“Don’t ask me no questions. N***a, I don’t know you. I got a gun on me, so I suggest you do stop talking to me.”
Tough words coming from a young, redheaded white kid. While he threatened me, he dug around underneath his sweatshirt near his waistband, as if reaching for a gun. He never did produce it. Hopefully he didn’t have one, but you can never be sure, and this antisocial exchange only goes to demonstrate just how complicated it can be to navigate the divide between the haves and the have-nots, relatively speaking, here in Kingston, in the year of our Lord, 2025 — at least if you’re a reporter.
It was Oct. 5 around 2 p.m., and the sun was shining down out of a clear blue sky. It had become clear that the “spike in crime” the newspapers had been reporting was overblown. A 19-year-old was stabbed in August, but the man who stabbed him was almost immediately taken into police custody. The gunshot reported in September ended up being traced to a man with a shotgun who shot himself in the foot. And as for the 18-year-old who was stabbed in the thigh, also in September, according to Deputy Chief of Police in Kingston Ricky Negron, while the investigation is ongoing, all signs point toward the activity of juveniles — that is, hotheaded young men whose behavior isn’t organized enough to qualify as organized criminal activity.
Still, the perception that dangerous people are congregating along the Midtown Linear Parkway and over on Broadway Avenue is real enough that the Kingston Police Department sent officers out to walk the avenue — an approachable demonstration of the police presence to ease concerns that residents in the area may have.
“Lieutenant Burkert and I met with the sheriff’s office detail,” said Negron, “as well as our walking patrol that we have in that area, because we’re trying to create an atmosphere where people know they can look for an officer instead of having to call for one.”
The balance he says the force is trying to strike is to avoid causing people to feel that they’re being over-policed.
“Which is a balancing act that we deal with every single day. We’re looking to create or foster a relationship with the community that they know that they can come speak to the officers and that it’s not just an enforcement action.”
Negron describes the intention as community policing meets procedural justice — he says to mean that people understand why the police are there.
“And when officers are talking to the folks, we want them to understand that they can talk to us and that we can talk back to them.”
Which sounds very much like the old way, where the police officer in the city walks his beat.
And that’s why they like to have the police cars prominent.
“Not necessarily being an enforcement, but maybe a deterrent, that’s important to us. It goes back to the basic principles of Sir Robert Peel — basically the father of modern-day policing.”
After I extricated myself from the situation with the aggressive youngster, a block later two men sitting up against a fence seemed likely subjects for an interview. Only as I approached, one began rocking back and forth, and the other shouted, “N***a, you die tonight!”
He wasn’t shouting at me, just shouting at someone in his memory. I passed on.
The problem with reporting these exchanges is that it leaves one open to the critique that one is intending to exploit the subjects for money or attention. Their lives are complicated, and they are suffering in public, and they deserve the dignity of privacy which they cannot afford. Unfortunately, at times, reality is sordid. To pretend otherwise is to present things less authentically than they are. But not everyone responded with threats.
Marcus, white, somewhere in his 40s, is on the losing side of the status quo. Homeless, he says he currently sleeps at the Darmstadt Shelter over at 40 Thomas St. Bad luck seems to have dazed him, but frequently hanging out on the linear park, he doesn’t feel particularly unsafe.
But like he says, “I think it’s different for women, you know? It’s a shady trail. There’s a lot of ‘activity’ on that trail. Everybody knows that. But they don’t really bother me. But I’m a tall guy. I’m on my bike. So I don’t really notice it. I never get hustled or anything.”
Asked what he’s trying to do in life, he answers, “I’m trying to get free in society. You know. Everything’s politics. If you’re not on the right side, you know? This is New York. It’s been a really rough track.”
Like everyone, Marcus needs four walls and a roof. Like everyone, he’s found the rental apartment market challenging.
“Landlords are completely discriminatory,” he alleges. “They got the money, so they got the power. We wrestle with the rulers and powers of the world. Wickedness in high places. Yeah, that’s exactly what my life has been.”
Off the linear park, over at the Radio Kingston park on Broadway Avenue, the day feels more peaceful. There are groups of people sitting at various tables, taking advantage of the shade cast by the umbrellas. Most are homeless. When the park was built, it was intended to be a safe space for everyone in the community, regardless of the amount of property they owned. But there is a park steward present, employed to make sure the rules of the park are obeyed. No drugs. No drinking. If someone tries to light a cigarette, they are shooed out to smoke their cigarette at the curb.
Two men sit at a table speaking quietly when I approach. One of them, Roger — white, with thinning hair — is game for conversation. The other man stares away down the street while we talk. Roger, who’s been homeless for the last four months, says it’s impossible to find an apartment.
“It’s no good. No. It’s hard because of the income. They want three checks from you all at once. It’s hard to do it.”
Like Marcus, Roger doesn’t feel that the area is particularly dangerous, but he understands the perception of others who see it that way.
“I guess because of the drugs and everything that goes on on these streets over here. Crack. Weed. Drinking. You know. You’ll find a drug addict, you’ll find alcohol people. They hang around here a lot, but they don’t hang out in this park.”
Roger admits he does feel bothered by the police presence.
“Yeah, you can’t have no open containers. You can’t smoke no weed. You can’t do nothing.”
Roger says the police recently took him down to the station because he was drinking in public, just long enough for booking, and then set him free again.
“The last week, they said that they busted down, and now they’re taking people … they took me to the county jail for two hours.”
If there is a common characteristic shared among those gathered under the umbrellas, it is the hard living written on their faces. The effects of homelessness on the mind and on health, as study after study proves, are dramatic. Stress, anxiety and uncertainty all take their toll, and the symptoms of PTSD are plain. Living on the streets for even a couple of weeks can lead to symptoms that resemble schizophrenia.
Rachel Estes, 47, white, homeless, with boyfriend, objects to the way she’s been treated by the cops.
“This one cop,” she alleges, “every time he sees my boyfriend he calls him a crackhead. He tells him go smoke your crack. Go sell your crack. They shouldn’t be treating somebody like that. Yeah, and there’s another cop, I don’t know his name. Heavyset. White. Mustache. And you’ll never believe what he said to my boyfriend,” she alleges. “He said, ‘Go home, Winchell. Oh, that’s right, you don’t got one to go home to.’”
Park steward for the day: Maurice Wood, young, black, with tattoos on his face. Once he realizes I’m conducting interviews in the park, he comes over to express concern.
“Because people come over here, they already have their own opinions of what’s going on over here,” Wood says. “They think this is where a bunch of losers hang out. And this is where crime happens. But guess what? No crimes happen right here in this park. But as far as people selling drugs here, doing drugs here, hurting people here, no one comes here and does that.”
Wood believes that the perception in the community that crime is rising is a result of social media.
“Things are getting better,” Wood says. “I mean, it’s just that there’s more cellphones now. There’s more platforms for people to judge other people now. If somebody shoots themselves over on that street over there, it’s Radio Kingston. If somebody runs from the cops, and gets arrested in this park, Radio Kingston gets the blame for it. That’s bulls**t. People don’t talk about the lives we’ve saved here.”
Since Wood has been park steward — about a year, he estimates — he knows of two people who overdosed in the bathroom. Neither one died.
“There’s a homelessness epidemic that Kingston has never seen before,” says Wood. “I’ve never seen this many homeless people in my life. It’s at a crazy scale.”
Wood himself has been homeless at one time in his life.
“Of course I have,” Wood says. “But I was able to get this life back on track, because I wanted help. And I did what I had to do. You can’t want help and still want to do bad things and still be destructive to yourself. You’ve got to address your mental health. You’ve got to address your substance abuse issues. You’ve got to address the toxic things that are going on in your life. If you don’t fix those things, you can’t get housing. You literally cannot help somebody unless they want to help themselves.”
When Rachel’s boyfriend arrives, he appears agitated. And it becomes clear he doesn’t want to be interviewed.
“We’re homeless,” he said. “We’re trying to find our way. We can’t provide for you right now.”
Mickey, white, in his 50s, is not homeless. He says he’s been hanging out at the Radio Kingston park for about a year. He appreciates having the police around but also notes he doesn’t find the area particularly dangerous.
“I’m not down here at night too often,” Mickey allows, “but even where I’ve been down here at night, I’ve never had any real problem. And the cops have only been around for about a week. So I’ve never felt intimidated and so on and so forth.”
When you get down to it, Mickey agrees, what the fear represents is that the haves are afraid of the have-nots.
“But I like having the police presence. It’s good. I mean, they’re doing their job. Everything would be chaotic if you didn’t have police. Anybody who’s completely anti-cop is nuts.”
According to locals who remember the bad decades after the IBM plant closed, crime in Kingston can very much be a concern. Then, like now, poverty and substance addiction issues will be the driver, and the lack of sufficient mental health services.
Put another way, a systemic societal lack of empathy gives birth to its own monsters, and the police are then tasked with locking them up — after they’ve done something unforgivable.
Asked whether he gets tired of the rat race, whether he could see himself tiring of winter or the scene on Broadway Avenue and trading in Kingston for a beach somewhere, Mickey laughs.
“Would I go on my yacht? Yeah.”
Statistics for incidents of violent crimes in Kingston made available by the State Division of Criminal Justice Services show that 83 incidents of violent crimes were committed in 2024, up from 57 in 2023.
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