Silence Greets Queens Park Crime Wave

At 1,255 acres, Flushing Meadows- Corona Park is the second largest park in New York City, exceeded in size only by Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx. And while other parks can be found throughout Queens, for the two million people who live in the borough, Flushing Meadows- Corona Park is their unofficial back yard.

As is the case with the other parks in the city, the grassy swaths and forest thickets, the lakes and meadows for which Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is named are the scene of problems as well as pleasures. The latest such problem- to use the term lightly- is a crime spree that began November 20 and ended Friday, January 5 with the arrest of three teenagers- a fourth is still being sought. The crimes include a murder by machete and a Christmas Day assault so vicious its victim is still comatose and, indeed, may never recover. At least 10 other knifepoint robberies were committed by at least two of the suspects, both 17 years old; police were able to charge a 19-year-old with only one of four assaults because in only that one case was the victim known.

In our book, a crime wave with 10 known robbery victims, a comatose assault victim and a murdered man whose body was found in a lake the day after his killing certainly ranks as major news. And while it is a truism that news is seldom recognized as such while it is happening, after the third or fourth assault it should have been apparent that some sort of a pattern was beginning to develop. It is a sad fact of life that parks are far from being completely crimefree, but a sudden spurt in assaults, all of which happened after dark, should have rung alarm bells in several places, including newsrooms.

For the most part, however, until the Christmas Day attack which left Jae Woo Park comatose, little attention was paid to the crime statistics for Flushing Meadows- Corona Park. Not even the murder of Carlos Flores, whose body surfaced the day after his murderer dumped it in Meadow Lake, drew much notice. The news for the most part seemed to be greeted with a universal shrug.

Ten years ago, in 1997, a homeless man was killed and his body dumped in a lake in Manhattan's Central Park. The cries of outrage were audible throughout the tri-state area, as they should have been. The murder was a vicious act and deserved the opprobrium it received. However, the murder of Flores, a 44-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant, for $6 and a MetroCard, seems to us equally heinous and equally deserving of the kind of hue and cry attendant on such a crime in Midtown Manhattan.

Any kind of incident that happens in Central Park is almost certain to be considered front page news. This is all well and good. Our parks will become safe places that everyone can enjoy only if the collective voice of righteous indignation is raised whenever and wherever something happens. We must, however, point out that in this respect, all parks, apparently, are not created equal. Fourteen robberies, a vicious beating and a murder in Central Park would have sent a wave of indignation throughout the city. We don't recall anything much happening after Flores' murder or Park's assault. The unpleasant but logical, only conclusion possible is that in some quarters, what happens in this borough doesn't count for much.

Queens is a part of the city of New York, and so is Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It's about time some media outlets- and even some people in fairly high places- recognized that fact.