STOP GANG WARS
Gang violence made the headlines early this year, on Monday, January 19 to be exact. A member of the Latin Kings gang had been stabbed near Elmhurst hospital and the gang members had been looking for who did that crime. The 18-year-old son of a Metropolitan Opera Chorus singer was fatally stabbed in apparent gang-retribution just blocks from the scene of the original stabbing. More blood on the streets.
More recently, two young men, neither of whom had lived 21 years yet, were shot down in cold blood by a hooded gunman who leapt from the shadows along 54th Avenue. A third man with the unlucky pair escaped.
Both men were shot in the chest outside a Corona bar, Marcios, at around 1 a.m., Juan (Mono) Gonzalez, 20, and Edgar Fernandez, 19 had pregnant wives waiting for them at home. More blood on the streets.
Fernandez died on the bloody sidewalk and Gonzalez died at the New York Hospital Queens later. Both were members of Trinitarios gang according to their friends who believed that they were targeted by members of the Latin Kings gang for an earlier shooting.
This violence must stop. No one in the neighborhood is safe. These gangs shoot into crowds and in broad daylight too. They are bold and brash. The police must do more enforcement and education to break up this threat to society.
In the late 1990s, the Roosevelt Avenue Taskforce, consisting of undercover police officers and detectives, was largely responsible for ridding Roosevelt Avenue of crimes. If the funds for that type of response cannot be found perhaps with some of the stimulus funds flowing into the city, could be allocated to install security cameras on the streets, to deterring future killings.
“A human life is worth much more that a camera,” said Queens Assemblymember Jose Peralta. “The more cameras that we have, the better chance we have of fighting crime,” he added.
And of having less blood on the streets of Queens.
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