Shootings and murders have spiked so far this year in the Brooklyn neighborhood where two young girls were hit by stray bullets while playing in a park, police crime stats show.
There’s been a 50% increase in gunplay in the NYPD’s 73rd Precinct covering Brownsville, with 24 shootings recorded between Jan. 1 and Sunday, compared to 16 over the same time frame last year, the numbers show.
Murders have jumped to 13 so far this year from just four over the same span in 2023 — a whopping 225% spike, according to the department’s data.
“It’s a challenge because they had almost a record year last year of keeping the violence low,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry told WPIX-TV Tuesday. “They are up slightly from the success [of] last year, but it’s still doing pretty well.”
This year’s shooting victims in Brownsville included 9-year-old Ruanna Paris Brown and her 11-year-old cousin, who were caught in the crossfire of what police are eyeing as a gang-related shooting at the Hilltop Playground just after 9 p.m. Monday.
“Every time it gets warm this is what happens,” Ruanna’s mother, Melissa Alexander, told The Post on Monday. “Either it’s fighting or shooting or something.”
It came just one day after a 12-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old cousin at a Brownsville housing project.
Last month, a 30-year-old man, Lamont Russell, was gunned down outside Howard Houses — on the same Brooklyn street corner where he was accused of shooting another man in 2019, and then convicted of gun possession.
Less than one week earlier, on May 12, Maurice Boodie, 24, was shot dead outside his Brownsville apartment building, blocks from where a double homicide took place in 2022.
In April, an 11-year-old boy was shot inside the Brownsville Houses housing project with four other children as young as six nearby, according to police.
Cops recovered a 9 mm handgun and said the shooting may have been accidental.
In January, career criminal Melvin Butler, 39, allegedly grabbed an NYPD cop’s gun and shot at the officers, hitting one in the hand and the other in the leg.
Police said Butler was accused of attacking his mother inside their Brownsville apartment.
Despite the recent increase in bloodshed, the area has seen worse times in the past — murders peaked at 74 in 1993 and have dropped since, the stats show.
Shootings had also been declining year to year, from 96 for all of 2020, to 79 in 2021, to 63 in 2022 and hitting a year-end total of 44 last year, stats show.
“Obviously, we don’t want to see one person get shot, but Brownsville was averaging over 100 shootings before this regime came in,” Daughtry told WPIX-TV.
“We don’t want to see one,” he continued, “but in the totality of things the 73rd is still doing pretty well based on the history that precinct has had for decades.”
Other crimes have also plummeted, including felony assaults, which dropped more than 24%, to 56, so far this year compared to 2023, according to police data.
Robberies are down to 20 from 24 last year, or 16.7%, and car thefts dipped more than 33%, to 10 from 15 at this time last year, in the 73rd Precinct, the stats show.
