Gunplay reviving image of NYC as urban battleground

NEW YORK -- The shootings seems to be everywhere: In a string of store clerk slayings in Queens and Brooklyn, at a melee in a crowded Times Square arcade, during a police sting on the streets of the city's most sedate borough, Staten Island.

Those shootings alone killed six people this month, including two undercover detectives, reviving menacing images of the Big Apple as an urban battleground.

"Sometimes we have a couple of fights, but nothing like this," said Omar Leger, a security guard for the Times Square arcade's nightclub, where eight people were shot a week ago.

The violence has been a startling departure from the city's long, steady decline in crime. For the nation's largest police department, it also comes as officers are already stretching their resources to respond to terror threats.

The latest crime statistics show 43 people were shot in the city in the first week of March, compared with 25 in the same period last year.

'A bad week'

Police officials call the spike an aberration.

"It was a bad week," said police spokesman Michael O'Looney. "But this is a city of 8 million people. You have to look at the big picture."

That picture shows 260 shooting victims through March 9, down more than 8 percent from the same period last year and 71 percent from 1993. Officials also note that serious crimes -- murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft -- are down 11 percent this year.

The string of storefront slayings date to Feb. 8, when a supermarket worker and a convenience store proprietor died in separate shootings in Queens and Brooklyn.

They were investigated as unrelated. But then, on March 1, the manager of an auto parts store was gunned down. A week later, a worker at a 24-hour coin laundry was killed.

On March 8, the gun violence spread to tourist-friendly Times Square with a dispute between patrons in an arcade nightclub. By the time the shooting was over, eight people had gunshot wounds. All survived.

and the normally bustling sidewalks were smeared with blood and cordoned off with crime scene tape. All the victims survived, and five people were later arrested in connection with the brawl.

Ballistic evidence linked three of the homicides to the same .40-caliber pistol, and surveillance videotapes captured matching images of a man in a hooded sweat shirt. A team of 20 investigators has been assembled to catch what they fear is a serial killer.

On March 8, the gun violence spread to tourist-friendly Times Square with a dispute between patrons in an arcade nightclub. By the time the shooting was over, eight people had gunshot wounds and the normally bustling sidewalks were smeared with blood and cordoned off with crime scene tape. All the victims survived, and five people were later arrested in connection with the brawl.

Two days after that shooting, a pair of undercover detectives became victims of a sting operation gone bad.

The detectives, trying to buy a semiautomatic handgun on the black market, were shot in the back of the head as they sat in their unmarked car on Staten Island. Six men were arrested in connection with the killings, the first of police officers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Last year, police arrested nearly 3,000 people for allegedly carrying or selling illegal weapons. More than 780 have been arrested this year.

Despite the rash of shootings, the overall crime numbers aren't high and should offer some comfort, said Thomas Reppetto, head of the Citizens Crime Commission.

"Sometimes these very serious crimes come in spurts," Reppetto said. "Of course, it's something that has to be watched."