A LOOK BACK
IT TOOK 20
YEARS FOR THE LIGHTS TO COME BACK
(Photo
courtesy New York Daily News)
TAGS: NYC 1977 BLACKOUT, CRIMINALITY, LOOTING,
ARSON, RANDOM VIOLENCE
FOR
25 HOURS, 1977 LOW POINT FOR NYC, MAYOR ABE BEAME, PRESIDENT FORD
TO
NYC “DROP DEAD”, “The Bronx is Burning”, SON OF SAM, “THE WAR YEARS” FOR THE
FDNY
& NYPD, FORT APACHE – THE BRONX
THE
BRONX OF 2015
(Monday July 13, 2015 Simpson
St., The South Bronx) Once home to the
41st Precinct which was self-designated by the MOS who worked here
as Fort Apache in the mid 1970’s, this stolid building is now the home of the
Detective Bureau Bronx and is surrounded by gentrified housing that bears
little resemblance to what this neighborhood was like during “The War Years” of
the mid 1970’s through the late 1980’s.
The 41st precinct moved to their new, modern facility on
Longwood Avenue in 1993 at the time The Bronx and all of New York City was just
beginning to turn the corner on its dark, crime-ridden, violent past.
The infamous reputation The
Bronx acquired in the 1970’s was in part due to a quote credited to Howard Cosell
allegedly broadcast in October 1977 during a World Series game at Yankee
Stadium. As an aerial shot of Yankee Stadium was aired from coast to coast, a
building fire blazed in the foreground.
Cosell did not actually utter that famous phrase and its origins remain
murky. No matter who truly coined the
phrase, it became an apt declaration for a Borough and City that was on the
brink. Crimes in all major categories as recorded by
the NYPD and Department of Justice were the highest in the nation particularly
violent crimes such as assault, rape, robbery and crimes against property
especially the epidemic of arson; arson “for profit”. The City was on the verge of fiscal
insolvency and the real specter of declaring bankruptcy consumed then Mayor Abe
Beam. The Son of Sam was into his second
summer of terror stalking “lover’s lanes”
shooting young men and women as they sat innocently in their parked cars
; his wave of random, serial murder that began in mid-1976 ended with the
arrest of David Berkowitz on August 10, 1977.
One of the most powerfully
illustrative events depicting the nadir of life in our City occurred 38 years
ago this evening during rush hour when several lightning strikes tripped
circuit breakers at Con Ed stations north of the City triggering a rapid
progression of cascading technical failures that thrust the City into total
darkness for 25 hours. July 13, 1977 was another in a long scorching string of
extremely hot, humid, sweltering days that had tempers on short fuses and
tensions high. What transpired during
those overnight hours was not fully realized until sunrise on July 14. As that dawn broke over the preternaturally
unlit City, the damage caused by widespread looting and arson told the tale of
opportunistic criminality as well as more controversially, the release of years
of frustration and perceived neglect in predominately Black enclaves from The
South Bronx, through Harlem and out to Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn and various points
in between. The NYPD had essentially
declared Marshall Law and over 4100 arrests were made in the overnight hours.
On July 13, 1977 hundreds of thousands of
commuters where stuck down in the broiling, pitch black subway tunnels; other thousands
hung from immobilized elevator cables trapped for reasons they had no way of
knowing . The sense of social order was
tripped to the off position as effectively unleashing waves of violence and
looting as the tripped Con Ed breakers cut the lifeblood of modernity –
electricity – paralyzing NYC in one way and empowering some of the darker motivations
of others. The question “where were you
when the lights went out”? asked in 1977 had an entirely different meaning than
it did during the massive Blackout of 1965 when people were more civil,
neighborhoods more closely knit, and social order was the norm of the day.
By the time of the Blackout of
1977 we lived in a vastly different City and, for that matter, a different
country. The 1970’s were in many
respects the hang-over years after the tumultuous 1960’s that had left no
corner of our society, culture, politics, and institutions untouched by
upheaval. After the failed programs of President
Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” Agenda, cities across America were feeling the
odd gnawing “growing pains” of “urban renewal” and many policies and practices
that were in essence intentional or accidental endeavors of social engineering. The advent of massive housing “projects”,
concrete and brick edifices that housed the poor only served to isolate them
from the surrounding neighborhoods as well as easy access to local stores and
the economy of the area. Integration in
the form of busing was creating culture shock in cities in the Northeast as
much as in the Deep South. Public
assistance initiatives had devolved to the role of abdicating the absence of a
“breadwinner” in the family and encouraged the poor, predominately Black in
those days, to have more children. Yes, the United States of America was still
reeling from the Sixties, licking our wounds from the debacle of Vietnam, race
riots, political assassinations, “women’s lib”, draft dodgers and the traumatic
societal cleavage that became known as “The Generation Gap.”
But that is all well known if
not personally recalled history for those of us Baby Boomers of Bronx vintage
circa 1955 - 1965.
The lights that went out on
the sticky summer night in 1977 did really not come back on for almost 20
years. There were more dark days ahead
for the City and her people. TIME
magazine may have called her derisively “The Rotten Apple” but most New Yorker’s
knew better. Somewhere in the back of most of our minds we knew what our City
was, who we were, and that we were better collectively than as miserable, fed
up individuals. Certainly the stalwarts
during the smoldering, violent War Years were the MOS of the NYPD and FDNY; the
top agencies of their kind in all the land.
It would be block by block, building by building, vacant lot by garbage
strewn reeking alleyways that we would reclaim our City. Giuliani was the right man at the right time
and was the one leader to finally pull the City away from that dark, gaping
abyss of urban blight and decay.
The Bronx and the City as a
whole began to turn the corner in 1994 with the election of Rudy Giuliani. Love him or hate him he proved successful
across a wide range of quality of life matters, was supportive of the NYPD, and
was a straight shooter. After the
abysmal years of the David Dinkins administration Giuliani was just what the
public needed. A former Federal
Prosecutor in the Southern District of New York which includes NYC, he was a
relatively well known personality before his first run for office which was
unsuccessful. The continued decline of
the City over the ensuing term of Dinkins made a believer out of the
predominantly Democratic majority of registered voters in NYC. He was actually swept into office on a tidal
wave of support; most could not have cared less if he was a democrat,
Republican or Martian. All New Yorkers
wanted was an effective Mayor to take control of the City and begin to cure all
its epidemic of societal ailments. And
that he did. His reign was not without
controversy but as the City began its stunning transformation through the
second half of the 1990’s, his tangible results muffled some of the
controversial policies, practices and reforms he championed. He virtually bent the will of the City by the
force of his own.
Today New York City is the
number one tourist destination among foreign travelers as well as the “Safest
Big City” in America by any metrics employed to analyze crime statistics. Even the once notorious neighborhoods of The
South Bronx are rejuvenated, vibrant communities with robust local economies
and a better quality of life than anyone ever thought possible in 1977.
Yes, the lights are back on in
NYC and have been for some time now.
ARCHIVED NEWS ARTICLES FROM JULY 14, 1977
RECENT COVERAGE AND RETROSPECTIVES
NYC DURING THE “WAR YEARS”
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