![]() In an attempt to avoid a conflict, Turks and his friends tried to get away when their car broke down. During a stop at a bodega, the men were confronted by a group of white men. On June 22, 1982, Turks, a black New York City transit worker, and two black co-workers were in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. The Willie Turks murder was the first of several high-profile bias crimes in New York during the 1980s. While many of the bias incidents of the 80s passed under the radar, a few became infamous in what was a decade of festering racial unrest in New York City. Racial Unrest "New York is a powder keg right now, and it will take just a tiny spark to set it off." “Violence perpetrated against blacks because they were in an all-white neighborhood and ‘must be up to no good’ was seen as justified by the fear factor,” and although racially motivated crimes were not new to New York in the 80s, they “were being committed with startling frequency.” Statistics from the late 80s show that 177 bias incidents were recorded in New York City in 1980, but that number had increased steadily to 541 in 1989. Cases like the Central Park rape, where young black and Latino men were charged with raping and assaulting a white woman, made headlines and incited fear in primarily white communities. The type of crime that was most feared by the general public in American cities in the late 1980's was random street violence, such as rape and robbery. in particular crack, played a role in at least 38 percent of the 1,867 murders. Statistics presented in the late 80s explained that "from 1987 to 1988, the number of murders in New York rose 10.4 percent” and that “drugs. With the drug epidemic came a surge in violent crimes. to an estimated total of 600,000 in 1988.” According to New York State statistics, there were 182,000 regular cocaine users in New York City in 1986. crack more than tripled the number of cocaine users in the city since 1986. The drug epidemic had serious fiscal consequences on the city with little to no positive effect "despite the more than $500 million spent by the city in on drug-related enforcement alone - more than twice the amount in 1986. As financial and business services the city’s income distribution progressively polarized, inducing a growing schism between rich and poor.” Ĭrack cocaine became a major problem on the streets, stretching the police department’s resources paper-thin. After four decades of job loss in manufacturing, “New York City to lose blue-collar jobs twice as fast as the rest of the United States, with significant effects on its occupational and residential structure. However, underneath New York’s gilded exterior lay serious problems. In the 1980s, New York City experienced massive economic growth, becoming a global banking and financial center. The resulting animosity and tension between the races had grown to a fever pitch by that summer, to a point where lives were endangered and even lost." While largely uncharted resentment and anger at unyielding social conditions seethed and bubbled in black neighborhoods, well-documented and often-tolerated loathing and fear of blacks grew in the city's white enclaves as homicide statistics rose in minority communities. ![]() ![]() The gulf between the haves and the have-nots was wider than it had been nearly a century. The twin scourges of crack cocaine and AIDS were straining both law enforcement and health care resources past all reasonable limits. New York City: The Gilded 80s "By 1989, New York was a troubled city.
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