The city’s smallest borough has a big crime problem.
Murders on Staten Island this year have skyrocketed 125% (9 from 4); while rape is up 60% (16 from 10); robberies 42% (128 from 82), burglaries 33% (149 from 112), and felony assaults 30% (390 from 299), NYPD data shows.
Overall, major crimes are up 20% and every category is headed in the wrong direction, far surpassing the next-worse borough, the Bronx, which has seen crime rise 6%.
On Thursday a Staten Island family buried 13-year-old Jamoure Harrell, who was fatally shot May 19 while playing basketball in a Stapleton schoolyard.
Harrell’s death rocked the borough, which is known as a bedroom community for cops and usually boasts the city’s lowest crime rate.
He was collateral damage in a turf war between rival gangs, with a .40-caliber bullet striking the innocent teen as he sat with friends inside Rev. Dr. Maggie Howard Playground, near NYCHA’s Stapleton Houses, according to cops.
The alleged shooter, a 16-year-old boy whose name was not released, was picked up by US Marshals four days later.
Stylist Bousso Babou is “still stressed out” about the August 2021 shooting at her Brighton Heights salon that left two innocent bystanders — one of them a 17-year-old girl — wounded.
Babou was in the shop when two men fired the shots from the street.
The alleged gunman was arrested last month.
“Even now I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it,” the mother of two told The Post.
Former prosecutor and veteran defense attorney Mark Fonte — who has tried many cases on Staten Island — said the fentanyl scourge, homelessness, and an influx of “out of county individuals” who feel emboldened by the city’s “Democratic progressive policies” are fueling the borough’s ballooning crime stats.
“We wish we were the forgotten borough when it comes to crime,” he said. “Crime on Staten Island traditionally was limited to certain areas of the borough. It is now from the North Shore to the South Shore and everywhere in between.”
The stats back him up.
Major crimes on the island’s North Shore 120th Precinct are up 39% this year and the Mid-Island’s 122nd Precinct has witnessed a 49% spike, including a 121% rise in felony assaults (84 from 38).
The traditionally sleepy 123rd Precinct on the South Shore has also witnessed an 18% hike in major crimes.
Major crime is down 15% in the 121st Precinct, which serves the northwestern part of the borough.