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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. TABLE 7-2 Average Annual Morbidity and Mortality for East New York Zip Codes and New York City, 1989–1991 (rate per 100,000)
Between 1980 and 1990, however, zip code 11207 lost 19.0 percent of housing and 13.8 percent of its population to continuing contagious urban decay, and zip code 11208 lost 5.4 percent of its housing but gained 6.2 percent in its population. As shown in Table 7-2, between 1989 and 1991 zip code 11207 reported far higher rates of homicide and syphilis that either its neighbor zip code, 11208, or the city as a whole. Clearly, large sections of East New York began suffering contagious urban decay and depopulation earlier than the rest of the city and continued later than the rest of the city. Zip code 11207 seems the worst affected, and we attribute its markedly increased rates of homicide and syphilis and decreased rate of families with two parents to this pattern of decay and neglect. Thomas Jefferson High School was located in this particularly hard-hit area. Drugs and ViolenceDrugs and guns moved into East New York throughout the 1980s, reaching a peak between 1989 and 1993. All observers agree that guns were everywhere, and many people felt they needed to carry a gun. One Jefferson student was quoted in the paper as saying, “I’m not scared to go to school. I come here with a weapon, a 9-millimeter automatic. So it don’t make no difference. I’d rather use my fists, but if it came down to that, I’m going to use it.”83 Patrick Carroll, then head of the 75th Precinct, offered a number of ways of imagining the amount of violence that was going on:
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