Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Murder in Brentwood
I follow the local media of the area where I grew up, like I imagine most of you do. For me, that’s Long Island, NY. It’s always interesting to read about what is happening back in my old stomping grounds. I will continue to read from afar because as much as I liked growing up there, I would never move back to Long Island as an adult. When I go back to visit, I barely recognize the place. I’ll stick with my memories.
Long Island contains the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, and has two counties, Nassau and Suffolk. Nassau County goes from the city to about 1/3 of the island, and Suffolk County takes over and extends out to Montauk and the Hamptons. I lived in Suffolk County, mostly in Centereach, but also in Stony Brook and Port Jefferson.
About 13 miles west of Centereach lies Brentwood. Like most of Long Island, it’s a blue-collar, relatively sleepy town. Lately, however, residents of Brentwood haven’t gotten a lot of sleep. A wave of brutal murders of black and Hispanic teens has gripped the town, and those who live there fear for the lives of their children, as well as their own.
Over two weeks in September, authorities found the bodies of Nisa Mickens, 15, and her best friend, Kayla Cuevas, 16, as well as Oscar Acosta, 19, and Miguel Garcia-Moran, 15. All four deaths are said to be at the hands of Hispanic gangs, and most likely MS-13.
According to The New York Times:
For nearly two decades, MS-13, a gang with roots in Los Angeles and El Salvador, has been terrorizing the town, the authorities say, especially its young people. Since 2009, its members have been accused of at least 14 murders, court and police records show.
Tensions simmer here because some residents say they believe an increase in Central American migrants to town has led to the increase in gang violence. According to 2014 census figures compiled by Queens College, Brentwood’s population is 68 percent Latino or Hispanic, with more than 17,000 residents claiming to be from El Salvador.
MS-13 was formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s by immigrants from El Salvador escaping civil war. The abbreviation stands for Mara Salvatrucha, which roughly translates to “Salvadoran street posse.”
The authorities say the gang has been in Suffolk County since around 1998, and is organized in cliques bearing names like the Brentwood Locos Salvatruchas. Leaders gather to discuss their lines of business — extortion, prostitution, robbery, drug dealing — and to authorize the killings of chavalas, or members of rival gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, court papers say.
Police say Acosta’s murder was the result of “foul play.” They do not elaborate beyond that. Garcia-Moran’s death is thought to have stemmed from a gang initiation. Mickens’ family believes that she was killed while trying to stop a gang from kidnapping Cuevas. Both were brutally murdered, by savage means, hallmarks of gangs like MS-13:
Mickens had more than 10 wounds to her face and head, according to the medical examiner. Both died from blunt force trauma, Sini said. They also had wounds consistent with cutting.
After the 4 murders in September, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said:
I want to be very clear about this, the only people that should be fearful right now in Brentwood are those gang members. We are putting a tremendous amount of pressure on these known gang members and we are going to be taking them out very strategically, in collaboration with our local and federal law enforcement partners.
I am sure Commissioner Sini is sincere in his desire to eradicate gangs from Suffolk County, but it seems a Herculean task. Contrary to his warning, gang members in Brentwood don’t seem to be fearful. Yesterday:
Police on Friday were searching for gang members they believe attacked a man, leaving him to die on a Brentwood street — a killing that dealt another blow to a community still on edge from the gang-related slayings of four teenagers last month.
While there is “no connection at this time” between the violent attack on 34-year-old Dewann A.S. Stacks and the deaths of the Brentwood teens, the crime is considered to be gang-related, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said Friday afternoon.
Marianela Lozano, 46, who lives in a house next to the crime scene, said her daughter’s boyfriend left the house to walk to a nearby coffee shop around 11:30 p.m. Thursday when he saw Stacks lying on the ground.
“He came running back to the house and said he saw a body in the street. I ran out to the street and saw a man lying there,” Lozano said. “He was still alive, breathing heavily. But he couldn’t talk. He was bleeding very hard.”
“He had big cuts all over his face, his mouth, his eyes. It was horrible,” said Lozano, a homemaker who lives with her husband and three grown children in their 20s.
“I’m a Christian, so I just kept talking to him for about five minutes, trying to give him words of salvation,” Lozano said. “But he wasn’t able to speak at all. He just breathed heavily one last time, so hard that his shoulders came off the ground. But then he was gone.”
No one should have to watch a person die like that, or fear that they could be the next victim. Long Island and Brentwood’s gang problem is decades in the making, and it will take a very long time to get this murderous crime wave under control. I worry about how many victims are next, innocents savagely murdered by gangs like MS-13.
As much as I worry for residents of Brentwood, I also get angry when I look at the lack of nationwide reporting. Other than a couple of stories on Fox News, and in conservative-leaning outlets like The Daily Caller, the Brentwood murders are not getting any coverage outside of New York. Try searching for the names of any of the four victims on Google. I challenge you to find any other outlet outside of New York reporting on this story.
In a mainstream media very supportive of Black Lives Matter and unchecked Hispanic immigration, I fear that the reason this story isn’t being covered nationally is because it goes against too many narratives. That’s unacceptable.
Published in General
I agree. So how do we change this? This is a question I’m always asking myself when I read posts such as yours about the unacceptable. I don’t have the answer but know there has to be one.
Having grown up in Queens, I do tend to look for news of the area even though I left there more than 40 years ago. I played polo in Brookville and rode with the Meadowbrook Hunt Club back in the 1960s. It seems almost inconceivable to me that areas of “The Island” are taking on the characteristics of the seedier areas of Brooklyn and Queens. What makes it ultimately believable is that I have seen the same thing happen to Seattle in the years I have lived here.
I got to Seattle shortly after a major reduction in force by Boeing in the late 1960s. Having taught in Bedford-Stuyvesant before coming out here, I was amused when people talked about the “Central Area” as though it was a crime ridden area comparable to Watts or Bed-Stuy. It was, in fact, at that time, a clean, orderly middle class area inhabited mostly by hard working African-Americans and a few Hispanics. That was then. Now it is a hell hole that extend well beyond its previous boundaries with a mix of everything from Somalis to Samoan to Vietnamese to various Hispanic groups, along with African-Americans. Drive-By shootings are a nightly occurrence. It is, in fact, a far more dangerous environment than Bedford-Stuyvesant was during the two years I taught there. I guess that may be the ultimate goal of Multiculturalism the left seems to want to achieve.
I grew up in Stony Brook, too. I recall Brentwood and C.I. were never terribly safe areas. I imagine these murders don’t get coverage for the same reason murders in DC and Chicago don’t get attention. Only some lives matter to the media.
I lived in Brentwood 30 years ago. It was a nice quiet suburb. Sad to hear it’s devolved. I suspect the local cops are not capable of handling gangs and gang violence on a series scale.
The Government has ceded all of Arizona south of I-10. People are even told to stay out of the mountains further north, lest they encounter cartel lookout (sniper) positions on hilltops.
Glad they are sending planes to pick up “unaccompanied minors” from Central America.
Eeyore,
I had to go look it up. What you say is stunning, when I viewed a map of AZ.
Arizona has essentially ceded everything south of I-10, the red line in the map. Wow.
My favorite gang, the Natural Conservatives.
We need leadership in our states that demand federal funding for extra municipal services, including but not limited to law enforcement, to go along with the influx of refugees. We can’t have it both ways: a lax immigration policy and inadequate numbers of law enforcement officers.
It is not fair that the federal government ignores immigration law without providing adequate funding for jobs, housing, health care, education, and law enforcement.
Some communities are getting help from the State Department. I know that because a friend works in a State Department designated community for refugee resettlement. The county is actually making money for providing local help for the refugees.
There’s a slight modification of what I meant. You see where I-8 intersects I-10, about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix. That I-8 line forms the general northern border of the ceded territory from where it intersects.
Yet and still…
Update: I re-read the sign above, and it specifically suggests visitors use public lands north of I-8.
This is what happens when the political class is disconnected from the outcome of their policies. Ground truth is attenuated from the goings on in the land of Oz. Bureaucrats don’t lose their jobs or their funding. Voters in Ohio (fill in any non border state) haven’t seen their government cede control of their cities to lawless invaders nor have 95% of politicians paid any price.
Is it a wonder people are so frustrated they are using Trump as a middle finger?
Watching News12 Long Island one cannot help but notice that most of the unlicensed DUI drivers have Spanish names, of course, legal/illegal immigration status is never asked. All of this goes hand in hand with governments at all levels creating programs to make the invaders comfortable. Does anyone remember voting for this?
Black lives only matter when the right people take them.
Who reads Ricochet? This post is linked at Instapundit