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Buffered bike lanes on First Avenue would be swapped with parking lanes and converted into fully protected curbside bike routes. Photo by Milos Balac/Northattan.

East Harlem resident Diego Gerena-Quinones stood before a packed community meeting in the Red Theater at Harlem Prep Charter School on 123rd Street one evening earlier this month.

Gerena-Quinones was giving personal testimony in favor of a controversial proposal to extend protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues, from 96th to 125th streets.

“We’ve been hearing a lot of facts and statistics, which is great, they tell a story,” he said. “I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m going to tell a personal story.”

On Gerena-Quinones’ mind was the injury summary for First Avenue just presented by New York City Department of Transportation’s Joshua Benson. From 2006 and 2010, 579 people were injured in traffic-related accidents along the stretch of road between 96th and 125th streets alone.

“I was one of those 580-something people that was struck by a vehicle,” said Gerena-Quinones.“I think it would be great to have these protected bike lanes. I know that I personally would have benefited from it.”

His message was a powerful one. After his accident this year, in which a car struck his bike on First Avenue and sent him flying over the hood, he spent six hours in the hospital in a neck brace. Months later, he is still undergoing physical therapy for the spinal injury he suffered.

But as dramatic as his story is, it does not persuade everyone in East Harlem — particularly those who own businesses on First and Second avenues. In their view, the city Transportation Department’s bike lane plan would serve only a handful of cyclists, while increasing traffic congestion, diminishing air quality and — most important for the area’s restaurants, bodegas and other retailers — hindering deliveries to local businesses.

“We’re not prepared to sacrifice our lives for the sake of a few,” said Erik Mayor, owner of the Milkburger restaurant on Second Avenue at 106th Street. Mayor told the community meeting that converting one of the current car lanes on Second Avenue to a bike lane would drastically reduce available parking, on a street already congested with double parkers.

Community Board 11 asked the city’s Transportation Department to build protective bike lanes in East Harlem two years ago. The board, together with department, held a series of public meetings to inform local residents and businesses of their plans. But not everybody got the message.

A slew of local residents and business people have come forward claiming they were not informed of the bike lane proposals, and have accused the Transportation Department of a lack of transparency. Their disquiet led to the community board’s withdrawing support for the bike lanes at its meeting in November.

Board officials subsequently decided to bring transportation officials and locals together for an extraordinary meeting at Harlem Prep Charter School in early December.

New York City has built bike lanes on city streets  at rapid rate since 1997. Fifteen years ago, the city had just 119 miles of bike lanes, marked with paint on city roads. As of July 2009, this had grown to a 561-mile network of off-street paths, traffic-protected lanes, on-street lanes with buffer zones and shared lanes marked by chevrons.

By 2030, that network could more than triple in size, if Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan gets her way.

While early development of the bike lane network met little opposition, new expansions in East Harlem and elsewhere are encountering more resistance.

A 2010 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Transportation,“ Cycling in New York,” states that the number of New Yorkers traveling to work by bike has more than doubled since 1990. And, in gentrifying neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, it has quadrupled. The report says this is largely a result of the city transportation department’s effort to expand and improve cycling facilities.

But while numbers of cyclists have increased, the same report says that the number biking to work is still minuscule. It put the citywide figure around 0.6 percent for 2008 — just under 25,000 cyclists. Erik Mayor contends the only cyclists he sees when he looks out the window from his Second Avenue restaurant are couriers.

At the East Harlem community meeting 13-year-long resident Pablo Guzman questioned the prioritization of bike lanes given the community’s dire need for education and health funds. Gasps rippled across the school hall when the cost of the project was revealed at $300,000 per mile — around $840,000 for the 2.8-mile East Harlem project. As 80 percent of this is federally funded, the city would foot a bill of around $168,000.

Joseph Ferris, a spokesman for the bicycle advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said that taking the federal grant into account, the real city investment in bike lanes since 2006 has been about $1.6 million, “virtual drops in the bucket” compared to spending on other transportation infrastructure.

“Traffic crashes cost New York City $4.29 billion in 2009, according to the NYC DOT’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan,” said Ferris in an email. “Bike lanes have proven to drastically reduce the number of crashes.”

Downtown from East Harlem, city figures for First Avenue between Houston and 34th Streets show a 37 percent drop in traffic accidents following the introduction of protected bike lanes. And, for the same distance on Second Avenue, a decrease of 11 percent was recorded.

According to the Transportation Department’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan, released in August 2010, traffic accidents resulting in pedestrian fatalities is one of the primary causes of death among children between 5 and 14, and among adults over 45.

Local Mount Sinai pediatrician Dr. Kevin Chatham-Stephens told the community meeting at Harlem Prep that he supported bike lanes for that very reason. In a sobering statement, the young physician said that on top of these bleak statistics, black children are 50 percent more likely to die in traffic than white children.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito sees the pedestrian islands built alongside bike lanes as integral part of her office’s “Aging Improvement District” plan. On wide avenues the islands provide additional rest stops for elderly citizens.

Proponents at the community meeting offered a laundry list of reasons why the bike lanes should be built, ranging from helping reduce obesity, to the possible reduction of smog and other pollution, which can contribute to asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Community Board Chairman Matthew Washington supports the bike lanes, but is growing weary of the debate. Speaking on the eve of the community meeting, he said opponents weren’t paying attention before.

“I’m just really looking forward to us as a community board getting beyond this issue so we can focus on more important issues,” he said, “like the 16 percent unemployment rate in our community or the 43,000 people on public assistance.”

Memorial for Aaron Kobe Collins in front of Wilson Houses, East Harlem. Photo by Mayeta Clark/Northattan.

“I couldn’t see his face, but I know that’s the one who did it.”

David Collins was going through his brother’s belongings trying to find his phone. It wasn’t on him when he found him wounded in the burned-out stairwell right next to their apartment on the 16th floor of the Woodrow Wilson Houses in East Harlem on that Monday night. “If I can find it, maybe I can find the killer,” he said.

Collins was in the bathroom when he heard the front door close. Shortly afterwards he heard gunshots. He ran out of the family apartment in his robe and into the dark stairwell to investigate. Collins recounted seeing a man in a hoodie and skullcap coming down the stairs. “What happened?” he asked. “I don’t know,” the hooded man replied.

Collins went inside to put on some clothes. He asked his mother who’d gone out the front door. “Kobe,” she said referring to her younger son. Kobe, 28, had been asleep shortly before his family heard the gunshots that killed him.

Collins ran back outside and up a flight of steps. When he rounded the corner he saw his younger brother slumped on the stairs. He tried CPR, but was unable to help him.

“My brother was a good dude,” said Collins. “He just loved everybody, anybody. Everybody was in the hall trying to save him.”

Police said they were called to the Wilson Houses shortly before 9 p.m. on Dec. 12, where they found Aaron Kobe Collins shot in the torso. Although he was rushed to Metropolitan Hospital by emergency services, he was pronounced dead on arrival.

“He was a loving brother and a good father,” said his sister Lasheika Collins. “Anything I needed or my kids wanted, he’d get it for us. He always looked out for his family, looked after our mother.”

Kobe was in fact battling the courts for custody of his son, who had been removed from his mother, Kobe’s ex-girlfriend, and placed in a foster home.

Lasheika Collins said she thinks her brother knew his killer, and that more than one person may have been involved. She believes the person who set up the killing is also from the Wilson Houses complex.

Sean Collins, another of the victim’s siblings, said he believes the killer was motivated by jealousy. “He was high on something, looking for nice things,” he said, flashing his own jewelry. Collins said his brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lasheika Collins also said her family was thinking of suing the Housing Authority, which is responsible for their building. The walls and lights in the stairwell where Kobe Collins was murdered were blackened by a fire up to the 20th floor over a month ago, the family said. Furthermore, Lasheika Collins said that the lack of security cameras and a broken panel on the front door of the building meant that anybody could walk in at any time without hindrance or fear of detection.

Lasheika Collins said she asked the assistant manager of Wilson Houses to fix the stairwell and front door the day after her brother was murdered, but that her request was met with ambivalence. “He took his last breath on that staircase,” she said, shaking her head.

A statement from the New York City Housing Authority said that the maintenance staff planned to repaint the walls and repair the missing glass panel in the building’s front door this week. It also said the city has set aside $43 million to install cameras and improve security at several housing developments across the city, including Wilson Houses, with work scheduled to begin in 2012.

The Collins family has lived in the apartment on the 16th floor of Wilson Houses since Kobe Collins was 4. He had a learning disability, and while he was unable to do paid work in adulthood, he was fond of basketball and drawing, filling notebooks with stark, graffiti-style sketches.

Kobe Collins’ death brings to 14 the number of murders in East Harlem this year, down from 18 last year. David Collins and his sister Lasheika said that too many of those deaths have occurred near their home. “Over here’s just bad, period,” she said.

Outside their city housing block on East 105th Street, an impromptu memorial reminds residents of the violent death of their 28-year-old neighbor.

Residents slowed as they approached the entrance to the building on December 15. A flattened cardboard box had been taped next to the door. Some wrote personal messages:

“RIP KOBE. Lost but never forgotten.”
“We will dearly miss you.”
“That drink was for my G.”
“RIP Kobe Ima keep them pullups scrappy S.I.P”

Green and white candles with “R.I.P. Kobe” in black marker burned at the foot of the impromptu memorial, next to empty bottles of malt liquor.

“Never bothered nobody,” said James Cromartie, a handyman for the building, who remembered meeting Collins when he did repairs on his family’s apartment. “He was a quiet kid. Kept to himself.”

Another resident Deshawn Stevenson, 15, recalled Collins working out on the basketball courts each day.

Detectives from the New York Police Department’s 23rd Precinct were unable to comment, other than to say the investigation was continuing.

“They hit my best friend,” said David Collins. “Make sure you put in that article we loved him.”

Cache of guns brought in during Harlem gun buyback event. Photo courtesy of the New York Police Department.

The indoor basketball court at Harlem’s Bethel Gospel Assembly church was eerily quiet on a recent October Saturday. A few police officers sat behind computers facing an empty row of chairs. A lone visitor arrived, wearing a cap and holding a large brown paper bag – his contribution to the gun amnesty sponsored that day in a joint initiative between law enforcement and religion.

City police and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office had pooled their funds to offer $200 bank cards for each operable handgun brought in, or a $20 card for shotguns or rifles – with a limit of three guns per person. Handguns were higher value because they are easier to conceal and more often used in the city’s crimes.

Gun buybacks have been staged periodically in the city for at least two decades, but the October program had a special urgency, coming just weeks after the shooting death of Harlem high school basketball star Tayshana Murphy. Rumors that Murphy’s murder would spark reprisals in the neighborhood prompted community leaders like Iesha Sekou, founder of Street Corner Resources, to request the October buyback at a second venue – the Holy Family R.C. Church in Central Harlem.

“We wanted to give young people the opportunity to think about it and to turn in illegal weapons,” Sekou said.

By 4 p.m., 139 guns had been surrendered across the two locations, including a .22-caliber semi-automatic with a silencer.

“Our gun buyback took 139 dangerous weapons out of our neighborhoods, and will hopefully save lives,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in a post-buyback announcement that reflects the conventional wisdom of elected officials in many states.

Yet critics say gun buybacks are a waste of taxpayer dollars and don’t effectively get guns off the street. A handful of studies have cast doubt on them as a crime-fighting technique, and the prestigious National Academy of Sciences concluded in a 2004 review that “the theory underlying gun buy-back programs is badly flawed.”

“A gun buyback program is a Junk B Gone program for gun owners, nothing more,” said Alex Tabarrok, research director for the Independent Institute, a think-tank specializing in socioeconomic and legal issues in Oakland, Calif.

“It’s like standing outside of McDonald’s and offering to buy half-eaten Big Macs and expecting that this will help address obesity crisis,” Tabarrok said in an email interview. “A Big Mac buyback and a gun buyback are equally ineffective.”

Such sentiments run in stark contrast to the priorities of Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, who has embraced gun buybacks with the enthusiasm of his predecessor, Robert Morgenthau, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who co-chairs the national coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

“I’m more concerned about getting guns off the street,” Vance said in an interview at Bethel Gospel Assembly, where he spent that October Saturday morning to show his support. “It’s that simple.”

Police-clergy buyback partnerships were initiated in New York City in 2008. According to the New York Police Department, some 7,000 guns have been turned in at church buybacks since then.

Officials say they can assure the anonymity of those who want to turn in guns at churches, which are regarded as neutral locations for buybacks. At Bethel Gospel, for example, officials ordered a reporter not to interview the man in the cap – or any of the dozens of others who brought in guns – lest they feel intimidated and change their minds.

Police also say they will not examine security camera footage from around the church to try to identify any of the people who brought in guns.

Still, Mel Hazel, supervisor of security at Bethel Gospel Assembly, wondered how many felt reassured by the police statements.  “Some people don’t understand the fact that it really is anonymous” said Hazel. “You can just bring the weapon in, no questions asked. And sometimes people don’t trust that issue.”

Joining Vance at the Bethel Gospel buyback event was District 9 City Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens, who is also a strong supporter of such programs.

“This is one way of encouraging our young people and anyone else that has a gun in their home, hidden, to bring the gun in, with no repercussions,” said Dickens. “If we get five guns off the street today and save one youth’s life, or from being maimed, then it’s been a total success.”

As for the weapons turned in during the buyback, they are headed for the smelter, and could turn up at a dry cleaners near you.

“You’ve heard the phrase swords into plowshares,” said Vance. “Well, we’re turning guns into hangers.”

Northattan’s multimedia team traveled to the heart of the protests at Wall Street to gauge the mood after three weeks on the street.

Photos and Video by Mayeta Clark/Northattan

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