A Little Skittish About Things in Boerum Hill

The drama of Boerum Hill continues. (For those of you joining the story in progress, you can check in window smashings & tire slashings, chalk marks on trees and, our favorite, the Mad Crapper.) In any case, here's a bit of the latest, from emails:

On Monday night I was getting a drink of water in my kitchen at about 12:30 when I heard, what I think, were gun shots. I'm hoping that I was wrong, and maybe they were fireworks, since we're so close to the holiday. The sound came from the vicinity of Bergen and Bond or Dean. Did anyone else hear this as well? My first thought was "what is going on here?" Between all the recent car vandalism, and poopy people roaming in the neighborhood it made me rather uneasy.

There is also concern about good old fashioned noise:

I totally agree that addressing criminal activity in the neighborhood is a priority and many of us take action on this issue on an ongoing basis. However, crime is an entirely separate issue from noise control and addressing one does not preclude addressing the other. And these days noise has progressed to more than a mere annoyance - hence the new legislation. No one is out to get any good neighbors and no one is questioning whether they are good neighbors, I am sure they are and that's not the issue at hand.

We just need to seek ways to reduce the increasing noise whether that is addressing excessive honking, illegal bike parts, trucks, boom cars, etc. These days on many streets in the neighborhood it is difficult to carry on a conversation on one's stoop because there is a constant din of noise. There must be ways to address this and improve the neighborhood. I am just interested in figuring out what are those ways to make our environment a bit more pleasant.

And, of course, more breaking car windows:

Last week I heard a widow pop. I went outside to see a man crawling into the car through the broken window. I shouted "what are you doing?" He came out of the car saying that he did not break the window. He was either white or latino, stocky, light colored hair with a gold earing in his right ear. He was carrying a cardboard box about 12"x12"x3". That's the best I can do on description. I'm not good at that. I went inside to call the police. They put the description over the air (I heard the operator do that). A car came quickly. They had spotted someone who fit the description. We drove to where he was, but it was not him. Curiously enough the car owner later told my wife that nothing was missing from his car, except the window of course. I unfortunately, or fortunately do not have a cell phone, or I would have followed him while I called the police.

More, no doubt, very soon.

Related Post:
Boerum Hill #2: Slashed Tires and Smashed Windows