It’s been a tough year for many residents of Williamsburg’s south side.
Inexorable gentrification has put many of its low-income residents under the threat of displacement. Crime in the 90th precinct is up nearly 14 percent since last year, due in part to the increase in gang activity and violence.
Capping off a bad year was last month’s murder of Richard Duran, a 22-year-old resident of South 3rd Street. Two hours after Duran was shot, two men were attacked and wounded by a group of individuals wielding machetes in an incident police suspect might have been related to Duran’s murder.
But on Saturday evening, community residents and elected officials organized a show of force against the violence that has threatened their community in recent months.
More than 1,000 people filled Washington Park Plaza (at Roebling Street and South 5th Street) for the “Community Rally for Peace,” which was dedicated to Duran’s memory. The event included a mass in his honor administered by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Diocese.
“We need to stop and get together as a community before another innocent child is killed,” said Rosa Duran, Richard’s sister, fighting back tears as she addressed the crowd.
“I don’t want another family to go through what I’m going through right now.”
Sounding a similar theme, Councilmember Diana Reyna said it was up to Williamsburg residents to “stop this violence, find peace within ourselves and extend that peace to our youth. Peace must prevail.”
Reyna was one of the event’s main organizers along with Assemblymember Vito Lopez, El Puente and Churches United.
To counter the steady stream of negative attention focused on area youth, the event featured dance performances and poetry readings by young Southside residents representing the overwhelming majority who are not involved with gangs.
To Father Rick Beuther of Epiphany and St. Peter and Paul Churches, “Days like this accentuate the positive. For all the attention the violence gets, this shows how many kids are not involved with that.”
At the same time, event organizers said they wanted the rally to underscore the critical nature of the problems facing the south side.
“We want to bring it out to the public that it’s getting really bad. Politicians, parents, and everyone in the community needs to step it up,” said Edwin Marquez of JDV Ministries, a Catholic youth empowerment organization that is active on the south side.
“We can’t go through the ‘90s again, when the streets were taken over by violence and gangs,” said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who had requested a meeting with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to address the area’s gang problem on July 14, the day that Duran passed away. She had not gotten a response as of this past Saturday.
This gang violence in Williamsburg is a relatively recent phenomenon, having largely cropped up during the past year, a police source said.
According to the source, the Trinitarios, the Dominican-based gang that also has chapters in Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, and other parts of the northeast including prisons, have been in Williamsburg for a long time.
But the arrival onto the scene of other neighborhood gangs – such as the Pretty Boy Goonies and the Brooklyn Bad Boys, both believed to be chapters of the East Coast Bloods – has created new “turf” rivalries that has led to violence, the police source said.
Friends of Richard Duran have steadfastly insisted that Duran was not involved in gangs.
But his suspected assailant, Michael Torres, 18, a Bushwick Avenue resident, is believed to be a member of the Brooklyn Bad Boys. Friends of Duran said they heard the group Torres was with on the night of the shooting yelling “BBB” as they made their way to the bus depot at Broadway and Roebling Street where Duran was shot minutes later.
Torres is still on the run. Neighborhood residents have spoken of rumors saying he fled to Florida as well as those saying he is in Pennsylvania.
The police source mentioned a recent rumor saying that Torres was recently spotted on the south side.
At Saturday’s rally, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes said bringing the shooter to justice was “a top priority” of his office, though he did not mention Torres by name.
“When we indict the coward who killed Richard Duran, he will go to jail for 25 years to life at least,” he said to the cheers of the crowd.
