Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
Since at least 1950, New York City has been trying to figure out how to oversee its large police force.
After a summer of protest, a number of proposals are circulating to strengthen civilian oversight of the police department. They face calls for more radical measures, doubts about effectiveness and memories of a seven-decade effort that has fallen short.
Amid the controversy over the management of New York’s public housing, NYCHA officials are contemplating historic changes to how the agency operates. Tenants are looking for more ways to weigh in on those ideas.
Times Square. In its colorful and danger-filled heyday of the 1970s and ’80s, porn shops, drug pushers, prostitutes and pistol-toting stickup men were the price of admission. But the venue has been a tourist-friendly commercial strip for some 15 years. In early April, for few minutes, that changed.On Easter night, a series of brawls and violent confrontations broke out in Times Square and nearby Herald Square among roaming bands of youths, reportedly resulting in the shooting of three women and one man, whose ages ranged from 18 to 21. A 20-year-old Bronx man was arrested in two of the shootings.
The 13-year-old was a middle school student. He lived in Washington Heights. He wrote in his journal that he wanted to die by putting a plastic bag over his head. School-based health counselors contacted his guardian and referred him to an emergency room. He’s in counseling now, and alive.
Fighting teen dating violence begins with recognizing it
For Tasnim Huque, the past few months have been full of surprises. Her Muslim parents, who immigrated to New York City from India’s sprawling eastern city of Calcutta in the late 1980s, are gradually allowing the 18-year-old to show some independence. While there’s little inhibiting most seniors at Hunter Science High School in Manhattan from attending the prom— except, perhaps, the cost of limos, gowns and tuxes— Huque was certain that she’d be missing it for a different reason: her 6 p.m. curfew. But her parents recently told her that she could, in fact, attend.“They even bought me a nice Westernized dress,” she says excitedly. And that’s not all she’s excited about.
Mervyn E. Simon was not a politician, nor was he ever an officially recognized activist, but he showed that one person can impact a community-at-large, by helping others one at a time.
With city and state turmoil shaking up political alignments, some see a new opening for growing ethnic groups to claim power.
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