March 23rd, 2009
20 Most Dangerous States for 2009
1. Nevada (Voted most dangerous 6 years in a row, #1 in Robbery & Car Theft)
2. Louisiana (Highest Murder Rate, 2nd in Assault and 3rd in Burglary)
3. South Carolina (#1 in Assault)
4. New Mexico (#2 In Rape, # 4 In Murder)
5. Florida (#3 in Robbery)
6. Tennessee
7. Alaska (#1 In Rape, 4th In Assault)
8. Arizona
9. Maryland (#2 In Murder & Robbery)
10. Michigan
11. Arkansas
12. Georgia
13. Alabama (#3 in Murder)
14. California
15. Texas
16. Oklahoma
17. Delaware
18. North Carolina (#1 Burglary)
19. Missouri
20. Illinois
For the people that live in these states, is it really that bad?
Suggestion Box
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
well i live in atlanta and i think most of the shit they r talking about is drugs cuz it aint no murders everyday or nuthin
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Looks like New York been soft since Bin Laden came through and crush the buildings….
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I live down here in Oklahoma City and I have noticed the change in the last 2-3 years how people really dont give a fuck.Everybody getting out of jail from the early 90’s and they be having these young boys ready for anything.Oklahoma City is growing and is probably going to get worst.I hope shit change because I have kids and I dont want to have to worry about them when they get older.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
FLORIDA WE LIVE. NOT GLORIFYING IT JUST SAYING.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
well in atl/ga all u need is a GA driver’s lic w/out a criminal rec and u straight to purchase..so yea erryone floats around da A strapped up g!..on the other hand i’m proud my original homestate of NY aint made da goon list Top 20 this yr lol..Bloomberg got niggaz n check earrly huh?? holla!
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
wow! i’m in jersey and i’m surprised we didn’t make the list. good lookin on that though. if jersey didn’t make the list, got damn all of yall that did live in the ghetto! sucks for ya!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Chozen, you an idiot. What makes NY soft? We dont want NY to be on this list. Actually we dont any of our states on this list. Fuck outta here. We got kids to raise out here.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Im surprised Cali aint higher than 14. But then again its only bad in the hood. The bay area been getting bad recently and San Diego go so much drugs bein sold its gettin real territorial. A lot of shit goes unsolved here also.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Bottom line is most crimes are commited by thugs in areas surronded by other thugs and criminals. The victims are usually other criminals. It’s not like everyday people in general have to be scared to go out.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
cosisng wit mic sorc
its not being on dis list makin yu hard
is bout out kids nd generations.
think!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
number 2… shut the f*ck up it aint no laughing ting… and look at all the wannabe badmen comment about how they the shit..
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
i honestly never thought baltimore maryland was a bad place to live until i saw the wire.. i heard its even worse than how the wire makes it seem
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Carolina In Here…
Aint No Nigga Ran In My Crib
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
WTF cali at number 14. CPT repasenta right hear!!!ccg for life right her(compton crip gang)got to make it to number one in a minuite got to get the 9MM and the A-k redy to go kill me some flamed up bloods bang bang fo life ya hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I live in florida and my pitbull FEMALE puppy was stolen so yes, there is alot of robbery in FL.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
What chozen was referring to is “It’s like New york’s been soft ever since Snoop came through and crushed the building,” a Jay Z lyric.
Shout out to Fort Worth, Texas though.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
It’s true for Florida.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Nevada ain’t bad at allllllllll….it’s just the strip where most people get robbed everyday cause the Goons know that’s where the $$$ is @. If you take away Strip Robberies then Nevada probably wouldn’t be in the top 30. I live 10 minutes away from the strip in the same sub-division as the Maloofs (Owners of the Palms, Kings etc) so that lets you know it ain’t to bad.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
i thought cali would be a lot higher
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
HOW THE HECK DID NEW YORK NOT GET MENTIONED..? AND FOR ALL THE STATES THAT GOT MENTIONED…WHY DO SOME NOT HAVE DETAILS ON WHAT THEY WERE DANGEROUS OR KNOWN FOR?
PLZ CLARIFY IF YOUR GOING TO LIST ALL 20 STATES. EXP: CALIFORNIA…YEAH I DONT BLAME US FOR BEING MENTIONED BUT WHAT FOR? JUST BEING DANGEROUS? WELL SHIT WE HAVE THE LARGEST FUCKIN POPULATION…
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
i 5tay n n. karolina n it dnt b poppin off
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
IM NOT GONNA COME ON HERE AND GLORIFY NONE OF THIS IM FROM NEW ORLEANS AND THE SHIT IS SHAMELESS HOMIE , IT’S A VICIOUS CYCLE THAT WILL ONLY END WHEN THIS WHOLE STATE GETS BURNED AND WASHED OUT…
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
does it matter, theres crime everywhere. Theres victims and criminals no matter where you are, just cause you aint gettin’ robbed with a gun doesnt mean you aint getting robbed period. Check your credit report, 401k, bank loan, them ni99as is just as bad. A bullet wound or stab wound heals, but some of this shit stays on your credit for years.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
lol all these new york faggots be catchin feelins cause their soft ass city aint on the list
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
CHOZEN U A FUKIN PUNK.. DONT TALK RECKLESS LIKE THAT U LIL FAGGOT.. ILL SMACK CRUST OFF YA MONKEY ASS RIGHT HERE IN BK
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
illinois has been doin alot better diz year (im from chicago) last year round february dere were 40 sumtin shootingz in a 2 day span n i think 10-20 people died and 15 got injured i cant remember but yea good 2 see its improvin…..dere has been alot of robberies lately doe
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
apparently Alaska keeps it gully on the low? 1st in rape 4th in assault that’s crazy
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
#27 its cold, dark and boring in Alaska. They are most known for Sarah Palin lol. Niggas goin crazy out there so they rape and rob. That shit is crazy tho.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Considering, Maryland being the smallest state out of all of those beside Delaware, and still is 2 in murder and robbery IS HORRIBLE
And people point straight to B-More. Yes we play a big part in it, but its other wild places near PG County and shit
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
As far as MD Goes, Yeah i mean its pretty bad it just seem like people dont care about there lives anymore and they do sht for the moment , im not usually the one but i think music plays a big role in it cuz all that Gucci Mane and stuff brainwashed them into thinkin that kind of stuff was cool like it wasnt affecting lives
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
YAY WE’RE IN THE TOP 15!
“lol all these new york faggots be catchin feelins cause their soft ass city aint on the list”
HAHAHA TRUE,IT SHOULD BE REALTALKNEVADA
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I stay in inkster,michigan which is like 5-10minutes away from the detroit which probably is the reason michigan is even at #10 besides the suburbs surrounding THE D. But Detroit is bananas tho plus that hood tax is definitely in effect by people like the streetlordz chedda boyz and them other hood niggas.
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I guess NY talk a big game…..dats it..lol
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Wurd……..
My State Ain’t On That Shitty List..
Now Post The Best States To Live In RealtalkNy..
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
See New York we gettin improved fuck all ya that say ny is soft well we been most fucked up city from 90’s homeboys after 10 in a half years we improved and we not in a list anymore its big improvement who remember any of those states on the list back in 90’s hey i live in Brooklyn yeah NY might be not on list and its good but honestly if you live in a hood trust me shit soes goes down in here you never know wat will happen there are still alot of stick up kids so stop frontin yo and come thhrough and take train to any of out boroughs and see it yourself….
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:43 pm
how the fuck is philly not up there. my sister lives there, said she seen cops get killed and people are always being shot. says every night pretty much hears a gun shot. so how that not make it? and illinois wtf there is just corn in illinois and chicago yea but not really.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Where da fuck the West Coast Gangstas go?! Looks like the EAST goesss HARD
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
405 NORTHSIDE SMOKLAHOMA CITY A.K. HIGH CAP CITY, WITH CALI BEING 14 AND OKLAHOMA BEING 16, MAKES ME THINK, IS IT REALLY BAD DOWN HERE.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
No North East states @ All!!! Shocking… even though this report means nothing its interesting what they’re puttin out here! more scare tactics…
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
fresh#32 .appearently .. you don’t know anything about michigan to say .detroit is the reason why .michigan’s ..in the top ten . you ever been to grand rapids .aka gun rule . or flint .. or tha kazoo , benton harbor .. niggaz gets it in out dere ..and i’m from detroit ..so it’s nothin against detroit ..i’m just sayin ..shits worse out dere than here.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
by the way ITS STATES NOT CITIES FOLKS!!! But you should really question your values if you really want your environment listed here!!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
SON I LIVE IN CHARLOTTE,NC and all these lil niggaz do is petty robbery. everday on the news its a petty robbery. I guess them shits startin to add up.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
cosign #41
Posts like these shine a light on the ignorance and immaturity running rampant in blogs like these…………if you got kids or even family you care about, why the hell would you be proud of your home state being on this list?……….come on people, our president is black!
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Ive lived in Nevada for the second half of my life. Vegas is a problem though, people dont understand, theres so much $$$ to take that people be going to desperate measures to get it.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Chozen Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Looks like New York been soft since Bin Laden came through and crush the buildings….
_______________________________
OH MY GOD!!! DID HE REALLY SAY THAT??? HAHAHAHAHA ….THATS SO WRONG LOL!!!!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:08 pm
TEXAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
i dont know why you niggaz all happy.yall aint doin the killin fuckin e-thugz
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Man Im from AR and it is crazy down there thats why I got the fuck out and moved to MN. dont shit ever happen here cept for some bridges fallin and shit
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
LOL, might as well replace Louisiana with New Orleans. Lately, dudes been getting killed daily, but it is usually because of drugs and other illegal shit. People be getting robbed, but not in open places, usually in closed areas like central city. Recently dudes been raping and assaulting chicks around the universities. Fucked up really. Shit overrated though. Basically, if you ain’t in no shit, you str8 unless you in wrong place at wrong time like on mardi gras day. On an neva eva be out at night by yo self, you just asking for it like dem university chicks. LMAO
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Im from AR and shit is crazy down there everybody is a hustler or at least tries to be. Thats why i got the fuck out and moved to MN 4 years ago shit never happens here cept some bridges falling and shit
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 pm
the bay area is gettin hella worse, the drug problem is getting really bad around here, and there was that huge taliban bust
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
No offense Southerners, but like I be watchiN’ First 48 and yea..lol
And Proud to say that NY isn’t on the list.
Nice to know I am kinda safer in NY rather than some other states.
But remember NYC is in NY.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:46 pm
im mad how niggaz is proud to be on a high crimes list. shit like this makes black ppl look bad son yall need to cut this shit out.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
IM FROM SOUTH CAROLINA BITCHES
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED THAT NEW MEXICO IS # 2 IN RAPE???
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I dno why some of u ppl are mad that ur city is not there lol
why would u wana live in places like that
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Fuckkkkkkk my state ain’t make the list… That’s bull shit…Fuck it piru gang all day!!!! Zoo woo
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm
SAFIEST CITY IN THE COUNTRY
No. 1: Ramapo, NY
Ramapo’s crime rate is 89.18% below the national average. Ramapo had the fewest burglaries, the second fewest motor vehicle thefts, and also ranked in the top 10 for fewest robberies. In all, Ramapo had only 688 incidents of reported crime over the past year.
http://www.walletpop.com/mortgages/safest-cities
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I’m from the N.O and it’s just said to see these 15 and 16 years who already have a couple of bodies under their belt….. The mentality of some of these kids is just sickening. Although statistically it’s pretty dangerous, I feel safe here because I’m not involved in the drug game.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I Live in San diego it aint THAT Bad
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
South Side!!! Its real down here in the Dirty Dirty D!!! (Dallas aka Dollaz Texas) They popped John F. Kennedy here in the grassy noll
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I PERSONALLY THINK NY NIGGAS ARE GETTING OFF THE STREETS AND GOING INTO THE MUSIC BUISNESSS. EVERYBODY NOW A DAYS WANT TO RAP.
AND I HEAR NIGGAS IN COLORADO BE RAPPIN ALOT ON CAMPUS AND ON THE STREET TO
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 pm
LOL at these silly dudes asking about CITIES when it clearly says STATES.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Ive lived in FLA my whole life, my brother stays in Jacksonville and I commute back and forth weekly from Gainesville to Tampa. Speaking from experience, I know that Jacksonville and Tampa have high rates of criminal activity everyday cause I’ve seen alotta gutta ass niggaz bein crazy after clubs let out n shit. I got arrested once in Ft. Myers too, the police are Invasive as shit down there and are fuckin everywhere. That jail is nothin to play with either. so yea, I can see why FLA is in the top 5. It’s kinda crazy tho to see that 4 of the top 6 most dangerous states are southern ones, we gotta become more enlightened down here n stop lettin society and all its negativities get to us so much.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:53 pm
MAN I’M SURPRISED! the mayor or someone must be up to some sh!t cause my cities NOT EVEN LISTED like its no crime!!!
proud to say i’m from New Haven tonight… ;0)
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
p.s. the state is in the top 15 safest! but atleast 2 cities listed in the 60 worst with a few more included later on in the list!
March 24th, 2009 at 12:26 am
“WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED THAT NEW MEXICO IS # 2 IN RAPE???”
THAT’S BECAUSE YOU WERE RAPED
March 24th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Niggas in this website are fuckion dumb talkin about how bad their states are 1. every state by law has to have some neighborhoods for the poor people AKA “the hood”. so offcourse where there’s poverty it gets pretty bad so in other words this occurs in every state so stop being surprised cus ur state wasn’t listed or not listed high enough. On top of that why niggas proud their states are listed? then we wonder why black people don’t progress yall think crime is cool SMH….
March 24th, 2009 at 12:42 am
@ 67… cruel man cruel! I was thinkin that though, jus wasn’t tryin to go there…lmao!
so seein you set it off~ “THAT’S BECAUSE YOU WERE RAPED” in N.M., multiple times!
March 24th, 2009 at 2:03 am
^ get a life you stay on this site
March 24th, 2009 at 2:30 am
NEVADA got this 6 yrs in a row!!!??????
wtf???
been here in vegas all those 6 yrs n i didnt think it was that bad!
guss i was wrong hahaha
March 24th, 2009 at 2:55 am
@ Mon, r u serious? lol… n!gga please
March 24th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Nevada bacically only has 2 cities…lol its crazy how a state almost totally owned by the federal gov’t is the worst! they need distractions i guess…lmao!
March 24th, 2009 at 7:36 am
shiit im from nigeria and shit is tough out here!
“real tough like nigerian hair”
got lions tigers and real gorrilas trYna take yo life
rapes gon up too,
March 24th, 2009 at 8:38 am
The reason while yall bugger cities are not on here is because these are usually based on per 100,000 people.
Now a state of 10 people could have 1 murderer and that would put that state first with 10% of the population being murderers.
Im sure the bigger states have more total murders/assualts and rapes its just the bigger states also have a higher population of people not being assholes.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I can’t believe you huys are happy about ur state being mentioned are yall joking or really that pathetic? Anyhow ny,nj,and philly nigs is about getting money fuck robbing and raping a bitch yall could have that
March 24th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
i’ll tell you why New Jersey aint on the list…. cause Officer Ricky don’t play out here… we have the most integrated police system this nation has seen! mu’fucken cops know EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US by name. word to mutha… and not too many of em are corrupted neither.. that’s why it’s less REPORTED crime.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:04 am
I LIVE IN TENNESSEE, CHATTANOOGA TO BE EXACT AND MY HOMEBOY GOT AN ATTEMPTED MURDER CHARGE THEN LIKE TWO MONTHS LATER MY OTHER HOMEBOY GOT SHOT AND KILLED SOMEBODY, THEN A DUDE FROM MY NEIGHBORHOOD WENT TO GA AND MURKED SOMEBODY. WE RIDING ROUND STRAPS ON THE LAPS DOWN HERE AND THIS AINT EVEN THE WORSE PART OF TN. THE GO HONEY BAKED HAM UP IN MEMPHIS.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Yeah, its pretty bad. Birmingham has been messed up and it doesn’t look like its getting any better. Being one of the country’s leaders in murder is not a good look. These lists come out every year and they rarely change. Kinda of ironic how some people are proud of this negativity, though.
April 19th, 2009 at 3:36 am
You could take that most dangerous states lists with a grain of salt
just like those most dangerous cities lists because it doesn’t mean
highest per capita murder rates. Prime example is Louisiana has
the highest per capita murder rate of any state for the last 20 years
straight (1989-2008) but it hasn’t been the most dangerous state
20 years straight like it’s murder rate is.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I just moved to Connecticut from Brooklyn I am living in New Haven C.T. on Sate Street wanting to get away from the whole hustle and bustle of the city life. Now of course I have heard that Hartford was a dangerous city and NYC and C.T. are very close together but was i dead wrong thinking that i was moving into a nice suburb with a yard white picket fence the whole 9. I moved here October 10th 09 and so far i have been robbed at gun point in brawd daylight 4 times, 3 times by kids that were no older than 14 my car has been stolen and my neighborhood is filled with crack heads,drug dealers,hookers. The first night i was here i was up all night with loud music,yelling,fighting then around 4am to top off the night 10 gun shots with 3 people being shot and one victim was shot right on my stoop. Obviously this is nothing new to me cause the neighborhood in Brooklyn i lived in was very dangerous but I am 42 yrs old and never once have i been robbed in NYC or seen someone be shot and killed in front of me and with-in the first 4 days of living in New Haven i seen and been threw all this already. There has already been well over 20 murder’s this year in this city there seems to be a homicide or shooting 3 times a day here i should have moved to Staten Island where i would be safe. So my experience living in New Haven these 6 months have been a complete nitemare and is getting worse i can not understand how this city is not heard of as a dangerous city such as Harlem,Detroit ect. I made the mistake one time going into the fair haven section WOW never again Newark has nothing on Fair Haven crime wise. I have yet to go to Hartford or Bridgeport yet and I am praying i do not have cause I always knew that they were dangerous city’s just by watching the news in NYC so if New Haven is not known outside of C.T. and Hartford and Bridgeport have a rep well its sick. One thing i learned quick is that New Haven has a huge gang problem and New Haven is broken up in sections i guess you can say i live in the hill section then there is the Vill,Tre,Jungle and Terror Dome and what ever section you live in that is who your down with and lets say that i go into the Vill and anyone knows that i live in the hill ill get shot real quick the 3rd day i lived here it was 3pm school was getting out i heard bout 7 gun shots but that’s all i heard anyway so i slid under my table as i do everytime i hear a gunshot and since it is a constant thing i make sure i am never near a window but anyway a 12 yr old girl shot and killed a 13 yr old boy cause he was from the Tre section a 12 yr old girl I am telling you this city is on a whole diff. level than any other city in the world its unheard of 12 yr old’s shooting and killing each other let alone a little girl but this is the norm here. Someone really needs to step in and do something it is just to dangerous day,nite don’t matter
May 15th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I was reading what Rocco had writtin’ about New Haven Connecticut. I also live in N.Y.C. but i have family in Bridgeport Connecticut and i try to visit them as much as i could since i live in the Bronx I just hop on the train and I am in Bridgeport in 10 min. Well the section in Bridgeport where my family lives is in the lower east side on Stratford ave and it is very wild and dangerous out there. Expecialy the housing projects that are near them P.T. and Marina Projects there’s thousands of drug dealers all sitting and hanging out on the walls that are outside the projects and also the live right near 5th ave as 50 cent calls it da bloody 5th. Bridgeport is under seige meaning that they are way,way under the provety line dead broke and it shows you drive threw the city and cars are on fire boarded up houses garbage all over the place people walking around wearing bullet proofe vests there’s actually a huge sign when you are about to drive into Bridgeport it say ”Welcome to da port good fuckin’ luck” from what i hear there is a 35% chance of being murdered when you go into Bridgeport. But Father Panic Village Projects that was the most dangerous housing project on the east coast its actually very famous being known as a highly notorious for murders drugs and being highly dangerous there is a broard way show about it a group of people from Virgina wrote and directing the play it is called ”the rise and fall of Father Panic Village” you can google all about it. So anyway yea Connecticut city’s are very poor,dangerous and wild. But there are very rich classy city’s also such as West Port,Greenwich that is actually a suburb of Manhatten. I just agree 100% with Rocco if you do not have to go to New Haven,Bridgeport,Hartford,Stamford or Norwalk do yourself the favor and stay far, far away and if you find yourself having to drive threw there drive fast with windows up doors locked and heads down so you don’t cetch a stray bullet cause bullets don’t have eye’s.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I am from Delaware and i Googled Father Panik Village Projects in BridgePort Connecticut it is sad and scary how dangerous and not to mention how these people how to live.. No wonder why it is the most Dangerous High-riser Housing Project in the east coast
It’s difficult to find a reference to Father Panik Village that doesn’t have the adjectives “notorious,” “crime-ridden” and “drug-infested” strung ominously alongside it. The name of Bridgeport’s former mammoth housing project conjures images that are the living nightmares of any city: crack dealers, prostitutes, heroin needles, broken windows–a blight of poverty seeping into surrounding neighborhoods, punctuated by the sound of exploding gunshot and wailing infants. That the 46-building affordable housing complex was built in 1939 as part of a nationwide effort to save the impoverished working class following the stock market crash and the Great Depression, as a place where parents might raise their children in dignity, grow vegetables out front and hang clothes on community lines until they could afford homes of their own, was all largely forgotten. The urban legend of Father Panik Village had consumed all else. The stories of the former residents, until now, had all but been snuffed out.
“I was inundated with people talking about the village,” says Pearl Dowell-Young, president and CEO of Hall Neighborhood House, a large, one-story brick settlement house whose employees worked alongside the former Father Panik residents in Bridgeport’s lower east side beginning in 1957. “We watched the village go from a nice place to live to a place that was demolished. We were there. We became a cornerstone of that community.”
In fact, Hall Neighborhood House provided Father Panik’s struggling residents with job training, college preparation and senior citizen services that the city should have, but didn’t. Still, the stories Dowell-Young heard from residents over her 28 years at Hall Neighborhood House did not resemble the bleak pictures presented in sensationalized headlines of shootings and gang violence. They were stories of resilience and survival. “It helped them have good self-esteem, even though the environment was very negative,” she says.
The public needed to hear the real-life narrative of the sixth-largest housing project in the nation, so some five years ago, Dowell-Young contacted PBS producer and playwright Ruth Sloane to capture the housing project’s oral histories. She, in turn, began a quest for collecting the fond and sometimes tragic remembrances of more than 50 people who called Father Panik home for a docudrama play infused with music and dance, called simply, Father Panik Village: The Untold Story . The Southern-bred Sloane has a passion for history, and the Father Panik story, for her, was a microcosm of the larger cultural shifts happening around the country post-Black Tuesday; it was real, honest, and, overall, uplifting.
When the housing project was first opened in 1940, it was called Yellow Mill Village, and monthly rent averaged $19, a fee that included “light, heat and janitor service,” according to the old Bridgeport Times-Star. Later, the property was renamed for Rev. Stephen J. Panik of Saints Cyril and Methodius Church, the first chairman of the Bridgeport Housing Authority under Bridgeport’s 24-year-running Socialist mayor, Jasper McLevy. While the name “Panik” would in later years elicit a certain knowing chuckle due to its association with crime and degradation, in the early years Father Panik, the man, was associated with civic action in a way few clergymen are.
“No sermon is more effective than to take poor people out of dirt and filth and place them into sunshine,” the Reverend is quoted as saying in a 1938 Bridgeport Post article. “Give them a little park and a little playground for their children and you have done more to increase their faith in mankind than all the sympathy and relief that is paid from each of our pockets with no appreciable results.”
When Alfredo Ribot’s family, with eight children, moved to Father Panik in 1950 from a cramped attic apartment on Coleman Street, they couldn’t believe their good fortune.
“When we first moved in it was a beautiful, beautiful place,” he says. “We had a vegetable garden and a fruit garden in front of our building. Each tenant had a little plot. And there was grass… there were many elderly in our building, building 44, which is right on Pembroke Street. Because we were a large family, we got a penthouse apartment, which had two floors there were three bedrooms on the second floor, we had two bathrooms, it was great. I loved it. We really were happy as children.”
The Ribot’s were the first Latino family in Father Panik, and lived there for 22 years, many of which were spent surrounded by the protective innocence of stickball games, marble tournaments, hitchhiking across the rickety wooden bridge to Pleasure Beach amusement park to spend pennies on cotton candy and carousel rides and delivering newspapers door-to-door. The community he describes is one in which the police were friendly helpers who encouraged good behavior, and even made it possible for Ribot to save some money.
“We had the Police Athletic League, a community based, police-community relations situation,” Ribot, who is now 60, says. “In one of the apartments there, we had a meeting place where we would go and they basically worked with the kids. We got a shoeshine box, and were assigned a strategic corner every week, and we’d shine shoes and the cops would come by and pick up the money and deposit it in our savings account. It was a great thing; I remember saving quite a bit of money that way.”
At 9:30 p.m., one officer known as “Al the Cop” would patrol all the buildings, reminding the kids of the 10 p.m. curfew. By that hour, says Ribot, “you could walk through there and it would be deserted.”
A couple former Father Panik Village residents, 62-year-old Bert Ortiz and 59-year-old Dewey Barnett, now work at the Fairfield Post Office on Commerce Drive and recall a similar age of innocence in the housing project’s early years. “It was crime-free,” says Ortiz, whose family moved from Puerto Rico in 1949, and moved into Father Panik in the late ’50s. “You could leave your windows open.”
“People were a lot friendlier,” Barnett agrees, “they might take a week and scrub the hallways, keep it clean. People looked out for each other.”
“It wasn’t an ‘I’ attitude,” Ortiz says. “It was we.’”
Sloane, who has researched the lives of the residents extensively, recognized Father Panik as, initially, a place of great opportunity. There was no stigma associated with living in public housing at that time.
“The president [Franklin D. Roosevelt] was giving people a place to live that was decent, clean, with a beautiful exterior, flowers and trees. Most people understood it was an opportunity to bring their lives together and move out, not a place to stay 50 years.”
For many, moving into cities like Bridgeport for the industrial and mill jobs from rural, segregated Southern areas, a place like Father Panik Village also represented a cultural melting pot the likes of which they’d never experienced. “It was an opportunity to learn and share each other’s culture,” Sloane says. “That opportunity hadn’t presented itself before.”
But as the cultural makeup of Father Panik started to change, there were clashes. Some of the families, as Ribot recalls, dwarfed his eight-children family, with one family, the Blackwells, having as many as 16 kids.
“They were huge, huge families,” he says. “With all the children, the misbehavior started.” He remembers that the Southern families, too, had different standards. “I loved going to their homes and eating their food,” Ribot says, “but they were basically rural individuals, so their sense of things was somewhat different they tended to do things that were not that acceptable, like repair cars in the yard. That kind of took away from the aesthetics of the place.”
During the 1960s, violent incidents were already beginning to erupt in the once-quiet village courtyards. According to early Connecticut Post articles, a policeman fired a warning shot into a large crowd there while investigating a broken window, and was later arrested for beating two unarmed men with his blackjack. Five men were arrested at the village for stoning a police officer in a 1963 incident. Three of the four Bridgeport slayings that year happened in the housing project. By 1968, there were articles detailing another clash with police, in which approximately 50 young people threw “rocks, bottle and firebombs at police and passersby” during a two-night spate of violence. Youth gangs had taken the place of stickball leagues, and “Al the Cop” wouldn’t be able to usher them home to bed at night.
While the initial impetus for projects like Father Panik–to provide clean, attractive, affordable, transient dwellings for working-class families–was noble, the cost of removing problem tenants, maintaining the landscaping and repairing windows, pipes and elevators taxed the city’s good will. It was cheaper, and easier, to pave over the grass, take down the community clotheslines and let the whole complex fall into disrepair. What once resembled a park, with trees and fields and flowers, had become a wasteland.
“The mid- to latter-’60s is when the gangs started and the violence started,” says Ribot. “It was Father Panik against P.T. Barnum [another city housing project]. And the gangs would visit each other, it was just a horrible thing. Pot and drinking and all that started, where the kids really started becoming destructive.”
The stories from those years are filled with despair, of residents afraid to leave their buildings for fear of being shot. By the ’80s, four buildings came to be known as “The Hole,” a constant hive of drug dealing and shoot-outs. Alfonzia Booker, the project’s superintendent at the time, related to the Hartford Courant that children as young as 10 were selling marijuana and cocaine in parts of Father Panik. Poor residents who wanted a better life but couldn’t afford one were trapped in conditions so miserable they eventually filed a class action lawsuit against the Bridgeport Housing Authority in 1987. They spoke of filthy hallways, lack of hot water, mice and fleas, junkies shooting up in the hallways and drug dealers taking over dozens of apartments that the Bridgeport Housing Authority kept vacant, allowing them to deteriorate to such deplorable levels that they would have to be demolished.
“These were people who suffered the social ills of an overpopulated environment,” Sloane says. “There was no social service. If a family was burned out of their home, there was no one to help. Hall Neighborhood House really gave them a place to learn, to become upwardly mobile.”
At Hall House, where Dowell-Young witnessed the deterioration of the housing project firsthand, she, too, points to a lack of social services and maintenance of the property as fundamental problems. “This area mirrored the rest of America,” she says. “There was blight, it wasn’t safe, and they lacked the access to services that others had. The dwellings deteriorated and there were basic concerns about human needs and quality of life.”
While the increasingly miserable conditions fit the mold of public housing problems nationwide in cities like Chicago and Atlanta, what struck Sloane throughout her research-gathering was the resilience of the residents who called Father Panik home, their ability to survive and hang onto hope.
“It was one of the most violent high-rises on the East Coast,” Sloane said. “But I discovered that they were very spiritual people. There were drug addicts who refused to let kids going to college participate [in drug activities]. I ran into a genius population–math teachers, science teachers–who were poor. These stories are not told, the quiet people there the girls who went to college and became social workers.”
Oftentimes, the residents’ stories intersected, and from these Sloane wrote characters for her play that represented composites of various individuals. Using 11 principal characters and many secondary ones, she wrote the play as a series of moments, with dance and music fusing those moments together. Father Panik Village: The Untold Story opens in 1933, following the collapse of the banking system. As Yellow Mill Village becomes Father Panik Village, the audience will hear B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone,” as actors stroll the stage, talking about how alive and vibrant their community was. A renowned Colorado-based choreographer, Cleo Parker Robinson, has crafted the dance portions of the play, allowing for fluidity and natural movement.
“Music and dance are part of the life of a plot,” says Sloane. “They are a well-integrated part of the whole.”
The dance will help to tell of the cultural experience of the project residents, as in the African dance piece “Harambee Fiesta,” which suggests working together in a celebratory moment, and one about healing that Sloane says is a tribute to those children who drowned in the Yellow Mill River in their attempts to run across the ice, or build a boat out of a box.
The play, she says, “will move into a darker reality, but even in that reality, people had faith and succeeded over and above the odds.”
Every year, former residents of Father Panik Village meet for reunions near the Yellow Mill River or at Seaside Park or the Holiday Inn, flying in from California, Georgia and Puerto Rico, connected via the Web and the East Enders Alumni Association in Bridgeport. The sense of family and friendship they found among those 46 brick buildings has been a constant sense of comfort throughout their lives.
“It was a camaraderie there, that has lasted through today,” says Barnett. “How many times do you hear about a place that got torn down having reunions every year?”
Where Father Panik Village once rose in high-rises across 40 acres of Bridgeport’s East End, there now stand contemporary capes and colonials with brightly colored vinyl siding. Each fits on an orderly, treeless plot of land. A nearby forlorn-looking playground is vacant on a winter day. The modern, suburban-looking stretch overlooking the icy gray river seems to hold no memory of the vibrant community of people that once gathered outside playing games and listening to doo-wop, hanging their laundry and sleeping outside on humid summer nights.
By 1993, the last of Father Panik’s residents–some 300 families, down from the 5,000 who once lived in the complex–faced relocation. An expensive demolition followed, and then a federal investigation that netted not only the city’s Mayor Joe Ganim but also the developers Alfred Lenoci Sr. and Jr., who were to be awarded the contract for rebuilding the site. What began as an urban initiative to counteract slums ended with a city becoming one of the nation’s worst slumlords, and the perception of housing projects as a place of fear, neglect and mismanagement. Perhaps, onstage, Sloane will help reshape the themes of that story, reflecting not only the hard struggles experienced by former residents of Father Panik Village, but also, more importantly, their enduring pride.
May 25th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
first Who da f#$k is dis cat talkin bout credit reports leave that sh** for da birds look man iam for da lou saint louis yall know bout us alot of yall probably dont even live in the hood to understand what really goes on and why s$^t happens most cat tv gangstas anyway and wont last a day in da lou or nowhere real for da matter so come test it an den talk
June 15th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
June 15th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
in the hood of las vegas westside corner of h st. and lake mead blvd…pimps, gangs, hos, drug addicts, and poverty. follow larontae “montana” johnson and see what life is like “in back of the strip” where the casino lights dont shine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn4fEYHMJNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSxWGloW2o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5WIddPshOg
July 11th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
MARYLAND WOW
damn we cumn up
AYe dc should be on dere
November 13th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Im from Karolina South and i have to say that i knew it was a matter of time cuz they whoop some ass out here and i know cuz i had to pay back 5 stacks for breaking a security guards face and that shit wasn’t cool but from what i had heard he really needed his face fixed, dude was one of those ass-hole types that thought he was untouchable now i wasnt looking to fight this dude but when its 4 against 2 somebody going to get hit and it wasn’t going to be me….Come to think about it thats why our clubs dont stay open long around here and i mean in the upstate around I-85 don’t come around here and act up niggas don’t play round here.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:31 am
AYY Jacksonville be gettin off
everybody robbin it cut throat
we gettin big fuck wit us
free boosie n gucci