By Chris Fuchs
From Jan. 1 to Dec. 17, the number of felonies reported in the northern Queens precincts decreased by nearly 11 percent and in the southern precincts by roughly 7 percent, compared with the same period last year, said Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown. In addition, Brown said, the number of auto thefts reported to police – a crime often the highest in the city in Queens – dropped by nearly 72 percent over the last 10 years to 12,032 in 2000, from 50,239 in 1990.
“The Police Department's crime control strategies and our office's focus on career criminals and other violent predators continues to drive down the rate of robberies, burglaries and other violent street crime,” the district attorney said.
The police declined to provide overall crime statistics for each of the five boroughs in a request made Friday.
Even with the murder of five workers at a Wendy's Restaurant in Flushing and the fatal brick attacks against two Asian-American immigrants in the borough, the number of homicides in Queens had dropped so far this year by 10 percent, to 108 from 120 compared with the same period last year, the district attorney said.
In May, seven workers at the former Wendy's on Main Street in Flushing were preparing to close when two men entered the restaurant and announced a robbery, the district attorney said. The workers were led into the basement and into a refrigerator, bound and gagged, then shot execution-style, the district attorney said. Five of them died. Two men have been charged with the murders.
Less than six months later, in early September, a man who emigrated from the Fukien province of China 10 years ago and who owned a takeout restaurant in St. Albans was bludgeoned to death with a brick while making a delivery. A week later, the police arrested five teenagers – the youngest was 14 – and charged them with murdering the man, Jin Sheng Liu, 44. Their motive: to eat without having to pay, the district attorney said.
Weeks later on Sept. 23, a Korean-American immigrant, returning in the early-morning hours from work in Manhattan, was brutally attacked by two teenagers in the lobby of his Flushing apartment. The two teenagers were caught on a grainy videotape, the police said, which showed one of them raising aloft a cobblestone and smashing the man, Jong Rin Lee, 43, in the head. Lee was conscious when he was taken to the hospital but died several days later. No arrests have been made, the police said.
Apart from murders, the district attorney said that this year his office has prosecuted nearly 7,000 narcotics cases and other crimes.
“Overall, it is my belief that a sustained effort at both street narcotics enforcement as well as a more organized violent drug gang investigation have helped drive down the crime rate,” Brown said.
