A COMPLICATED DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

• Author: Farsad, Negin
• Position: HEMMING AND HAWING

I live in a great neighborhood in New York City. It's the kind of neighborhood where you'll hear impromptu jazz in the park, where fireflies light the summer nights, where a Frank Sinatra impersonator sings on the rooftop of a church, where you can find cuisine from Indian to Ethiopian to Greek, and where in some places dessert is the main course.

You can buy vinyl, you can buy Japanese stationery, you can buy 1990s-inspired tank tops. You can overhear conversations about breakups, shitty coworkers, and how someone's mom doesn't know how to use her smartphone.

The people are young and old, they're Black and white, they're Chinese and Mexican, and maybe seventy-five other nationalities and ethnicities. It's Manhattan. It's got everything.

But the advent of COVID-19 has brought to New York, as to other urban cities, something new and troubling. To call it a criminal element makes me sound like some kind of be-khaki'd suburban mom who's suspicious of the neighbors and is probably a racist. So I'm not sure what to call it.

I've been living here for more than a decade, and I've never seen it before. There's more graffiti, more garbage strewn about, and a boom (pun intended) in the use of illegal fireworks. Those are to be expected when you're in a pandemic. What else is there for people to do? I get it.

But I've also seen straight-up drug deals. My husband has kindly asked a couple of people smoking meth in broad daylight to clear the path. And I've watched as street chatter has turned into a real fight.

Do we call the cops? Is it weird to call the cops but also want to see their budgets shrink? What's the right approach? I don't know.

There are Black and brown and white people who do crime-adjacent things who are not criminals. I want to recognize the institutional forces that have impacted their lives. I want things to be handled delicately and with sensitivity. I want justice to be meted out fairly. I don't want bail to determine whether someone withers away in jail. I want social services for social problems. I want to know what number to dial if it's not 911. I want to be a...