The DAS Fitness Center in Inwood introduces a new approach to self-defense. (Photo by Ines Perez)

Metal chains rattled in unison following deep thuds against a punching bag. Incomprehensible shouting – short, precise, order-like – floated up the steep staircase of a gym on Academy Street.

The D.A.S. Fitness Center in Inwood opened in June as a boxing center that also offered karate classes for children. This fall, however, the club has added another course to its repertoire: self-defense.

The rise in crime, particularly violence against women, has caused major concern to Washington Heights and Inwood residents. The number of rapes in the 33rd and 34th Precincts combined has increased 27.9 percent in 2011, compared to this point last year.

“It’s a problem that, if not fixed, it will get uglier,” Rafael Santiago, 32, one of the center’s owners, said in Spanish. He was approached by Luz Bermudez, 34th Precinct Community Council vice president, who was interested in setting up courses.

Bermudez worked with the local nonprofit UNIDOS Coalition, which focuses on the needs and problems of Inwood’s youth.

Taught by Kyoshi Nathan Ingram, chairman and founder of the Deadly Art of Survival Karate Federation, the classes take a new approach to self-defense. “In a real world it’s not like the movies,” Ingram explained, adding that when attackers strike, they do so with whatever they get their hands on.

What sets this program apart, Santiago said, is that it teaches women to also make use of whatever is at hand – water bottles, umbrellas, purses, even keys – to defend themselves. “Sometimes self-defense is running,” he added.

Women also learn to look out for potential dangers by being alert.

Yolanda Rivas, 51, leaves her house at 6:30 every morning and heads to her job downtown. She said the class had helped her stay aware of her  surroundings, especially when it’s dark outside, early in the morning or late at night.

“I look from side to side, sometimes I would turn around to see if there is a person behind me,” Rivas said. “They taught me to be aware that something could happen, to always be prepared.”

She gave up using her iPod when walking in the street alone and stopped answering phone calls or texts. “Now, I always say, ‘I will call you back when I get home,’ so I can stay focused.”

The growing number of attacks hasn’t stopped Rivas from going out. But she has learned to be extra-cautious.

“When I go out with my girls, I have the driver that I know pick us up,” she said. “And then he drives to drop us off and he waits to see us go inside the building.”

A major concern for young women has been the burgeoning nightlife scene of restaurants, clubs and lounges along 207th and Dyckman streets. Men drive to the area and hang out on the streets, blasting their music, drinking and becoming aggressive, said Elisa Suarez, 23, who carries pepper spray in her purse “just in case.”

While Bermudez focused on teaching women how to physically defend themselves, other organizations and advocacy groups seek broader solutions to the problem.

“Women should take self-defense classes but we should also look to reduce domestic violence,” said Angelo Ortiz, UNIDOS youth problems director.

“People who commit the crimes are usually young adults; they are between 18 and 25 years old,” he said, adding that in his opinion, their generation has not been properly socialized.

Growing up in a household where verbal and physical abuse have become part of the daily routine can have a huge impact on future relationships. “They grow up in this environment and think it’s normal,” explained Ortiz.

He also cited economic factors. “Our unemployment rates are high; people feel desperate and feel like they don’t have anything to lose.”

Ortiz and his team also work on quality-of-life issues that some believe can increase crime. “All over Inwood, there are posters of half-naked women advertising vodka and partying,” Ortiz said. “Young men keep on seeing it around them and think of women as sexual objects.”

Local leaders and residents have requested more police officers in the 33rd and 34th precincts. Ortiz said that major pedestrian routes, like those near subway stations from 181st Street to 207th Street, are particularly dangerous and that the police should increase foot patrols to safeguard  women traveling to and from work.

“We need more police in the community, but we also need cameras and emergency phones,” Bermudez said. “Sometimes, young women don’t understand the dangers of the world we live in and my goal is to teach them about it.”

Harlem Youth Court members Nala and Cadece prepare for a hearing. (Photo by Elizabeth Harball)

It’s a familiar courtroom scene: An advocate scribbling on a notepad prepares her closing statement. A judge presides, pounding her gavel to bring the hearing to order. She turns to the offender, a young man being tried for assault, and asks,

“Do you swear to tell the truth?”

“Yes,” he replies.

This is when things start to look different from a traditional courtroom. A juror stands, thanks him for attending, and says, “We just want to let you know we’re not here to judge you or criticize you.”

The juror, named Milagros, is a high school student. Everyone participating– judge, jury, advocate, clerk and offender – is under 18. At the Harlem Youth Court, kids who have committed low-level offenses can avoid formal prosecution and instead tell their side of a story to a jury of their peers.

The court, now beginning its tenth year, is one of six youth courts in New York City, with a seventh coming soon in Queens. Funded by a mix of  government and private grants, the group holds hearings Monday and Wednesday evenings at the Elmendorf Reformed Church in East Harlem.

The youth court will only take a case if the offender admits guilt; the facts are determined beforehand. The goal is for young offenders to reflect on their actions and “think about how these issues affect the community,” says Sonia Balaram, the Harlem Youth Court coordinator. “In order to really fix the problem, you need to fix the relationships.”

To be tried in Harlem Youth Court, the offender must be referred by an outside party such as a school, a probation officer, or the police. Offenses are as minor as truancy or as serious as assault. Most cases involve fighting, shoplifting or  skipping school, Balaram says, though recently, she has seen a rise in bullying.

Traditional courts don’t attempt to understand why young people commit crimes, she explains. To consider the bigger picture, the youth court jury asks questions like “What are your goals?” or “Would you describe yourself as a leader or a follower?”

“We’re not judging them by their case, we’re judging them by who they are,” says high school senior Cierra. (Youth Court policy restricts the release of members’ last names.)

The youth court alters traditional courtroom language, too. Offenders aren’t called “defendants,” they’re “respondents.” The defense attorney who interviews the respondent before presenting the case becomes a “youth advocate” and a  “community advocate” takes the place of a prosecutor.

When sentenced, respondents must comply with “sanctions” which are  “more about reflecting, critical thinking and giving back to the community,” Balaram says. Sanctons might include community service or letters of apology. One respondent, interested in popular music, was asked to write a rap song about what she’d learned.

“We want them to benefit from it,” says high school junior Shuba, another youth court member. “Our goal is to get them engaged.”

Compared to the sentences juvenile offenders receive in traditional courts, the sanctions are “tough,” said Joan Stroud, an officer from the city probation department, after attending a hearing. However, “the sanctions that they give are fair,” Stroud said; she plans to refer young offenders to the youth court in the future.

After the hearing, Balaram monitors the sanctions; last year, she reports, 90 percent of respondents completed their sanctions. Respondents who don’t are often referred to other social services. “It’s not a magic wand that will fix everything,” Balaram says.

Do such programs work?  Research on youth courts’ effectiveness has been limited. In 2002, an Urban Institute Justice Policy Center study, “The Impact of Teen Court on Young Offenders,” compared the effectiveness of youth courts in four states. “There are many arguments that could be, and have been, made to support the effectiveness of teen court, but little sound evidence exists that would allow researchers to judge the validity of each argument,” the report concluded.

Of four youth courts that participated in the study, two were shown to be far more effective than traditional juvenile courts in reducing recidivism; the other two showed similar, though less statistically significant, results.

“The findings for our study are certainly promising,” said co-author Janeen Buck-Willison, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. While the report didn’t definitively conclude that youth courts reduce recidivism, Buck-Willison said respondents surveyed after participating were generally positive . Most were glad they’d attended youth court instead of a traditional court, and 80 percent felt they received fair treatment.

For youth court members, the benefits are clearer. This year, the Harlem Youth Court received a record 180 applications for its 20 positions. Before hearings began in September, members received six weeks’ training, observing New York Criminal Court cases, visiting the State Supreme Court, receiving sensitivity training from social workers and meeting with police officers in local precincts. During hearings, members grow comfortable with public speaking and facilitating discussions. Many want to seek criminal justice careers.

“It makes me feel like in the future, I have to do something with law,” says Shuba.

“It’s helping me figure out where I want to go in life,” adds Cierra.

Balaram writes letters of recommendation for members applying to college and even edits their application essays. Christian, a second-year youth court member, often visits Balaram’s office after school to discuss his plans after graduation. “We really try to make sure Youth Court members succeed,” she says.

Being a youth court member can be challenging. “It’s nothing like I imagined,” says Shuba, “It’s kind of scary sometimes.” Facing respondents’ parents during the hearings can be difficult, she explains.

However, members say they rise to the challenges. “It actually feels great,” says Cierra, “I feel like it’s a lot on my plate, but at the same time, it’s worth it.”

Blood from the stabbing dripped in front of a second-floor apartment. (Photo by Ali Leskowitz)

A man was fatally stabbed in his torso in a Harlem apartment building Monday night, the New York Police Department said. Emma Cornelius, 28, who lives in the apartment where the stabbing occurred, was arrested the same night and charged with manslaughter, the police said.

The police received a 911 call about 9:35 p.m. Monday. The man who was stabbed, Christopher Joseph, a 37-year-old Brooklyn resident, was alive when the police arrived at 119 W. 137^th St. He was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, the police said.

Clinton Whitfield, 23, a resident on the third floor of the building, said that he was asleep at the time of the stabbing and that his little brother had heard a “big bang.” Then Whitfield heard frantic knocking on his door. When he went to the door, he saw Cornelius, who lives in the only other third-floor apartment. Whitfield said she wanted to borrow his phone to call 911.

“She was crying hysterically and said her boyfriend hurt himself coming through the door,” said Whitfield. He added that he saw Joseph bleeding from his left side and sitting against the wall in Cornelius’s apartment. The 911 dispatcher gave instructions to lay Joseph on his back. Whitfield said Joseph was still breathing at that point.

Joseph had been visiting Cornelius on weekends for the past few weeks, Whitfield said. “He would bang open her door with his arm and she wouldn’t let him in,” Whitfield said. “He’d force his way in.”

Other neighbors declined to comment or said they didn’t hear or see anything.

Whitfield, who has lived in the building for two years, said he could not recall an incident like this despite his belief that the block is “kind of wild.”

Surveillance cameras captured this image of the robbery suspects. (Image courtesy NYPD)

Police are still looking for three men who robbed a Washington Heights resident in his apartment at gunpoint earlier this month. The suspects, not yet identified, entered the building at West 172^nd Street and Haven Avenue on the afternoon of October 8, bound the victim’s hands with zip ties, stole property and left, the police department says.

The building, which contains 54 apartments, is under 24-hour camera surveillance. The cameras captured video of the three men, all wearing hooded sweatshirts, meeting in the lobby at 1:42 pm. Video taken at 3:44 pm shows the men descending a staircase, one appearing to carry a white plastic bag. The police report describes all three suspects as male, Hispanic, and ages 18 to 22.

Tenants had expressed concern about crime in the rent-stabilized building before the robbery, evidenced by a notice posted in the lobby by Dalan Management, which oversees rent-controlled buildings in Washington Heights, Inwood, Brooklyn and the Bronx: “We have received reports that tenants have found people loitering at the property and possibly involved in illegal activity…If you witness any unlawful activity, such as trespassing, loitering or drug sale at the building you must report this to 911 immediately… The owners are in constant communication with the District Attorney’s office and the 33rd Precinct concerning this matter but we urgently need the assistance of our tenants.”

The notice was dated August 19.

Building supervisor Rafael Reynoso declined to comment and other local residents wouldn’t speak on the record because they feared retaliation by the perpetrators or their friends.

“It seems like there are always people hanging out on that corner,” usually men in their 20s, said Brian Schulkin, who lives in nearby Columbia University Medical Center housing. Schulkin had not heard about the October 8 robbery.

“Young kids from the neighborhood hang out there,” confirmed Michael Rivero, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 30 years. Rivero also had not heard about the robbery, but was unworried about neighborhood crime. “It’s pretty safe unless it’s something really big,” he said.

Daniel Eison, a Columbia medical student who also lives in student housing, expressed similar feelings. “I feel safe around here,” he said.

Washington Heights has experienced only a slight increase in robberies over the last two years. As of October 9, the New York Police Department reported 177 robberies in the 33rd precinct so far this year, a 3.5 percent rise from 2009.

Police officers stand guard in the aftermath of a morning shooting at a Harlem school complex. (Photo by Nat Rudarakanchana)

A shooting yesterday morning steps from a West Harlem school complex has left neighbors shaken and quickly led to an increased police presence.

At about 8:30am yesterday, while students arrived for school, a 16-year-old was shot from behind in the left shoulder. He was walking his girlfriend to school, police said, at a 129th Street and Amsterdam Avenue complex which hosts four schools.

Although the victim was rushed to a hospital, his injuries are not life-threatening, said 26th precinct Community Affairs Officer Jason Harper.

Harper couldn’t confirm whether the victim attended any of the schools, which include a middle school, a junior high and two high schools, but he believes that the victim’s girlfriend is a student there.

“We’ve requested that a special school safety task force be deployed,” said Officer Harper. “We need an extra police or uniformed presence.”

Although police say that the suspected shooter was a young black male, they haven’t made an arrest yet.

The victim, also African American, lives in the nearby Grant Houses public housing project and has not been completely co-operative in disclosing information to the police, added Harper.

“I’m sure he knows exactly who shot him and why, or at least he can find out if he doesn’t know,” he said.

But Harper explained that unwillingness to talk – “snitching” – is common among local youth, who prefer to settle disputes without police intervention.

Harper said the shooting has “no direct connection” to the murder of 18-year-old basketball star Tayshana Murphy in the Grant Houses, exactly a month earlier.

He conceded, however, that the shooter could live at the rival Manhattanville project, and that the shooting may be related to tensions between the two complexes.

He added that police may be making an arrest soon.

Principals at the four schools could not be reached for comment.

Two black NYPD School Safety vehicles remained parked outside the school this morning. Officers in one van said they would remain in the area “for as long as it takes”.

This afternoon their task was to ensure that all students returned home safely, said one officer.

Evelyn Johnson, a city parks worker at the Sheltering Arms Park just minutes from the complex, said she heard four loud shots before she ran for cover.

“Of course I was scared,” she said. “Them bullets ain’t got no name.”

Perla Polanco, a 22-year-old hairdresser who works opposite the school complex, arrived for work a few hours after the shooting.

“This is the third shooting recently, and so hearing of this didn’t surprise me so much,” she said. Two occurred during daylight, she added. “Although I feel pretty safe here, I wouldn’t want to go and sit outside our salon like I used to.”

Although police patrols and vehicles are a common sight, Polanco said, “what happens is that they stay for a few days after an incident, and then go away again.”

Chantel Phinaz, left, 19, and Shawniqua Hamilton, 22, mourn the loss of their friend Tayshana Murphy after her funeral. (Photo by Marina Lopes)

Two men indicted for murdering Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy, a Murry Bergtraum High School basketball star, will appear at the State Supreme Court next week.

Police found Robert Cartagena, 20, and Tyshawn Brockington, 21, hiding in a closet in South Carolina a week after her death. They’re charged with shooting Murphy, 18, three times in the chest, hip and arm at the Grant Public Houses in Harlem, as she tried to outrun them just before dawn on September 11^th.  An alleged accomplice, Terique Collins, 24, was also arrested shortly after the murder and charged with criminal possession of a weapon. All three have denied the charges.

The shooting, which police have attributed to an ongoing feud between rival housing projects, stirred residents’ frustrations with what they see as inadequate security.  Murphy’s family and friends have publicly called for an end to gang violence and an increase in police presence.

“There was so much blood. We were sure there was no saving her,”  Murphy’s sister Tanasia Williams, who ran to her sister minutes after she was shot, said at a fundraiser for her funeral. “Her eyes were wide open, hazel. My baby died with her eyes open.”

Residents believe Murphy was a mistaken victim as Grant and Manhattanville, a housing project four blocks north, traded assaults this summer. “They kept coming here all week with sticks and they would throw bottles at the kids,“ Elaine Johnson, who lives in Grant, said of Manhattanville residents. “Now somebody is dead.”

Williams denied that Murphy was involved. “My sister was not in a gang. She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.

The Rev. Vernon Williams, who works to prevent youth violence in Harlem, believes the murder was intentional, however. “They knew exactly who she was,” he said. “These kids grew up together, they know each other.”

ESPN ranked Murphy the nation’s 16^th best point guard in her class; she was being recruited by multiple colleges, her family said.

“She was a role model. She opened everyone’s eyes that there was more,” said Brittney Burrows, 20, Murphy’s friend.  “She was a good person.”

In the days following her murder, residents built Murphy a makeshift shrine. Seventy candles lit up the grimy entrance to the housing complex. Above them hung a white bed sheet covered with messages from friends and family; the words “R.I.P chicken” were barely legible through the handwritten goodbyes. Loved ones left roses, notes and even a box of fried chicken by the memorial.

“She was going to be somebody,” said Dorothy McCloud, Murphy’s aunt.

In the hours after her murder, Murphy’s friends and family laminated photos they had taken with her and hung them on silver neck chains, following a mourning custom in the city’s housing projects. The number of chains someone wears indicates losses that person has experienced, said Murphy’s friend Kiya Washington, a Grant resident.

“Some people have seven or eight for people they’ve had die,” she said. “ These kids are just not making it.”

From Queensbridge to West Harlem, more than a thousand people trekked to Murphy’s wake in Astoria to say goodbye.

At the wake, friends and relatives packed Tomas M. Quinn & Sons funeral home, spilling over onto the street and sidewalks. Murphy’s friends reached for the casket when it was carried into the hearse, calling her nickname, “Chicken,” as it passed.

“A part of everybody died today,” said Rachel Thomas, 22, who lives in the Grant Houses. “That was everybody’s little sister, everybody’s daughter, everybody’s child.”

Murphy’s family and friends used her death as a call to end violence in New York housing projects. “We are tired of burying our children,” said Roberta Knight, Murphy’s aunt, at a press conference outside the Grant Houses after her murder. “You guys have to stop this. It’s too much.”

Norman Seabrook, president of the New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, advocated an automatic seven-year sentence for anyone caught with illegal firearms.  “It is time for us to change the laws to make these young men accountable,” he said at the press conference.

Forty-eight shooting incidents occurred in New York City’s public housing complexes last year, a 55 percent increase from 2009, police statistics show.

“You’ve got kids dying before their grandparents nowadays,” said Washington.

She attributed the increase to a lack of afterschool programs and alternatives for teenagers. “It’s easy for these kids to find guns, liquor stores, cigarettes, but it’s hard for them to find a safe place to go,” she said.

Politicians are trying to respond. Last year, elected city officials set aside $12.3 million of the New York City Housing Authority’s budget to install surveillance cameras in public housing developments across the city, including 96 cameras at the Manhattanville complex. The Housing Authority has also funded preventive programs and is working to keep 25 community centers around the city open for public housing residents.

Yet residents demand a more direct police presence. “These cops walk around but they never go into these neighborhoods,” said Washington. “Politicians will walk down the street, show everyone the Apollo, but they won’t come in here.”

If the community remains isolated, Washington said, the cycle of violence in New York’s public housing complexes will continue. Of the men allegedly involved in the feud that killed Murphy she said, “These guys don’t have any value for life because nobody valued theirs.”

The police released a sketch of this man, wanted in connection to a string of burglaries.

The suspect is believed to be behind 16 break-ins, concentrated in an area between West 126^th and West 130^th streets stretching from Amsterdam Avenue to St Nicholas Terrace.

In the latest incidents, two apartments were hit in two and a half hours at 420 W. 130^th St. and 464 W. 126^th St. on the morning of Dec. 6. Most of the other burglaries occurred in the morning between 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m.

A police spokesman provided a list of some of the items taken in the thefts, including numerous laptop computers, computer game consoles, money, cameras and clothing. The police said the burglar often entered buildings through apartment windows.

The thief made repeated visits to particular buildings. One, 408 W. 130^th St., was hit four times between September and November. The building’s superintendent, Ivan Olguin, said the police had been making regular patrols of the building for the past two months.

“Around 45 to 48 apartments have had new windows,” he said, adding that new locks had also been put on the doors of the main entrance.

The neighborhood targeted by the thief is close to busy Amsterdam Avenue but is generally quiet with a playground and elementary school, P.S. 129 John H. Finley, nearby.

The daylight burglaries appear brazen, with security cameras prominently mounted over the main entrance and on the corners of 408 W. 130^th St. Olguin said footage from the cameras had been given to the police.

The police declined a request for interview but released a sketch of the suspect.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on (800) 577-TIPS (8477) or visit the website, www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.

Deborah Nathan stands at the spot in Inwood Hill Park where she was attacked. (Photo by Sulome Anderson)

On the evening of February 17, Deborah Nathan was dragged into the woods of Inwood Hill Park by an unknown assailant who, she said, sexually assaulted her. When her attacker fled the scene, Nathan immediately called 911. She was stunned and disappointed by the response.

A dispatcher told Nathan that the police were busy elsewhere, she said, and she waited for more than two hours before paramedics arrived. When the police finally took her report, according to Nathan, she provided a description of her attacker, as well as a full account of what he said during the attempted assault.

The police told her that the incident would be classified as “forcible touching,” a misdemeanor. Nathan, a 59-year-old freelance journalist, was surprised, believing she’d been the victim of attempted rape, a felony. She was further disappointed when she received a copy of her police report, and discovered that most of the details she’d provided weren’t included.

The next morning, an indignant Nathan posted an account of her experience on an Inwood blog (and subsequently told it to the Village Voice). Her story soon reached Adriano Espaillat, then the district’s state assemblyman, and the same afternoon, Nathan’s police report was changed, the crime upgraded to attempted rape, a felony.

Similar accounts, in which the police have reportedly downgraded felony crimes to misdemeanors in an apparent attempt to keep crime statistics low, have emerged over the past few years. In May, the Village Voice published transcripts of audio recordings by Adrian Schoolcraft, a patrol officer in Brooklyn’s 81st precinct, on which police officers were encouraged by their superiors to manipulate crime statistics by failing to record robberies and other crimes.  The New York Times has also covered the manipulation of crime statistics.

The practice appears to reach beyond the 81st precinct, two academic researchers have concluded.  Eli B. Silverman, professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of CUNY, is one of the directors of a Molloy* College study, “Survey Summary: NYPD Management Speaks Out.”

Silverman and coauthor John A. Eterno of Molloy College administered a survey to more than 309 retired police officers and precinct commanders and reported that “74.3 percent felt high pressure from superiors by way of CompStat to decrease index crime.” On their blog, Unveiling CompStat, Silverman and Eterno say the survey shows that “commanders felt greater pressure to downgrade major crimes to minor crimes from 1995”–  the first full year of CompStat — “to 2008 than they did before CompStat was initiated.

“What we found, to make a long story short, “ said Silverman, “was that there is an underside of the current management system… Numbers are driving the system.”

For example, a police officer at an upper Manhattan precinct, who insisted on anonymity because he feared for his job, said in an interview that the police department frequently misclassifies felony robberies as misdemeanors.

“It comes down to what’s in your purse and how badly you were hurt,” the officer said. “If it wasn’t that bad, they’re going to turn it into a misdemeanor larceny. And you know why that is? Because misdemeanors don’t count” in CompStat’s crime statistics.

Senior officers know about this practice and actively support it, the officer said. “Everything happens from the top down now.”

Four attempts to reach the police department for comment, through phone calls and emails over several weeks, received no response.

CompStat, short for comparative statistics, is a system intended to help the New York Police Department map crime. At weekly meetings, officers from each precinct present a statistical summary of the week’s complaints, arrests and summons. The CompStat unit generates a citywide database and compiles a weekly CompStat report, meant to allow precinct commanders to view emerging crime trends and funnel personnel where needed. The major index crimes are forwarded to the FBI in New York City’s Uniform Crime Report.

Although he feels CompStat was once a valuable tool, the uptown police officer said he’d grown concerned with the way it’s used. “When CompStat came into it, it was a good thing, because you could keep track of what was going on,” he said. “But the NYPD commanders have really bastardized the CompStat system to the point where it’s all about numbers.” Instead of being used to map surges in crime, he believes, CompStat is used to pressure police to hold the numbers down, which can lead to deliberately misclassifying crimes.

The disparity between local hospital data and police crime statistics supports the officer’s statements. In 2009, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital on 113^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue treated 210 people for sexual assault, which it describes as rape, said Susan Xenarios of the hospital’s crime victims unit. Of those victims treated, 110 reported their assaults to police, yet the six precincts surrounding St. Luke’s Hospital reported a total of 58 rapes last year.

Through the end of September 2010, St. Luke’s treated 196 victims of sexual assault, 126 of whom filled out police reports. Again, the six surrounding police precincts reported 82 rapes during the same period.

Harlem Hospital, which serves a much smaller area than St. Luke’s, treated 116 rape victims from 2009 through the end of September 2010. The surrounding three precincts reported only 75 rapes for the same period.

Officials from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Harlem Hospital stated that although a small number of people come to both hospitals from elsewhere in Manhattan, the vast majority of patients live in the surrounding area. (New York Presbyterian Hospital on West 168th Street declined to provide similar data.)  The New York Times used a similar method in its reporting on CompStat.

Discrepancies in Rape Statistics (Designed by Sulome Anderson, Jason Alcorn and Tahiat Mahboob)

What happened to Nathan is hardly surprising, the police officer said, adding that some members of the Special Victims Unit, which handles crimes like rape and attempted rape, also engage in the practice of downgrading crimes. “They’ll get a rape, and say it’s not a rape,“ he said.

Former police officer Colleen Helly, who retired in September from the 32nd precinct, shares those concerns. She has personally experienced pressure from supervisors to downgrade a crime from a felony to a misdemeanor, she said.  Listening to her fellow officers, Helly said, she learned that the practice has become widespread.

Robberies and sex crimes like Nathan’s are the easiest to manipulate, especially if the victim isn’t visibly hurt, Helly said. “If there’s no penetration, they won’t make it a sex abuse case,” she said. “If there’s no bruising, no injuries, they’re going to drop it down.”

Downgrading begins when responding officers alter or omit information in police reports, in Helly’s experience. “There are cases that do get downgraded,” she said, “and the majority of them are because of how they’re written up.” She blames poor training for some omissions, but says pressure from above prompts most deliberate downgradings. “It’s to make the city look better,” she said.

The way crime victims respond to questions also affects whether a crime is downgraded, Helly said. “They’ll ask you certain questions,” she said of the police. “If you answer those questions the wrong way, they’ll change the report.” Helly clarified by saying that if a victim omits any pertinent information during questioning, or gives an answer that might be construed as suspicious, the police usually downgrade that report. Other times, Helly said, officers are instructed by their superiors to alter reports after they’ve been filed. “It comes from the higher-ups,” she stated. “They’re going to call the cop and have the cop rewrite it.”

Like the unidentified officer, Helly believes that although CompStat was originally a useful instrument, it has begun to take over the department. “It’s a numbers game,” she said. “You’re trying to dictate to the people who are actually out there doing these jobs how they have to do them.”

That’s because the New York Police Department is under enormous public and political pressure to keep crime statistics low, Silverman said, which can lead to misconduct. “Since ’93 and ’94, the crime rate has been going down every year,” he said. “And the public in my view has been sold the goods that crime inevitably will go down, and therefore, no mayor and no police commissioner wants crime going up on his watch.”

The problem is more widespread than has been reported, Silverman added. “It’s very mind-blowing,” he said. ”The mainstream press has only treated it sporadically…My view is, the dots are all there, but no one’s connecting them.” He noted that the police have refused to permit independent analyses of its statistics.

Incidents like Nathan’s are an inevitable product of the current system, Silverman said. “She happens to be an articulate woman,” he said. “How many non-articulate women is this happening to?”

Some community members have similar questions about police practices. “They do not report a lot of that crime,” said Jackie Rowe Adams, the president and co-founder of Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E., an organization for parents who have lost children to gun violence. “They make it look like they’re the good guys and they’re doing their job so well, and the crime is not happening, and they sweep it under the rug.”

Deborah Nathan, former senior editor of the urban affairs magazine City Limits, believes her attempted assault was deliberately downgraded. “I think I was CompStated,” she said. Because key information – including things her assailant said — was omitted from her police report, Nathan said the police department will have a hard time finding similarities if her attacker strikes again. “Since it’s not in my report, because my report was downgraded…how are they going to find a pattern?” So far, there has been no arrest in Nathan’s case.

The police gave Nathan a receipt on the night of her attack; it clearly lists the reporting officer as Rosanna Capellan (she did not respond to two calls and one email seeking comment, relayed through the police department’s public information staff) and the offense as forcible touching. When Nathan got a copy of her police report, the police had already upgraded her crime to felony attempted rape, but had failed to change the language of the report, she said.

The report states that Nathan, the complaining victim (C/V) “stated she went out for a walk inside of Inwood Park, when an unknown perp approached her from behind and grabbed her, stating ‘I want pussy,’ and pushed her into the wooded area. Perp then fled into wooded area. C/V also stated at no time perp grabbed her private area, or tried to remove her clothing. C/V further states perp did not force her to have sex or any sexual activity. Sgt. Duffy on scene, Det. McSherry 34 Sqd. notified, and Sgt. Bach from Special Victims also notified.” Duffy, McSherry, and Bach also did not respond to requests for comment.

Nathan’s account, which she said she shared with police, was very different. “He started humping on me,” Nathan said. “He just started humping his pelvis on my butt, and basically masturbating on me… then he gave this big groan, like he had had an orgasm, and then he jumped off me and he ran off.” None of this appears in the police report.

Nor did police include the description of the attacker Nathan said she supplied; in fact, Nathan said she told police that in response to her questions, the attacker had told her that his name was Michael, that he was 17 and had never had sex.

After her report was changed to a felony, Nathan said, she was contacted by Lisa Friel, chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s sex crimes unit. During their conversation, Nathan said Friel acknowledged the district attorney’s office was seeing an increase in such downgradings, and assured Nathan that Friel would meet with the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, Phil T. Pulaski, to discuss the problem. The district attorney’s office declined to comment.*

According to Nathan, Friel said, “I keep telling him, ‘These kinds of problems are going to happen to the wrong person, so why don’t you sit down and deal with them now?’”

“And then she said I was the wrong person,” Nathan said. “It finally happened.”

*The story originally misspelled Molloy College and erroneously reported that the district attorney’s office failed to respond to phone calls seeking comment.

A security camera recorded the lookout man at Super Laundromats and Dry Cleaners before a robbery on Nov. 1. (Photo courtesy of Sung Cho)

Three bandits made off with nearly $700 from Sung Cho’s 24-hour laundromat on Nagle Avenue in Inwood in the early morning of November 1.

It was the tenth in a string of nineteen robberies since early August that police say are connected. In each case, two or three men made off with cash and drove away in a dark Ford Windstar.

On Friday, the police announced four arrests in the case, including one East Harlem man, Arvel Bullock, 40. The others under arrest are Joseph Suce, 24, and Fred Littles, 41, both of Brooklyn, and Xzavian Woney, 21, of the Bronx.

Cho is surprised that his Super Laundromats and Dry Cleaners became a target. “You can’t really take much from this kind of store,” he says. “The money is well secured.”  The money the thieves pocketed came from the employee working the night shift and the sole customer, not the cash register.

The night after they hit Cho’s, robbers made off with money from Sunrise Laundromat on East 116th between Second and Third Avenues in East Harlem.

A third early-morning incident three days later, at Super Clean Laundromat on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, netted two robbers $230 from the cash register.

“They said, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,” says Adam Idrissa, who was alone on the night shift watching a DVD when the robbers burst in, one waving a baseball bat. On demand, he pointed to the cash register and opened his wallet to show that it was empty.

Idrissa called 911 when the robbers left, and the police arrived within minutes.

He’s not sure whether his robbery is part of the citywide crime spree. The two men who robbed him were Hispanic, he’s “100 percent sure,” but the police told him the suspects from an earlier incident were African-American.

Each of the three locations has a security camera, but masks and baseball caps obscured the thieves’ identities. The police took tapes from Super Clean, recorded before the robbery, in case the thieves had cased the store earlier, says employee Iris Valois.

Initial police reports described three suspects in their early 20s. Two of the men under arrest match that description; the other two are in their early 40s.

Cho hasn’t heard from the police since the initial investigation, nor have investigators asked for security tapes from Family Dollar next door, says store manager Mario Claudio.

As for the laundromats, they remain open and their night shift attendants still work alone. It’s back to business as usual, which worries Idrissa. He’d like to be able to lock the door when it gets late, opening it only for customers.

“I’m more nervous now, especially when it’s two or three o’clock when nobody’s there,” he says. “What happened can happen again.”

José Lazala, shown in his family's apartment, was shot to death on December 28, 2009. (Photo courtesy of José Lazala, Sr.)

All the blood had been cleaned from the attendant booth’s windowpane. It looked like nothing had happened at the 24-hour parking garage in Harlem where José Lazala, 30, had been shot twice in the head at close range, murdered execution-style while working a late night shift.

The day of his death, Lazala had called his wife, Lidia Justo, to say he’d be sending her money to help pay for pre-school for their four-year-old son Brandon.  It was the last time they spoke.

As soon as she found out about the shooting, Justo, an Army sergeant raised in Washington Heights and stationed in Virginia, traveled to the garage where her husband had worked for three months. She wanted answers. Can you show me where he was killed? Is this the safe? Do you keep any money in the safe? No, there’s no money in the safe, José’s supervisor told her. It was December 2009, very close to New Year’s.

The New York Daily News headline on December 30th read: “Robber Killed Garage Worker who Couldn’t Open Cash Box.” The story reported, “A chilling security video shows José Lazala being led at gunpoint into the glass-enclosed office at W. 132nd Street garage sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., Monday. Moments after the robber and Lazala pass out of view, the footage shows blood splattering on the window.”

The spatter trajectory  indicates José was lying on the garage’s black-and-white checkerboard vinyl floor when he was shot.  Justo never saw that video— the last moments of her husband’s life. It was too painful to watch. She and José were separated, but she still loved him.

But while news accounts said Lazala had been killed during an attempted robbery, Detectives Michael Langella and Daniel Hull of the 32nd precinct have their doubts.  The brief encounter between assailant and attendant was too short for a robbery, they say: just 49 seconds.  The assailant, a black male approximately six feet tall, wearing a dark colored 3/4-length coat, purple or blue sweats and white sneakers, didn’t rummage through anything in the garage after shooting Lazala.  Since the surveillance video has no sound, nothing in the video indicates that the robber was asking Lazala to open a safe or cash box. The supposed robber didn’t even take the $7 still in José’s pocket.

Nine months after the murder, Crimestoppers has announced a $20,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction and Langella and Hull have appealed to the public for help in solving the case. “We have no leads right now and no one has come forward and spoken to us in regard to any kind of possibilities, or why it happened, or who it may be,” says Hull.

VFC Garage, on the corner of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard and 132^nd Street, sits just blocks from the Harlem YMCA  and the 32^nd Police Precinct. Many of the garage’s patrons work at nearby Harlem Hospital.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, some VFC attendants are eating stewed chicken and yellow rice in the garage’s tiny reception area and office, where Lazala was killed. Martin Madera, who’s worked at the garage since the mid- nineties, was on the job the day Lazala was killed.

“We thought maybe the guy wanted to rob the safe because that’s where we found José’s body—in front of the safe,” says Madera, who, like Lazala, emigrated from the Dominican Republic.  Lazala relieved Madera at 5 p.m. that day to work till midnight. The shift actually belonged to co-worker Victor DeValle, but Lazala agreed to sub because DeValle was on vacation for two weeks.

“The times he came to relieve me, we’d talk for a few minutes, and from our conversations he looked like he was happy,” says Madera.  “The last thing you would think is that he had any type of problem.”

VFC Garage on W. 132nd Street (photo by Makkada Selah)

“José was a good co-worker, a good guy,“ adds Victor DeValle. “Everybody was devastated. Nobody believed that. Everybody was in shock.”

Lazala didn’t like working alone, they say.   When the current owners, 4153 LLC, took over the garage in 2007, the management initially scheduled two people at night, but Madera says it eventually began allowing a single worker on night shifts. Still, “I never heard José talking negative,” says Madera. “He was always positive.  He told me he was going to school to become a superintendent.”

In fact, Lazala had paid $500 to take a 4-hour superintendent certification class, according to his former roommate Alfredo Ortiz of Washington Heights, who grew up with him in the Dominican Republic. Lazala planned to quit his parking attendant job very soon; he had the papers ready to apply for a job at a building downtown. Ortiz describes Lazala as “always happy.”  In a recent photo Ortiz and Lazala stand on Wall Street around Christmas, surrounded by light-laden trees; in another photo  Lazala leans against Ortiz’s mother  in Times Square, holding up two fingers in the peace sign.

“I couldn’t sleep for more than two weeks thinking about that,” says Madera. “ A co-worker gets killed on the job—it’s hard to come back from.” The body wasn’t found until around 12:30 a.m. when the worker for the next shift came in, so Lazala lay bleeding for almost two hours.

“Just the way the whole thing played out, it happened very quickly and very suddenly, which usually indicates a little more than a robbery,” says Det.Hull, speaking in one of the upstairs offices at the 32^nd precinct.

Hull insists that usually a robbery lasts a lot longer. “If you go in to rob a place and 30 seconds later you kill someone, you haven’t gone there for the reason you intended to go there.” he says. “By killing him, the assailant doesn’t gain anything.  If a guy didn’t know the combination to the safe—-that’s not something a person would get killed over. He might get beaten over it. But he wouldn’t be killed over it.”

The detective adds that the assailant didn’t even look around and try to take anything: “All the automobiles are accounted for. All the keys for the cars are accounted for. All the money for the evening in the safe in the back office was accounted for. And we didn’t see the subject take anything or remove anything from the victim.”

Though news accounts reported that the assailant asked Lazala to open the safe, with no sound on the surveillance video, it isn’t clear what they were discussing. “No one will ever know except those two,” says Hull.

During their initial investigation the detectives spoke to everyone employed at the garage, including past employees, and found no criminal records; they looked at the owners and management and found nothing unusual. Parking garages are notorious for drug sales, gambling and stolen cars, says Hull, but ” nothing told us that there’s any business going on there besides parking.” Lazala had no criminal record.

All homicides remain open until solved, however. “Once you get to a point where you have no one else to speak to you,” says Hull, who’s been on the force for 14 years, “ you have to wait until someone comes forward and says: ‘I have something to say.’”

“I’ve been getting a little frustrated,” says Justo in a phone call to Jose Lazala’s father’s house. Lazala, Sr., who is retired, sits at the kitchen table in his central Harlem apartment, perusing photos of his son’s funeral in Santo Domingo. This is where Jose Lazala lived, where he likely ate breakfast the day he died. “It’s been almost a year and they haven’t arrested anybody,” says Justo.

They met in Washington Heights through a close friend. Scheduled to deploy with her unit to Afghanistan in December,  she was so distraught over her husband’s death that her commanding officer decided she should stay behind.

“José’s supervisor was so rude to me,” Lidia recalls. “He thought I was blaming the garage company for José’s death, and in a way I do hold them responsible.” She doesn’t think it should be the garage’s policy to allow one person to work alone at night. If another attendant had been there, she thinks perhaps Lazala’sdeath could have been prevented.

Two funerals were held, one in New York and one in Santo Domingo, and Lazala Sr. went to both, traveling to Santo Domingo with his son’s body. One of the photo he’s looking through shows Jose’s birth mother beside her son’s coffin. She hadn’t seen him in over 8 years. After such a long time, she seemed to cherish his dead body, taking many photos of it.  In  death, Lazala’s lips were shiny.  He wore a big wooden crucifix across his chest; another stood towering at the head of his coffin. He is buried in a town called Villa de Gracia, in a cemetary of the same name.

There’s a clicking sound of the gas stove burner being lit as Lazala’s stepmother, Juana, prepares a meal. “I loved him like a son,” she says, referring to José the younger. “They are bad people, people who would do something like what happened to José.”

“No se sienten amor” – they don’t feel love, says her husband.

“Ay, si padre.”

His father calls José “amable” and his stepmother calls him “cariñoso.”

“He never drank,” she  says. “He had one enemy, the man who killed him.”

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