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Until recently, the negative aspects of New York living were more than compensated by the exhilaration of simply being there. As architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable says, "When it is good, New York is very, very good. Which is why New Yorkers put up with so much that is bad." Over the decades, Gothamites have evolved a hard-boiled, calculating approach to life that enables them to enjoy the city's manifold pleasures while minimizing its most egregious hassles. Says Brigette Moore, 19, a college student from Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay section: "I wouldn't have wanted to grow up in any other city. I think people in other parts of the country are more limited. In New York you have the privilege to be anything you want."
But that balance has now begun to shift. Reason: a surge of drugs and violent crime that government officials seem utterly unable to combat. Eight other major cities have higher homicide rates, but New York's carnage dwarfs theirs in absolute terms. Last year 1,905 people were murdered in New York, more than twice as many as in Los Angeles. In the first five months of this year, 888 homicides were committed, setting a pace that will result in a new record if it goes unchecked.
The victims have been of all races, all classes, all ages. This summer, in one eight-day period, four children were killed by stray gunshots as they played on the sidewalks, toddled in their grandmother's kitchens or slept soundly in their own beds. Six others have been wounded since late June. So many have died that a new slang term has been coined to describe them: "mushrooms," as vulnerable as tiny plants that spring up underfoot.
The city was still absorbing those horrors two weeks ago when Sean Healy, a prosecutor in the Bronx district attorney's office, was cut down by a hail of gunfire as he selected a package of doughnuts from the shelf of a neighborhood grocery. That same day Vander Beatty, a former political power in Brooklyn attempting a comeback by running for district leader, was shot to death in his campaign headquarters. The prime suspect, according to police, was a longtime friend who was allegedly angry over the manner in which a lawyer who had been recommended by Beatty had handled his alimony case.
Then last week came the murder of 22-year-old Brian Watkins, an avid tennis buff from Provo, Utah, on a subway platform in midtown Manhattan. Over the years, his family frequently made a pilgrimage to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens. En route to dinner at Tavern on the Green, a popular tourist attraction, the family was attacked by a group of eight black and Hispanic youths. After one of the gang cut open his father's pocket to get at his money and punched his mother in the face, Brian jumped to his parents' defense. He was stabbed with a four-inch butterfly knife and died 40 minutes later at St. Vincent's Hospital.
The shock of Watkins' death was intensified by the venality of its alleged motive. According to police, the suspects are members of F.T.S. (an abbreviated obscenity), a Queens youth gang that requires its members to commit a mugging as an initiation rite. They were reportedly trying to raise cash to finance an evening of frolicking at Roseland, a nearby dance hall, where six suspects were arrested. Two others were rounded up later.