, are directly across the street from Porter’s living room window. Fumee offers valet service on several nights, which blocks parking spaces available to area residents, forcing people – often the shop’s patrons – to double-park.

This wouldn’t be a problem on a side street, but 181st connects to the West Side Highway. When cars are blocked, drivers honk incessantly and yell for people to come out and move their vehicles. When someone appears, a war of words ensues. It gets so loud that “it sounds like people are standing in your living room,” Porter says.

Fumee’s patrons also drink on the street and leave the shop drunk late at night, she charges, even though Fumee doesn’t have a liquor license. Porter has logged many complaints about the noise and the illegal drinking, of which she has photos.

Just as with Best and Tello, Porter complains that the police rarely respond to her calls. She is convinced they don’t respond because they themselves are Fumee’s patrons and sometimes double-park their squad cars – something she also has photographed.

Porter is fed up. Inspector Capul speaks to her personally at meetings but does little to follow up. “For many years he was treating me as a crazy old lady,” she says, adding that he listens to her and then throws out statistics proving the police are doing a good job. “He has a pitch,” Porter says. “He uses the same words to pat himself on the back.”

She’s also fed up with 311. When she calls, she gets a reference number to track the complaint’s status online and will check hours later only to find the complaint is closed, yet the cars remain double-parked or Fumee’s patrons continue to make noise. In some instances, she waits for the police to arrive and finds the complaint closed even though no one responded.

When officers do show up, they do very little. In one complaint she filed on July 21, 2008, at 8:37 p.m. because Fumee’s patrons were drinking outside and making noise, an officer wrote: “IT’S A FRIGGIN’ RESTAURANT BAR WITH A SIDEWALK EXTESION.”

The 311 complaint line also baffles Best. “I would always call 311 and they would rarely come,” she says. “And when they come, they shut the guys up for two minutes and then they get loud again.”

Porter feels like she has nowhere to turn. Calling the precinct is futile. “There is nobody that you can get connected with at the precinct that is going to give you a straight answer.” In the rare occasion someone says they will put an officer on her problem, she has no way to track the complaint like she does on 311.

Porter used to vent at Community Board 12 meetings, which includes the 34th Precinct, but she worries she can’t trust them considering Chair Manny Velazquez recently resigned because of shady liquor license negotiations. Community and precinct meetings are the only other outlets, but they sap her morale. “You go, you let your heart out, you get your heart going, and nothing comes of it,” she says.

Inspector Capul promises to take action on unanswered 311 complaints; he publicly vowed to sit down with two key officers before year-end to discuss how they can do a better job, focusing on chronic problems like noise complaints, which make up about 75 percent of 311 calls.

Capul says improving 311 response times and making sure the police show up are his priorities, but cautions that each precinct has around 50 fewer officers than five years ago. Cars dispatched to 311 calls sometimes get diverted to more pressing issues.

Capul also says the police are doing well in some areas. In 25 burglaries this year, the police traced fingerprints or DNA at the scene and tracked down the invaders; in a recent shooting on Sherman Avenue, the suspect was caught within a block and a half.

Tello doesn’t deny that some officers and precincts do a good job, but she wants accountability on the issues that constantly affect her. She’s also sick of hearing crime statistics cited at public gatherings because she has nothing to compare them to, something she fears makes the police look unjustly good.

Best would also like to see accountability. The 34th precinct meeting was her first, but she attended because she’s had enough.

“I used to think people who complained at community meetings were losers,” she says. “Now I’m one of them.”

*The story originally misstated Tello’s former nationality: she comes from Argentina, not Venezuela.

In the 12 months through September 2009, New York City saw 473 of its residents murdered, according to New York Police Department statistics. That represents the lowest number of murders since 1962, when record keeping began, and a continued decline from a high of 2,245 in 1990.

But the gun violence is heavily skewed towards young, black men, peaking between the ages of 18 and 24. Victimization rates for blacks are more than six times greater than for whites and roughly one third of victims are under 25. Offending rates for blacks are higher too — seven times than that of whites, with half the perpetrators under 25.

All gun crimes in and around New York have dropped, FBI statistics show. In 2007, the most recent year for public FBI data, the New York primary metropolitan statistical area’s (including New York’s five boroughs and four suburban counties) robbery with a gun rate was 15.0 per 100,000 and assault with a gun was at 9.1 per 100,000. The numbers have plummeted sharply since 1992 when robbery with a gun was 436.2 per 100,000 and assault with a gun was at 185.52 per 100,000. Murder stood at 23.8 per 100,000.

Among the factors contributing to New York’s falling gun violence are tightening gun laws. New York has the sixth strictest gun laws in the US, according to the Brady Campaign for Gun Violence’s scorecard last year.

In recent years, New York enacted gun offender registration laws, tripled the mandatory minimum sentence for illegal gun possession and cracked down on out-of-state dealers. In July, Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, both Democrats, led the fight to defeat the “Thune Amendment,” which would have allowed people with concealed-weapon permits to carry their concealed weapons out of state. The amendment was defeated by just two votes.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to make gun laws even tougher. On his agenda, if he wins reelection, are legislation to eliminate armor-piercing bullets, criminalize possession of a gun while drunk, and raise minimum sentences for selling handguns to minors.

Jackie Rowe-Adams, co-founder of Harlem Mothers SAVE, speaks out against youth violence at a protest outside Public School 123 on Oct. 5. District 7 Councilman Robert Jackson stands far left; the Rev. Vernon Williams is at right. (Photo by Joshua Tapper)

By Joshua Tapper and Cecile Dehesdin

A raucous brawl outside a Harlem elementary school last week left three teenagers injured–one shot, one stabbed, one slashed—and has driven community leaders to pledge to eradicate gun violence on their streets and keep Harlem’s children safe.

“I have tears in my eyes; I’m saddened,” said Community Board 10 Chairman Franc Perry at a protest the evening of the melee. “This is absurd, disgusting, humiliating. It’s been happening for far too long. When are we going to recognize that we need to take guns out of our children’s hands?”

The Rev. Vernon Williams, who has been in contact with the families, identified the injured boys as Jonathan and Joshua Bell, 17-year-old twin brothers, and a teenaged friend, whose name could not be ascertained. They were wounded in a gang-related fight outside Public School 123, at West 141st Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, at 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 5. Days earlier, the teens had been involved in another fight on West 141st Street, according to 32nd Precinct inspector Kevin Catalina. They were taken to Harlem Hospital, but have all been released, Rev. Williams said.

To prevent retaliation, police have installed a Sky Watch tower, an elevated booth that allows officers to scan the street, at the corner of West 140th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and will be stationed near the school mornings and afternoons.

Police are stationed near the entrance of Public School 123 as children arrive at the school on Oct. 6. (Photo by Cecile Dehesdin)

Despite this latest incident, and exasperation from locals–”I’m to the point where I want to get out of the city,” said Lisa James, a mother of three boys–shootings in the 32nd Precinct have fallen dramatically, from 47 at this point last year to 25 this year. (See accompanying chart on gun violence in New York.)

Still, the violence has galvanized Harlem leaders and organizations. At an emergency meeting on Oct. 6 at a senior center on West 124th Street, more than 60 people crammed the room to join an impassioned dialogue on youth violence—including representatives from Community Board 10, the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Nation of Islam, and officials, among them likely district attorney Cy Vance.

Emotions flared as speaker after speaker called for neighborhood unity and compassion. “I’m pleading we don’t just have unity when bullets fly,” said Shaka Shakur, city chairman of the New Black Panther Party. “We are killing each other and we are tired of burying each other.”

Many exhibited frustration at the lack of community response to youth violence. Abdul Kareem Muhammad, vice-president of the Harlem Clergy and Community Leaders Coalition, which organized the meeting, deplored a chronic unwillingness to build sustained social programs like after-school activities. Unlocking playgrounds after school, like the one near his home on West 133rd Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, provides recreational space that can keep kids off the street, he said.

Grassroots activism is key to community peace, said Rev. Williams, who leads the Perfect Peace Ministry and is known as “Pastor on Deck” for his penchant for breaking up Harlem gang violence. “This is a challenge to all of us to be responsible for our community,” he said. Whereas the police, when called, are going to “suppress, this is about cultivation.”

A lack of paternal role models pushes teenagers to the street, Rev. Williams also said, stressing that “parents have to start being parents.” Without anyone to look up to, Williams said, teenagers begin to seek comfort in a gang. “We have to come out and captivate them,” he said. “They’re not animals, they’re human beings.”

Harlem has reached a critical juncture, said Tomasina Riddick, co-founder of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, at a parents meeting the next night, sponsored by Harlem Children’s Zone at Public School 194. The community has to organize, she said. “We can hold our elected officials responsible, we can hold our police department responsible, our schools, our community organizations, our clergy, but it’s for us to do.” In a community that has seen a major reduction in crime since 2001—murders, for example, have fallen nearly 40 percent in the 32nd Precinct—a distrust of police remains.

A common perception is that young black men are accosted by police simply for hanging out in groups–51 percent of 531,159 people frisked in New York in 2008 were black, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Handcuffs don’t solve our problems, we solve our problems,” said Shakur, promoting a Black Panthers program called “WUCUSU”—meaning “Wake Up, Clean Up, Stand Up”—that mentors black youth.

Catalina agreed that police presence in Harlem is not the sole answer. “This is really a community problem, not a police department problem,” he said at the parents meeting. “Gang violence is going to go away when the community gets together and says it’s not going to tolerate it anymore, and when the community starts talking to its sons and daughters and says, ‘Hey, I’m not having it.’”

Vance made the office opening part of his campaign; now he’s all but assured the seat after winning the Democratic nomination and facing no Republican challenger in November’s general election.

The pledge for a Washington Heights office fits into Vance’s call for a community-based justice model, say representatives for the incoming DA; the approach aims to build trust with local residents and leaders by stationing assistant district attorneys and staff in neighborhoods.

“We’re going to have our lawyers here, visible, working with you and supporting you,” Vance said at a recent community meeting in Harlem in the wake of a gang-related brawl. “I think the solution is, long term, neighbors help neighbors. Strangers don’t help each other. The DA has to be a better neighbor,” he said.

Outgoing District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who has held the post for 35 years, handles cases from two offices, downtown and on 125th Street. But the distance could make victims or witnesses in northern Manhattan think twice before making the trip to cooperate with the DA. “There’s an actual physical obstacle in addition to the mental obstacle of reporting a crime,” said Erin Duggan, spokeswoman for Vance’s office.

Specifics on the new Washington Heights office — the location, opening date and number of staff — have not yet been determined but will be in coming months, said Duggan. But the broad outlines for an expanded uptown presence are already in place.

Part of the mission for an office in Washington Heights, with its large foreign-born population, would be emphasizing that witnesses and victims won’t be asked about their immigration status when reporting a crime. This is already longstanding policy, but many people either don’t believe or are unaware of the rule, said Duggan.

Vance also intends to combat domestic violence uptown by creating a center, likely located in Harlem, that stations police officers, social workers and medical staff under one roof.

Domestic violence victims sometimes get treatment but hesitate to report an incident to social services or the police, Duggan explained. Putting all three services in one place reduces the time during which victims can get cold feet.

The New York Police Department reported more than 230,000 domestic violence incidents citywide last year, according to the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. The majority of Manhattan incidents occurred north of 96th Street, said Duggan. Domestic incident reports, include both verbal altercations and physical assaults, have risen in Washington Heights so far this year.

The 33rd Precinct had 1,294 domestic incident reports from January to July; in the same period last year it had 1,260. Meanwhile, the 34th Precinct had 1,444 domestic incident reports from January to July, with 1,229 in the same period last year.

Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, supported the idea of a Washington Heights office, calling it “a great asset for our community.”

“It would go a long to helping the community have a strong relationship with law enforcement in a way that would help all individuals in the community,” she said. But results will depend on how well DA officials can build trust with illegal immigrants, Fernandez said, by expanding community outreach and stressing the rules against inquiries about immigration status when a resident reports a crime. Because illegal immigrants are often unwilling to draw attention to themselves, said Fernandez, she’s seen situations where they have refused to report crimes.

Deputy Inspector Joseph Dowling, commanding officer of the 33rd Precinct, said his staff had a “tremendous” working relationship with the current District Attorney and was ready to cooperate with Vance. “Whatever programs he implements, we’re going to make work,” Dowling said of Vance.

Meanwhile, experts on progressive policing agreed with the push for more community involvement. Speaking generally, not specifically about Vance’s plan, Melanca Clark, who directs the Community Oriented Defender Network at New York University, noted that prosecutors “wield a lot of power. For them to get community reaction on what they’re doing, that’s a good thing.”

Posters, like this one outside City College, offered a reward for information about the serial rapist. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

By Rachael Horowitz and Sonal Shah

After an intense two-month search, police have arrested the man they believe responsible for raping and robbing four women in Hamilton Heights during August and September.

DNA from the suspect, 21-year-old Vincent Heyward, matches DNA samples from all the rapes, and a 5th attempted attack, according to officers from the 33rd Precinct.

At his September 21 arraignment, Heyward tried to escape the courtroom but was easily restrained. He will next appear in New York Supreme Court on October 22. “It’s too bad he got lawyered up,” said NYPD Deputy Inspector Scott Shanley. “I want to know what drives this guy.” Heyward had been in a Virginia jail for car theft and had been released in June.

Police involved the community in the investigation, widely publicizing a sketch of the suspect based on surveillance footage and victims’ descriptions. They also circulated still photos from the surveillance.

At a community meeting, Sgt. Richard Crespo from Manhattan Special Victims assured residents that the police were following all leads from the four attacks and encouraged local residents to provide information. He even urged people to “ask your kids to snoop around.”

“If this guy’s in jail, it’s because of the community and the police,” said Officer Alan Asusta of the NYPD Crime Prevention Section at a City College meeting after Heyward was arrested on September 21.

The rapist first attacked on August 1, assaulting a 59-year-old woman at knifepoint in the courtyard of 565 W. 148th Street at 2:45 a.m.. After the second attack on August 10 – on a 23-year-old woman at 144th and Convent Avenue – police began looking for a single perpetrator.

The rapist struck again at 4 a.m. on August 18 when he followed a 69-year-old woman into the lobby of an apartment building at 765 Riverside Drive as she returned from work. She was raped and robbed inside the building elevator.

In the last attack on September 7, a 28-year-old woman was raped in her apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue. The attacker jumped to her apartment’s fire escape from the roof of a neighboring building and entered through a bathroom window.

Details of the attacks led some residents to speculate early on that the rapist might be local. “I get the feeling he might be from the neighborhood,” Raquel Monserrate, who lives at 788 Riverside Drive, said in August. Police said that Heyward lived on Edgecombe Avenue, close to where the four attacks occurred, and they later confirmed that he probably picked out victims and followed them from the subway. Monserrate was avoiding going outside to walk her dog during those quiet hours. “Since that happened, we bought wee-wee pads,” she said.

Deputy Inspector Shanley hopes that the community involvement will remain even though this particular crisis has ended. “People have to realize he’s not the only rapist in the world,” he said.