Even Luke Cage Fears This Crime-Ridden NYC Block

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A father of two children was fatally shot in the head, two 16-year-old girls were prostituted against their will, another man was killed outside a corner deli — a single Crown Heights block has seen a two year crime wave and its residents are tired of it.

“There has been a rash of criminal activity on Lincoln Place,” said Christopher Weiss, who has lived on the street between Franklin and Classon avenues since 2014. “The randomness of the recent violence makes it feel more threatening.”

The Lincoln Place block has become so dangerous that even superheroes dare not go there, Weiss said. The Netflix series “Luke Cage” was scheduled to film at Glady’s — a Caribbean food restaurant on the Franklin Avenue corner — on July 21, but canceled after a man was shot nearby the night before, he said.

Netflix didn't confirm the reason the "Unbreakable Man" didn't return, but Weiss said, “I woke up in the middle of the night to what turned out to be shots and there was a guy lying on the sidewalk."

The expected film crew, which had appeared on the block earlier that month, failed to arrive the next day, he said.

"Shooting delayed by shooting," he said.

The crime spree began in March 2016 when 22-year-old Marlon Shuffler, a father of a 5-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, was shot dead outside 541 Lincoln Place, DNAinfo reported at the time.

"He was a good guy, a good son, a good father,” his aunt, Katrina Glover, 45, told DNAinfo. “I'm tired of coming to Franklin Avenue. I'm tired of losing part of my history. I'm tired of burying my friends, my family.”

Crime returned to the block off Franklin Avenue a year later, in July 2017, when police rescued two 16-year-old girls being held as sex slaves in a Lincoln Place apartment, the Daily News reported.

“I wouldn’t want that to happen to nobody,” said Tasha Daniely, 41, who lived on the same floor as the illegal brothel. “There’s so many crazy things going on in this world, but that’s really unusual and that’s really close.”

The girls’ alleged kidnappers — Antwan Green, 27, Denina Roman, 21, and Taymel Harris, 20 – have been charged with sex trafficking, court records show. Sources later told the Daily News that the NYPD was investigating a local gang to try and figure out how many girls had been forced into prostitution.

Two months later, a 20-year-old man was shot dead outside the deli on Franklin Avenue and Lincoln Place, according to police. Ghamdan Obayah, 26, the manager of the deli, told the New York Post he witnessed the shooting and saw the victim’s friend cry over his body.

And, between these major crimes, there have been smaller “acts of random violence” that seldom get reported, said Weiss.

Weiss was walking down Lincoln Place one afternoon last summer when suddenly he saw a woman in her 30s get “suckerpunched” and chased by a group of teenagers which had been sitting on a stoop.

In December, Weiss watched a young man grab some kind of metal pole and smash the windshields of a row of parked cars. And a spate of package thefts became worse during the holiday season when some burglars went so far as to rip open boxes, steal the contents, and leave the packaging behind, he said.

Weiss believes the crime is driving some of his neighbors away from his block.

"In my own building there’s been a lot of turnover," said Weiss. "People are scared."

Police responded to a request for information from Patch with a list of crime statistics from the 77th Precinct that showed there were six homicides, 1,153 major crimes and 14 shooting victims in the area in 2017. The figures were not broken down for the specific block.

“The NYPD and the Commanding Officer of the 77th Precinct are working to reduce crime to even lower levels in 2018,” police said in a written statement.

Weiss has not officially reported the problem to police, but said he’d spoken to several officers who were assigned to watch the block over the years.

After the forced prostitution arrests, Weiss struck up a conversation with a patrol officer newly stationed on Lincoln Place.

“I said, 'I live in that building,'” Weiss told the officer. According to Weiss, the cop responded, “Why?”

Lead image: Mike Colter attends the Netflix's original series premiere of Marvel's "Luke Cage" at the AMC Magic Johnson Harlem 9 Theater on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)