Violence on the upswing in Riverdale/Kingsbridge

1993

Troubled schools

There was little, it seemed, to be celebrated in the city or the Riverdale/Kingsbridge area in 1993. Classrooms remained crowded and crime grew. Children brought guns into school. A sub-machine gun was found at MS 143, and the student who carried it claimed that he brought it in only to keep it out of his sister’s hands.

Another student was shot as he tried to enter the lobby of John F. Kennedy High School.

People were so worried about the direction the local area was heading that a front-page article in The Press on March 4 asked the question “Do fires spell doom?” Fire trucks were being called out so often that there was concern Riverdale could soon become the burnt out South Bronx.

Adding to the gloom, accusations of corruption on the District 10 school board made headlines nearly every week, raising questions of favoritism, patronage and kickbacks in the hiring of principals and for other posts in the school system. Local schools were also found to have asbestos in classrooms, forcing many to close during abatement and leading to even greater overcrowding.

What would eventually become the Croton Water Filtration Plant was first proposed in 1993. There was a push to place it at the Jerome Park Reservoir, but opposition to the plan began within days, with local residents questioning both the need for the plant and its location in such a scenic open space.

At the end of the year, longtime Assemblyman Oliver Koppell was appointed as the state’s attorney general to finish out the term of Robert Abrams, who had resigned.