By Joseph Goldstein & J. David Goodman, New York Times, Sept. 18/19, 2013

[....] The show of police force in Brownsville reflects a broad shift in the New York Police Department’s strategy for combating gun violence. The stop-and-frisk tactic, once the linchpin of the police’s efforts to get guns off the streets, is in a steep decline; it has been rejected by the City Council, a federal judge and, most recently, the Democratic voters who supported the mayoral candidacy of Bill de Blasio, an outspoken critic of the tactic.

In its place, the department has focused on those responsible for much of the city’s violent crime: youth gangs, known as crews or sets. And while the new strategy has raised some objections, including privacy concerns, it has also garnered support from the stop-and-frisk tactic’s greatest critics.

As crime in New York continues to decline, violence by youth gangs has grown more pronounced: 30 percent of all shootings in recent years were related to crews, the department found.

Compared with gangs like the Bloods or the Crips, crews are more informal groups of teenagers and young men who are organized geographically [....]