title: European dragon

text: During the early Middle Ages, European culture was largely out of contact with classical literature for centuries. During this time there was a gradual change in the usual mental image of the "dragon", i.e. the Latin "draco" and its equivalents in vernacular languages, which occurred in oral and written literature, including in classical literature. This led to the depiction in this literature of "modern-type" dragons, whose features are described below.


title: European dragon

text: The modern western image of a dragon developed in western Europe during the Middle Ages through the combination of the snakelike dragons of classical Graeco-Roman literature, references to Near Eastern European dragons preserved in the Bible, and western European folk traditions including descriptions and drawings of animals named as types of snakes but inaccurately drawn with wings and/or legs. The period between the 11th and 13th centuries represents the height of European interest in dragons as living creatures.


title: European dragon

text: Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body more like a huge lizard, or a snake with two pairs of lizard-type legs, and breathing fire from their mouths. This traces back to the continental dragon, commonly referred to as a fire-breathing dragon. The continental, like many other European dragons, has bat-like wings growing from its back.


title: European dragon

text: The Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" refers to a dragon as a "draca" and also as a "wyrm" (worm, or serpent). Its movements are denoted by the Anglo-Saxon verb "bugan", "to bend", and it is said to have a venomous bite, and poisonous breath; all of these indicate a snake-like form and movement rather than with a lizard-like or dinosaur-like body as in later depictions, and no legs or wings are mentioned (although it is able to fly); however it shows several dragon features that later became popular: it breathed fire, flew, lived underground, and collected treasure.


title: European dragon

text: The Ramsund carving from Viking-age Sweden, around 1030, depicts events related in the Old Norse Völsunga saga about the hero Sigurd. It shows the dragon Fafnir as a big and very long wingless snake, drawn rather fancifully, surrounding the scene.


title: European dragon

text: An early image of a "modern-style" western dragon appears in a hand-painted illustration from the bestiary "MS Harley 3244", which was produced in around 1260. This dragon has two sets of wings and two sets of legs to go with them, and its tail is longer than most modern depictions of dragons, but it clearly displays many of the same distinctive features. Otherwise four-legged dragons are not seen until the fifteenth century, for instance in Lambeth Palace Library MS 6, depicting the fight between a white and a red dragon from Arthurian legend.


title: European dragon

text: Dragons are generally depicted as having an underground lair or cave, or living in rivers. They are envisioned as greedy and gluttonous, with voracious appetites. Dragons are often identified with Satan, due to the references to Satan as a "dragon" in the Book of Revelation.


title: European dragon

text: In Western folklore, dragon-like creatures and dragons in Christian literature are usually portrayed as evil, except mainly in Asturian and Welsh folklore and modern fiction. In the modern period and late medieval times, the European dragon is typically depicted as a huge fire-breathing, scaly, and horned lizard-like creature, with wings (usually leathery bat-like, sometimes feathered), two or four legs, and a long muscular tail. It is sometimes shown with one or more of a crest, a fiery mane, ivory spikes running down its spine, and various exotic colorations. Dragon's blood often has magical properties. The typical dragon protects a cavern or castle filled with gold and treasure and is often associated with a great hero who tries to slay it. Though a winged creature, the dragon is generally to be found in its underground lair, a cave that identifies it as an ancient creature of earth.


title: European dragon

text: The 12th-century Welsh monk Geoffrey of Monmouth recounts a famous legend in his "Historia Regum Britanniae" in which the child prophet Merlin witnesses the Romano-Celtic warlord Vortigern attempting to build a tower on Mount Snowdon to keep safe from the Anglo-Saxons, but the tower keeps being swallowed into the ground. Merlin informs Vortigern that underneath the foundation he has built is a pool with two dragons sleeping in it. Vortigern orders the pool to be drained, exposing a red dragon and a white dragon, who immediately begin fighting. Merlin delivers a prophecy that the white dragon will triumph over the red, symbolizing England's conquest of Wales, but declares that the red dragon will eventually return and defeat the white one. This story remained popular throughout the 15th century.


title: European dragon

text: The 13th-century "Golden Legend", written in Latin, records the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch, a virgin martyr who, after being tortured for her faith in the Diocletianic Persecution and thrown back into her cell, is said to have been confronted by a monstrous dragon, but she made the sign of the cross and the dragon vanished. In some versions of the story, she is swallowed by the dragon alive and, after making the sign of the cross in the dragon's stomach, emerges unharmed - or in another version, after a physical cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards.


title: European dragon

text: Fantastic stories were invented in the Middle Ages to explain gargoyles used as waterspouts on buildings. One medieval French legend holds that, in ancient times, a fearsome dragon known as "La Gargouille" had been causing floods and sinking ships on the river Seine, so the people of the town of Rouen would offer the dragon a human sacrifice once each year to appease its hunger. Then, in around 600 AD, a priest named Romanus promised that, if the people would build a church, he would rid them of the dragon. Romanus slew the dragon and its severed head was mounted on the walls of the city as the first gargoyle.


title: European dragon

text: The Christian Saint George had a tale of slaying a dragon and saving a princess. While this story is pre-Christian, Saint George is what made it popular. The actual Saint George died in 303 A.D.. His story is about taming and slaying a dragon that demanded a sheep and a human virgin sacrifice every day. When the dragon went to eat the princess, Saint George stabbed the beast with his lance and subdued it by making the sign of the cross and tying the princess's girdle around its neck. Saint George and the princess led the now docile dragon into the town and George promised to kill it if the townspeople would convert to Christianity. All the townspeople converted and Saint George killed the dragon with his sword. The narrative was first set in Cappadocia in the earliest sources of the 11th and 12th centuries. The later 13th-century "Golden Legend" transferred the setting to Libya.


title: European dragon

text: Dragons are prominent in medieval heraldry. Uther Pendragon was famously said to have had two gold dragons crowned with red standing back-to-back on his royal coat of arms. Originally, heraldic dragons could have any number of legs, but, by the late Middle Ages, due to the widespread proliferation of bestiaries, heraldry began to distinguish between a "dragon" (with four legs) and a "wyvern" (with two legs). In myths, wyverns are associated with viciousness, envy, and pestilence, but in heraldry, they symbolise the overthrowing of the tyranny of Satan and his demonic forces. Late medieval heraldry also distinguished a dragon-like creature known as a "cockatrice". A cockatrice is supposedly born when a serpent hatches an egg that has been laid on a dunghill by a rooster, and it is so venomous that its breath and its gaze are both lethal to any living creature, except for a weasel, which is the cockatrice's mortal enemy. A "basilisk" is a serpent with the head of a dragon at the end of its tail that is born when a toad hatches an egg that has been laid in a midden by a nine-year-old cockatrice. Like the cockatrice, its glare is said to be deadly.


title: European dragon

text: The legend of Saint George and the Dragon is recorded as early as the sixth century AD, but the earliest artistic representations of it come from the 11th century and the first full account of it comes from an 11th-century Georgian text. The most famous version of the story from the "Golden Legend" holds that a dragon kept pillaging the sheep of the town of Silene in Libya. After it ate a young shepherd, the people were forced to placate it by leaving two sheep as sacrificial offerings every morning beside the lake where the dragon lived. Eventually, the dragon ate all of the sheep and the people were forced to start offering it their own children. One day, the king's own daughter came up in the lottery and, despite the king's pleas for her life, she was dressed as a bride and chained to a rock beside the lake to be eaten. Then Saint George arrived and saw the princess. When the dragon arrived to eat her, he stabbed it with his lance and subdued it by making the sign of the cross and tying the princess's girdle around its neck. Saint George and the princess led the now docile dragon into the town and George promised to kill it if the townspeople would convert to Christianity. All the townspeople converted and Saint George killed the dragon with his sword. In some versions, Saint George marries the princess, but, in others, he continues wandering.


title: European dragon

text: In Scandinavian and continental Germanic folklore, the lindworm is a legendary creature that resembles a wingless dragon or serpent. The most famous lindworm in Norse and Germanic mythology is Fafnir. The Germanic stories of lindworms have them guarding a treasure hoard. The lindworm Fafnir guarded earthen mounds full of ancient treasure. The treasure was cursed and brought ill to those who later possessed it.


title: European dragon

text: Sea serpents are also called orms in Nordic languages, wyrms in Old English and worms in Middle English.


title: European dragon

text: These "dragons" are usually evil, much like dragon-like creatures of Greece and other dragons of Continental Europe; however, there are exceptions, and many do not want to go to battle unless they feel threatened. These serpents are limbless and wingless. The most famous sea serpent in Norse mythology is Jörmungandr, who is actually the child of Angrboða and the Norse god Loki, who will one day kill and be killed by Thor, Norse god of thunder.


title: European dragon

text: The red dragon features on, and is the name of, the national flag of Wales ("Y Ddraig Goch", "the red dragon"). The symbol may originate in Arthurian legend, or more likely from the Celtic dragon god Dewi (not to be confused with Saint David). Employed by Gwrtheyrn, Merlin tells of a vision of the red dragon (representing the Britons) and the white dragon (representing the invading Saxons) fighting beneath Dinas Emrys. This particular legend also features in the Mabinogion in the story of "Lludd and Llefelys".


title: European dragon

text: The dragon was used as a predominant symbol of Welsh leaders throughout history, such as Owain Glyndŵr and Henry VII of England.


title: European dragon

text: It is said that a very old snake can transform into an ala. Some depictions of alas are confusingly said to have the bodies of women. Other alas look like dragons. The number of heads on an ala may vary. Alas are enemies of the zmeys and it is sometimes said in south Slavic folklore that thunder is a product of alas and zmeys fighting. Alas are considered evil or malevolent, while zmeys are usually considered good or benevolent.


title: European dragon

text: Dragon-like creatures of Slavic mythology hold mixed temperaments towards humans. For example, Drakons (дракон, змей, ламя, (х)ала; dracon, zmey, lamya, ala) in Bulgarian mythology are either male or female, and each gender has a different view of mankind. The female dragon and male dragon, often seen as sister and brother, represent different forces of agriculture. The female dragon represents harsh weather and is the destroyer of crops, the hater of mankind, and is locked in a never-ending battle with her brother. The male dragon protects the humans' crops from destruction and is generally benevolent to humanity. Fire and water play major roles in Bulgarian dragon lore: the female has water characteristics, while the male is usually a fiery creature. In Bulgarian legend, The drakons are three-headed, winged beings with snake's bodies.


title: European dragon

text: In Bulgarian, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Bosnian, Serbian, and Macedonian lore, the dragon-like creature, or "змей" (), "zmey" (), "smok" (), "zmiy" (), (Bosnian zmaj), (), "zmej" (), is generally an evil, four-legged beast with few, if any, redeeming qualities. "Zmeys" are intelligent, but not greatly so, often demanding tribute from villages or small towns in the form of maidens (for food), or gold. Their number of heads ranges from one to seven or sometimes even more, with three- and seven-headed Zmeys being most commonly cited. The heads also regrow if cut off, unless the neck is "treated" with fire (similar to the hydra in Greek mythology). Zmey blood is so poisonous that Earth itself will refuse to absorb it. In Bulgarian mythology these "dragons" are sometimes good, opposing the evil Lamya /ламя/, a beast similar to the "zmey".


title: European dragon

text: The most famous Polish dragon () is the Wawel Dragon or "Smok Wawelski", the Dragon of Wawel Hill. It supposedly terrorized ancient Kraków and lived in caves on the Vistula river bank below the Wawel castle. According to lore based on the "Book of Daniel", it was killed by a boy who offered it a sheepskin filled with sulphur and tar. After devouring it, the dragon became so thirsty that it finally exploded after drinking too much water. In the oldest, 12th-century version of this fantasy tale, written by Wincenty Kadłubek, the dragon was defeated by two sons of a King Krak, Krakus II and Lech II. A metal sculpture of the Wawel Dragon is a well-known tourist sight in Kraków. The Wawel Dragon appears in the coat of arms of the Polish princes, the Piasts of Czersk.


title: European dragon

text: Other dragon-like creatures in Polish folklore include the basilisk, living in cellars of Warsaw, and the Snake King from folk legends, though neither are explicitly dragons.


title: European dragon

text: Iberian dragons are almost always evil, such as the Cuélebre, or Cuelebre, a giant winged serpent in the mythology of Asturias and Cantabria in the north of Spain. It usually lives in a cave, guards treasures and keeps nymph-like beings called "xanas" or "anjanas" as prisoners.


title: European dragon

text: There is a legend that a dragon dwelled in the Peña Uruel mountain near Jaca and claimed that it could mesmerise people with its glance, so the young man who decided to kill the beast equipped himself with a shiny shield, so that the dragon's glance would be reflected. When the young man arrived at the cave where the dragon lived, he could kill it easily because the dragon mesmerised itself. This legend is very similar to the Greek myth of Medusa.


title: European dragon

text: Herensuge is the name given to the dragon in Basque mythology, meaning "last serpent". The most famous legend has St. Michael descend from Heaven to kill it, but only once did God agree to accompany him in person.


title: European dragon

text: Sugaar, the Basque male god, is often associated with the serpent or dragon but can take other forms as well. His name can be read as "male serpent".


title: European dragon

text: Dragons are well known in Catalan myths and legends, in no small part because St. George (Catalan "Sant Jordi") is the patron saint of Catalonia. Like most mythical reptiles, the Catalan dragon (Catalan "drac") is an enormous serpent-like creature with four legs and a pair of wings, or rarely, a two-legged creature with a pair of wings, called a wyvern. As in many other parts of the world, the dragon's face may be like that of some other animal, such as a lion or a bull. As is common elsewhere, Catalan dragons are fire-breathers, and the dragon-fire is all-consuming. Catalan dragons also can emit a fetid odor, which can rot away anything it touches.


title: European dragon

text: The Catalans also distinguish a "víbria" or "vibra" (cognate with English "viper" and "wyvern"), a female dragon-like creature with two prominent breasts, two claws, two wings and an eagle's beak. Dracs, Víbries and other mythological figures used to participate in correfocs during popular celebrations.


title: European dragon

text: In Portuguese mythology, Coca is a female wyvern that battles Saint George on the Corpus Christi holiday. The fighting has a symbolic meaning: when the coca defeats Saint George the crops will be bad and there will be famine and death; when Saint George defeats the coca and cuts off her tongue and ears, the crops will have a good year and it announces prosperity. Still, she is called "saint" coca just as George is called saint, and the people cheer for her.


title: European dragon

text: Another dragon called "drago" is also represented in Portuguese mythology and used to take part in celebrations during the Middle Ages.


title: European dragon

text: Wyverns are usually evil in Italy, and there are many stories of wyverns being slain. Dragons also trick demons in Italian legends. The legend of Saint George and the wyvern is well known in Italy, but other saints are also depicted fighting wyverns. For instance, the first bishop of Forlì, Saint Mercurialis, was said to have killed a wyvern to save the city, so he is often depicted in the act of slaying a wyvern. Likewise, the first patron saint of Venice, Saint Theodore of Tyro, was a wyvern-slayer, and a statue representing his slaying of the wyvern still tops one of the two columns in St Mark's Square. St. Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers, is also frequently depicted slaying a wyvern.


title: European dragon

text: According to the Golden Legend, compiled by the Italian Jacobus de Voragine, Saint Margaret the Virgin was swallowed by Satan in the shape of a hydra, but she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the hydra's innards. The Golden Legend, in an atypical moment of scepticism, describes this last incident as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369), which did not prevent the legend from being popular and getting artistic treatments.


title: European dragon

text: More prevalent are the legends about dragons in Italy, particularly in Umbria. One of the most famous wyverns of Italian folklore is Thyrus, a wyvern that besieged Terni in the Middle Ages. One day, a young and brave knight of the noble House of Cittadini, tired of witnessing the death of his fellow citizens and the depopulation of Terni, faced the wyvern and killed it. From that day, the town assumed the creature in its coat of arms, accompanied by a Latin inscription: "Thyrus et amnis dederunt signa Teramnis" ("Thyrus and the river gave their insignia to [the city of] Terni"), that stands under the banner of the town of Terni, honoring this legend.


title: European dragon

text: Another poem tells of another dragon that lived near the village of Fornole, near Amelia, Umbria. Pope Sylvester I arrived in Umbria and freed the population of Fornole from the ferocity of the dragon, pacifying the dragon. Grateful for his deed, the population built a small church dedicated to the saint on the top of the mountain near the dragon's lair in the 13th century. In the apse of the church there is a fresco representing the iconography of the saint.


title: European dragon

text: In British heraldry, dragons are depicted as four-legged, distinguishing them from the two-legged wyvern. They always possess wings similar to a bat's. Dragons are traditionally depicted with tongues ending in a barbed tip; recent heraldry depicts their tails as ending with a similar barb, but this trait originated after the Tudor period. During and before this era, dragons were always depicted with tails ending in a blunt tip.


title: European dragon

text: In terms of attitude, dragons are typically shown "statant" (with all four legs on the ground), "passant" (with one leg raised), or "rampant" (rearing). They are very rarely depicted as "coward" (with their tail between their legs).


title: European dragon

text: According to heraldic writer Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, the red dragon of Wales on the flag originated with the standard of the 7th-century king, Cadwaladr, and was used as a supporter by the Tudor dynasty (who were of Welsh origin). Queen Elizabeth, however, preferring gold, changed the color of the dragon supporter from red to gold gules, in parallel to her change of the royal mantle from gules and ermine to gold and ermine. There may be some doubt of the Welsh origin of the dragon supporter of the Royal arms, but it certainly was used by King Henry III.


title: European dragon

text: In England, a rampant red dragon (clutching a mace) is still the heraldic symbol of the county of Somerset. The county once formed part of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex in western England, which too bore a dragon, or a wyvern, as a symbol. The Wessex beast is usually colored gold in illustrations.


title: European dragon

text: The Welsh flag is blazoned "parti per fess Argent and Vert; a dragon Gules passant". Welsh rugby teams include the Newport Gwent Dragons and the Cardiff City Blue Dragons.


title: European dragon

text: In continental European heraldry, the term "dragon" covers a greater variety of creatures than it does in British systems, including creatures such as the wyvern, the basilisk and the cockatrice. In German heraldry, the four-legged dragon is referred to as a "lindwurm".


title: European dragon

text: In Spain, there are many examples of dragons as heraldic symbols (particularly “dragantes”: two opposing dragon faces biting some figure). Dragons were introduced as heraldic symbols by King Peter IV of Aragon, who used a dragon on his helmet to show that he was the king of Aragon, as a heraldic pun ("Rei d'Aragón" becoming "Rei" "dragón"; translating in English as "dragon king").


title: European dragon

text: Historically, the Coat of Arms of Madrid included, besides a bear with a strawberry tree, a dragon. This dragon has its origin in a dragon, or a serpent according to Mesonero Romanos, that was shown on the keystone in the arch of a gate of the disappeared walls of Madrid known as ""Puerta Cerrada"" or ""Puerta de la Sierpe"" (Closed Gate or Wyrm Gate in English). In 1582 a fire destroyed the gate. At that time the walls had fallen into disuse, for this reason the gate and the surrounding wall have never been rebuilt. The serpent, become dragon, was retained as informal symbol of Madrid until the 19th century, when it was decided to incorporate the dragon in the Coat of Arms. The dragon then turned into a griffin, and the griffin disappeared from the Coat of Arms in 1967, although the heraldic dragon remains carved in stone in many monuments around the city.


title: European dragon

text: A dragon was used as the crest of the Greater Royal Coat of Arms of Portugal since at least the 14th century. Later, two wyverns were used as supporters of the shield of the Arms of Portugal. In the 19th century, King Peter IV of Portugal granted the city of Porto the incorporation of the dragon crest of the royal coat of arms in its municipal coat of arms, in gratitude for the support given to him by the city during the Liberal Wars. The badge of FC Porto incorporates the old Porto municipal coat of arms with the dragon crest; this is why the dragon was adopted as the animal mascot of the club.


title: European dragon

text: In relatively recent additions to the image of a dragon, the tongue and the tail ended with a barb. The house of the Tudor’s image of a dragon does no such thing, with the tail being long and pointy. The German Lindwurm seems to be where the English got their figure of a dragon. It is represented as a traditional one with scales, four legs, wings, sharp teeth, and horns.


title: European dragon

text: Mr. Mainwaring-Ellerker-Onslow's house was represented by a sea-dragon. This dragon is normal, in today's standards, for half its body and the other half has no hind legs and a large end of the tail. This is closer to the Chinese model of dragons.


title: European dragon

text: While this is comparatively rare to have, two cockatrices are the supporters to Sir Edmund Charles Nugent.


title: European dragon

text: The emblem books popular from late medieval times through the 17th century often represent the dragon as an emblem of greed. The prevalence of dragons in European heraldry demonstrates that there is more to the dragon than greed.


title: European dragon

text: Agosti Xaho, a romantic myth creator of the 19th century, fused these myths in his own creation of "Leherensuge", the first and last serpent, that, in his newly coined legend, would arise again some time in the future bringing the rebirth of the Basque nation.


title: European dragon

text: Dragons have long been portrayed in modern times as greedy treasure-hoarders, lusting for gold and precious gems. In such stories as "Beowulf", the theft of such treasure sparks a dragon's fury. In the fantasy genre, however, there has been a trend of originally depicting dragons in a positive light: as allies instead of enemies, the red dragon of Wales, and the brother dragon of Poland. Dragons are increasingly viewed as friends of humans and as highly intelligent and noble creatures, while still remaining the fearsome beasts of legend. They are frequently shown as guardians and close friends of individual humans.


title: European dragon

text: After the discovery of fossil pterosaurs, European-type dragons are often depicted without front legs, and, when on the ground, standing and walking pterosaur-fashion on their back feet and the wrists of their wings.


title: European dragon

text: Dragons play prominent roles in JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, particularly in "The Silmarillion" and "The Hobbit", and in the unconnected "Farmer Giles of Ham".


title: European dragon

text: Many of these modern ideas were first popularised by Anne McCaffrey with her "Dragonriders of Pern" series.


title: European dragon

text: Ffyrnig, the Last Great Dragon of "Legend of the Heart Eaters", the first book in the story of "Jonah and the Last Great Dragon" by M.E.Holley is based on an actual legend of the Welsh Borders, which tells that the last great dragon is asleep under the Radnor Forest, imprisoned there by St. Michael.


title: European dragon

text: Bryan Davis's "Dragons in Our Midst" series depicts dragons as noble and kind beasts, having the ability to marry and reproduce with humans.


title: European dragon

text: E. D. Baker's "Tales of the Frog Princess" series frequently includes dragons, and people who can change between human shape and dragon shape.


title: European dragon

text: The very popular "A Song of Ice and Fire" / "Game of Thrones" series includes dragons and dragon-riders.


title: European dragon

text: "How to Train Your Dragon" is a series of twelve children's books, written by British author Cressida Cowell. The books are set in a fictional Viking world and focus on the experiences of protagonist Hiccup as he overcomes great obstacles on his journey of Becoming a Hero, the Hard Way.


title: European dragon

text: Tui T. Sutherland's book series "Wings of Fire" is set in a dragon-dominant world where five dragonets must complete a prophecy to end a twenty-year-long war. There are currently three arcs in the series. The first arc is about five dragonets fulfilling a prophecy and to end a twenty year long war. The second arc is about the Jade Winglet, a group from Jade Mountain Academy, a school that the dragonets started. The students try to stop a deadly, ancient dragon named Darkstalker from destroying the IceWing tribe. The third arc is about some former protagonists and some new protagonists from a forgotten continent which has been taken over by a sentient plant known as The Othermind. The books (except for Dragonslayer) are based on the dragon's point of view.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Indonesian Army ( (TNI-AD), ) is the land branch of the Indonesian National Armed Forces. It has an estimated strength of 300,000 active personnel. The history of the Indonesian Army has its roots in 1945 when the (TKR) "Civil Security Forces" first emerged as a paramilitary and police corps.


title: Indonesian Army

text: Since the nation's independence movement, the Indonesian Army has been involved in multifaceted operations ranging from the incorporation of Western New Guinea, the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, to the annexation of East Timor, as well as internal counter-insurgency operations in Aceh, Maluku, and Papua. The army's operations have not been without controversy; it has been periodically associated with human rights violations, particularly in West Papua, East Timor and Aceh.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Indonesia Army is composed of a headquarters, 15 military regional command (Kodam), a strategic reserve command (Kostrad), a special forces command (Kopassus), and various adjunct units. It is headed by the Chief of Staff of the Army (Kepala Staf Angkatan Darat – KSAD or KASAD).


title: Indonesian Army

text: In the week following the Japanese surrender of 1945, the "Giyūgun" (PETA) and "Heiho" groups were disbanded by the Japanese. Most PETA and "Heiho" members did not yet know about the declaration of independence. Command structures and membership vital for a national army were consequently dismantled. Thus, rather than being formed from a trained, armed, and organised army, the Republican armed forces began to grow in September from usually younger, less trained groups under the national People's Security Agency built around charismatic leaders in the regions. Creating a rational military structure that was obedient to central authority from such disorganisation, was one of the major problems of the revolution, a problem that remains through to contemporary times. In a meeting between former KNIL and former PETA Division Commanders, organised by chief of staff (KSO) of People's Security Agency, Oerip Soemohardjo, a thirty-year-old former school teacher and PETA member, Sudirman, was elected 'commander-in-chief' in Yogyakarta on 12 November 1945.


title: Indonesian Army

text: Aware of the limitations of the military in the face of the Dutch aggression, the people and government of Indonesia had no choice but to fight foreign threats to the young nation's independence. Thus, in 1947, the People's War Doctrine in which all the power of the national armed forces and the community and resources were deployed to confront the Dutch aggression, was officially implemented within the army and the wider armed forces as the national military strategy. Thus, the integrity and existence of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia has been able to be maintained by military force with the people. By 1947, the young Army (then named "Tentara Republik Indonesia - Angkatan Darat") was organized into 10 infantry divisions, 7 Javanese and 3 Sumatran.


title: Indonesian Army

text: In accordance with the decision of the Round Table Conference (RTC), at the end of 1949 the United States of Indonesia (RIS) came into being. Correspondingly, the TNI's ground forces thus formed part of the Angkatan Perang Republik Indonesia Serikat (APRIS) (later the Angkatan Perang Republik Indonesia or APRI when the republic became unitary in 1950). It would be the merger of the TNI and the former KNIL and all military personnel of the two forces, plus the independent paramilitary groups ("laskar") which fought the war on the side of the independence movement.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The period is also called the period of liberal democracy is characterized by various rebellions in the country. In 1950 most of the former members of the Colonial Army launched an uprising in Bandung which is known as the Legion of Ratu Adil / APRA uprising and was led by former KNIL officer Raymond Westerling. The army also needed to confront the uprising in Makassar led by Andi Azis and the Republic of South Maluku (RMS) in Maluku. Meanwhile, DaruI Islam in West Java widened its influence to South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi and Aceh. In 1958 the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia / People's Struggle (PRRI / Permesta) started a rebellion in large parts of Sumatra and North Sulawesi endangering the national integrity. As part of the National Armed Forces the Army helped defeat all these uprisings, increasing its prestige in the eyes of the government and the people. Future Chief of Staff of the Army Ahmad Yani was instrumental in one of these first victories against rebels in Central Java.


title: Indonesian Army

text: On 17 November 1952, General Nasution was suspended as army chief of staff following army indiscipline over command and support that threatens the government. From the 1950s, the military articulated the doctrines of "dwifungsi" and "hankamrata", the military roles in the country's socio-political development as well as security; and a requirement that the resources of the people be at the call of the armed forces and police if the State warrants it. On 5 July 1959, Sukarno, with armed forces support and the advice of Nasution, issued a decree dissolving the Constituent Assembly and reintroducing the Constitution of 1945 with strong presidential powers. By 1963, he also assumed the additional role of Prime Minister, which completed the structure of 'Guided Democracy', and was named "President for Life", also with army assistance, the year after.


title: Indonesian Army

text: At the same time, the Indonesian government started sending their troops on UN peacekeeping missions. The first batch of soldiers were sent to Sinai, Egypt and were known as Garuda Contingent 1. Garuda Contingent I began its first deployment January 8, 1957 to Egypt. Garuda Contingent I consisted of the combined personnel of the 15th Army Infantry Regiment Territorial Command (TT) IV / Diponegoro, as well as one company of the 18th Infantry Regiment TC V / Brawijaya in Malang. This contingent was led by Lt. Col. of Infantry Hartoyo which was later replaced by Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry Suadi Suromihardjo, while his deputy was Major of Infantry Soediono Suryantoro. The contingent departed on January 8, 1957, on board the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II transport aircraft of the United States Air Force for Beirut, the Lebanese capital. From Beirut the contingent was divided by two, the majority heading to Abu Suweir and partly to Al Sandhira. Furthermore, the El Sandhira troops moved into Gaza, the border area of Egypt and Israel, while the command is in Rafah. This contingent returned to Indonesia on September 29, 1957. Garuda Contingent I had a total number of 559 army personnel of all ranks.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The army was heavily involved in the Indonesian killings of 1965–1966. The killings were an anti-communist purge following a failed coup of the 30 September Movement. The most widely accepted estimates are that more than 500,000 people were killed. The purge was a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order"; the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was eliminated as a political force. The failed coup released pent-up communal hatreds which were fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blamed the PKI. Communists were purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself was banned. The massacres began in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. They started in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java and, later, Bali. Thousands of local vigilantes and army units killed actual and alleged PKI members. Although killings occurred across Indonesia, the worst were in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra. It is possible that over one million people were imprisoned at one time or another.


title: Indonesian Army

text: Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion and communism) had been unravelled. His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, had been effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the army and political Islam; and the army was on the way to unchallenged power. In March 1968, Suharto was formally elected president.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history books and have received little introspection by Indonesians and comparatively little international attention. Satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence have challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives. The possibility of a return to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system. Vigilance against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's thirty-year presidency. The CIA described the massacre as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s."


title: Indonesian Army

text: Later army operations have not been without controversy however. Involvement in UN Peacekeeping operations continued, but in 2010, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was strongly criticized after two soldiers from Indonesia were filmed fleeing a clash on the Israeli-Lebanon border in a taxi.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The size of the Army has expanded over the years; in July 1976 the Army was estimated to consist of solely 180,000 personnel, one armoured cavalry brigade, part of Kostrad (one tank battalion, plus support units), 14 infantry brigades (90 infantry, 1 para, 9 artillery, 11 anti-aircraft, and 9 engineer battalions) of which three of the brigades were in Kostrad, two airborne brigades totalling six battalions, also part of Kostrad, one independent tank battalion, 7 independent armoured cavalry battalions, and four independent para-commando battalions.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Indonesian Army is currently organized into 15 military regions which are spread throughout the Indonesian archipelago. They are placed under the jurisdiction of the army headquarters. Three are based in Sumatra, four are based in Java, two are based in Kalimantan, one based in Lesser Sunda Islands, two based in Sulawesi, one based in Maluku and two based in Papua. The Komando Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat (Kostrad, strategic reserve forces) and Komando Pasukan Khusus (Kopassus, the Army special force) are independent formations and directly subordinate to the chief of staff. The army headquarters is under coordination with the armed force Headquarters. The highest-ranking officer within the army is the Chief of Staff of the Army which has the rank of a four-star General and is responsible to the Commander of the Armed Forces.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Indonesian Army and its relation to the Armed Forces General Headquarters and the other military branches are structured into the following in accordance with the provisions of Presidential Regulation No. 66/ 2019 on the Organization of the Indonesian National Armed Forces:


title: Indonesian Army

text: The following agencies are called "Badan Pelaksana Pusat", translated as Central Executive Agencies, and directly subordinated under the Army Headquarters. Agencies with affix "Pusat" (Centers), "Akademi" (Academies), and "Sekolah" (Schools or Colleges) are headed by two-star Major General, while agencies with affix "Dinas" (Services/Departments) and "Direktorat" (Directorates) are headed by a one-star Brigadier General. Exceptions are made for the Army Territorial Forces Center, Army Military Police Center, and Army Central Hospital as they are all headed by a three-star Lieutenant General.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Army Strategic Reserve Command (), better known by its abbreviation Kostrad is the Indonesian Army's strategic operational command. It is a corps-level command which has around 40,000 troops, organized into three divisions. It also supervises operational readiness among all commands and conducts defence and security operations at the strategic level in accordance with policies of the TNI commander. Green berets are worn by its personnel, and it is the main basic warfare combat unit of the Indonesian Army.


title: Indonesian Army

text: While Kopassus is the elite-special forces of the Indonesian Army, Kostrad is still maintained as the first-line combat unit of the TNI below the Kopassus. Despite its nomenclature as reserve units, it is also used as main combat force, deployed for certain circumstances and is also capable for semi-special ops because mainly airborne infantry units are part of this corps. Kostrad contains Infantry (including Airborne) units, Artillery, Cavalry, and other military combat units. The three division's composition and its headquarters are:


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Army Doctrine, Education and Training Development Command (, abbreviated into Kodiklatad) is charged in providing training to all officers, warrant officers, NCOs and enlisted personnel of the Army. The Command HQ is based in Bandung, and organized into the following:


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Special Force Command () or Kopassus for short, composed of an estimated 5,530 personnel organized into five brigade-level groups:


title: Indonesian Army

text: Except for the Special Force Education and Training Center, every Kopassus groups are tasked with maintaining its combat and operational readiness at any given moment. Each group is headed by a Colonel and all groups are qualified as airborne commandos. Kopassus is known for its roles in high-risk operations such as the "Woyla" hijacking and the Mapenduma hostage crisis. However, Kopassus is also known for its alleged human right abuses in East Timor and Papua. Personnel of the unit are distinguished by their red berets, similar to most paratrooper and special forces units in the world.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The territorial Regional Military Command () and its units below hierarchically serve as the main operational organization of the Indonesian Army. These military territories were established by General Sudirman (the then-Commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces), following the model of the Nazi German "Wehrkreis" system. The system was later codified in "Surat Perintah Siasat No.1", signed into doctrine in November 1948.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The Army's structure underwent various reorganizations throughout its early years. From 1946 to 1952 the Army was organized into a number of set combined arms divisions. These were further consolidated in 1951, and then dispersed in 1952. From 1952 to 1958–59, the Army was organized into seven Territorial Armies ("Tentara & Teritorium") composed of regiments and independent formations in the battalion level and below. In August 1958, the Indonesian Army reconsolidated its territorial organization. There were then established sixteen regional commands, which retained earlier divisional titles; the Siliwangi Division, for example, became Kodam VI/Siliwangi. The RCs, then as in today, were subdivided administratively into Areas (the former territorial regiments), Districts (the former regimental battalions) and District Sectors, and operationally composed of a number of specialty battalions and in some regional commands, an infantry brigade.


title: Indonesian Army

text: A reorganisation in 1985 made significant changes in the army chain of command. The four multiservice Regional Defence Commands ("Kowilhan"s) and the National Strategic Forces Command ("Kostranas") were eliminated from the defence structure, re-establishing the Regional Military Command ("Kodam") as the key organisation for strategic, tactical, and territorial operations for all services. The chain of command flowed directly from the ABRI commander in chief via the Chief of Staff of the Army to the ten territorial commands' commanders, and then to subordinate army territorial commands.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The territorial commands incorporate provincial and district commands each with a number of infantry battalions, sometimes a cavalry battalion, artillery, or engineers, and there are an increasing number of infantry brigades being activated. Some have Raider battalions attached either under divisional control, under brigades, or as territorial infantry.


title: Indonesian Army

text: All infantrymen of the Indonesian National Armed Forces have capabilities in Jungle warfare, including infantrymen from the Indonesian Marine Corps and Paskhas corps.


title: Indonesian Army

text: In the army, as well as in other armed forces branches in Indonesia, the rank consists of three group of ranks: "Perwira" for officers, "Bintara for" NCOs, and "Tamtama" for enlisted.


title: Indonesian Army

text: The proper title to address of rank are as follows and applicable to all branch of TNI, all flag officers (generals, admirals, and air marshals) use their rank followed by "(TNI)", while senior and junior officers use their rank followed by respective branch/corps abbreviation. For example, an Army colonel with Infantry branch use the title "Kolonel INF" (read as ""), while an Army Major General from Infantry branch use the title "Mayor Jenderal (TNI)". Enlisted personnel are not required to put their respective branch/corps specialty.


title: Indonesian Army

text: Note: Indonesia is not a member of NATO, so there is not an official equivalence between the Indonesian military ranks and those defined by NATO. The displayed parallel is approximate and for illustration purposes only.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Wishbone is an American half-hour live-action children's television show produced from 1995 to 1997 about a dog who relives famous literature. It was originally broadcast on PBS and later rebroadcast on PBS Kids and PBS Kids Go!. The show won four Daytime Emmys, a Peabody Award, and honors from the Television Critics Association. "Wishbone"'s exterior shots were filmed on the backlot of Lyrick Studios's teen division Big Feats! Entertainment in Allen, Texas, and its interior shots were filmed on a sound stage in a warehouse in Plano, Texas. Additional scenes were filmed in Grapevine, Texas.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: This show garnered particular praise for refusing to bowdlerize many of the sadder or more unpleasant aspects of the source works, which usually enjoyed a fairly faithful retelling in the fantasy sequences.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: The show also inspired several book series. Altogether, more than fifty books have featured Wishbone, which continued to be published even after the TV series ended production. In 1998, the TV movie "Wishbone's Dog Days of the West" was aired.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: A film adaptation of the series from Universal Pictures and Mattel Films is in the works with Peter Farrelly serving as producer.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: The show's title character is a Jack Russell Terrier. Wishbone lives with his owner Joe Talbot in the fictional town of Oakdale, Texas. He daydreams about being the lead character of stories from classic literature. He was known as "the little dog with a big imagination." Only the viewers and the characters in his daydreams can hear Wishbone speak. The characters from his daydreams see Wishbone as whichever famous character he is currently portraying and not as a dog.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: A standard episode of "Wishbone" consists of an opening scene, introducing Wishbone's and his family's current situation (for example, Arbor Day planting a tree, or Joe catching a lunch lady attempting to donate food to a homeless shelter). When one of the main characters decides to get involved in the noble act, Wishbone flashes to a famous work of literature that it reminds him of, usually with him playing the lead role in costume. Wishbone may not play the lead role if the character is difficult to relate to (he plays Sancho Panza in "Don Quixote") or is female (in the show's "Joan of Arc" episode, he plays Louis de Conte). By the end of both stories, the real-life situation usually follows the work of literature closely, such as the King saving Robin Hood at the last minute and the Principal saving Joe at the last minute. The last two minutes of nearly every episode feature Wishbone narrating some background description of how the episode was produced, including how stunts were performed, how costumes were designed, or how the visual effects were created.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: "Wishbone" was conceived by Rick Duffield after brainstorming with his staff about "making a show for kids that was told from a dog's point of view". In an interview with "The New Yorker", Duffield recalled that he had a habit of putting a voice to his dog's expressions. His eureka moment came when he was staring at a row of books on his shelf: "The one that caught my eye that day was Frank Magill's "Masterpieces of World Literature". Well, what if a little dog with a big imagination could take us into some of the greatest stories ever told? And, why not make him the hero?"


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Inspired, Duffield produced a seven-minute pilot for the show. In the summer of 1993, he spent three days casting for the dog star at a motel courtyard in Valencia, California, looking at between 100 and 150 dogs. He elaborated in the interview with "The New Yorker": "[A]n extraordinary little Jack Russell named Soccer walked up and dazzled us all. I filmed the teaser, which captured Wishbone's character, suggested the show's format, and brought it to Alice Cahn at PBS. I suppose convincing someone that it was a good idea came down to executing a pretty fetching dog trick!"


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Duffield told "Entertainment Tonight": "Keeping up with the variety in the series is the biggest challenge. Because Wishbone is the central figure of each show and plays an integral role in the contemporary story and the literary story, he's in almost every scene. So he has a lot to do and designing scenes that can work with a dog, with period actors and period sets, as well as kids in a contemporary world is a big challenge."


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Larry Brantley, the voice of Wishbone, said he got the job through: "...the weirdest audition I think that's ever been or will ever be. I didn't know what the dog looked like, and they give (me) the barest of information, 'there's going to be this great new kids show with this dog that talks and we want you to come in, and we want you to be funny' so I went to the first audition having no idea what to do. In the callback, I got to meet Soccer for the first time...It was a five-minute impromptu audition...I never really read from the script, I was supposed to, but I didn't. Rick Duffield, the executive producer, said, 'well, watch the dog and just follow along and see what he's doing right now.' Soccer was obsessing like over this tennis ball...and he wasn't interested in Rick Duffield or me or anybody else in the room; it was like a tennis ball. And he would stare at the tennis ball. I want the tennis ball...So it was like five minutes about a tennis ball, and I walked out of the audition saying, 'I can't believe I just did five minutes about a tennis ball.' And then I got the job. We may never understand."


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Ultimately, Duffield wanted "Wishbone" to be an: "...entertaining way for kids to get their first taste of great books. We believe this show can cultivate a new appetite for reading by making kids think it's fun to get to know these books. And it's intended to be fun, action-packed, clever, and a way to get their first taste of great stories that can become a valuable educational stepping stone in their lives. The dog makes it all the more endearing and entertaining."


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Despite acclaim from critics and educators, only 50 episodes were produced. The first 40 episodes were shown as a single-season run in 1995, while the remaining ten episodes became the second season in 1997–1998. Duffield told author Michael Brody that PBS halted production because the show did not have "merchandising potential".


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: The series aired on PBS and premiered in the United States on October 9, 1995. The final episode aired on December 4, 1997. After the series ended, reruns continued to air until August 31, 2001. The series returned in reruns on PBS Kids Go! on June 2, 2007. "Wishbone" clips came to the PBS Kids Go! website. The return to PBS lasted a short time, although some PBS stations continued to air "Wishbone" until October 7, 2013.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: Only a handful of the "Wishbone" episodes have been released to VHS and DVD. There were also a few computer games in 1996 and 1997, such as Wishbone Activity Center, Wishbone Print Tricks, and "Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey". "Wishbone" has also inspired several book series: Wishbone Classics, Wishbone Mysteries, and The Adventures of Wishbone, which is similar to the TV series.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: In 2004, HIT Entertainment released 4 DVDs of the show: "Hot Diggety Dawg," "The Impawsible Dream," "The Hunchdog of Notre-Dame," and "Paw Prints of Thieves."


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: On February 15, 2011, HIT Entertainment (distributed by Lionsgate) released the "Wishbone" DVD, "The Little Dog With a Big Imagination", which only includes the four previously released episodes.


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: On July 15, 2020, it was announced that Universal Pictures and Mattel's film division are developing a film adaptation of the series. Peter Farrelly will produce the film while Roy Parker will write the screenplay and Robbie Brenner will executive produce. In a statement by Brenner, "Our deep library of iconic franchises continues to offer cinematic storytelling opportunities. We’re thrilled to be working with Peter Farrelly, Roy Parker, and Universal to take the beloved dog classic into a new direction with a modern reimagination of the franchise."


title: Wishbone (TV series)

text: It will be the first theatrical collaboration between Universal and Mattel and the ninth Mattel Films project in development, as well as the second "Wishbone" film in the franchise. The first movie in the "Wishbone" franchise was the popular 1998 TV movie "Wishbone's Dog Days of the West".


title: Colton Ryan

text: Colton Ryan (born June 10, 1995) is an American actor and singer. He is known for his performance as Conrad "Coco" Roy in the Hulu miniseries "The Girl from Plainville" (2022), and for playing Connor Murphy, a role in which he understudied in the Broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen" and reprised in the 2021 film adaptation. He is also known for originating Gene Laine in "Girl from the North Country", and the main role of Samuel on the Apple TV+ series "Little Voice".


title: Colton Ryan

text: Ryan was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Ryan attended the School for the Creative and Performing Arts (SCAPA) for grades six through twelve, where he majored in theatre. His acting career took off in 2015 while attending Baldwin Wallace University when he played Dickon in the Idaho Shakespeare Festival production of The Secret Garden".


title: Colton Ryan

text: He made his Broadway debut in 2016 as the standby for Evan Hansen, Connor Murphy and Jared Kleinman in "Dear Evan Hansen", which he stayed until 2017, when he graduated with his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Baldwin Wallace University. That same year, he made his television debut in a guest role on "" and then played the recurring role of J.J. Elkins on the Showtime series "Homeland" the following year.


title: Colton Ryan

text: In 2019, he originated the role of White Rabbit/Alfred Hallam/March Hare in the Off-Broadway production of Alice By Heart and made his film acting debut in "The Social Ones" and "Adam". In 2020, he starred in the Bob Dylan musical "Girl from the North Country" as Gene Laine, a role in which he originated in the 2018 Off-Broadway production, but the production was shut down that May due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Colton Ryan

text: In 2020, he starred in the main role of Samuel on the Apple TV+ series "Little Voice" and as Bruce in the Amazon Studios film "Uncle Frank". It was also announced that year that he would reprise the role of Connor Murphy in Stephen Chbosky's film adaptation of "Dear Evan Hansen", which premiered as the Opening Night Gala Presentation of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, followed by a theatrical release on September 24, 2021.


title: Colton Ryan

text: In 2021, he was cast opposite Elle Fanning in the Hulu drama series "The Girl from Plainville" based on the death of Conrad Roy.


title: Colton Ryan

text: In 2019, he received a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance for "Girl from the North Country".


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville is a residential neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn in New York City. The neighborhood is generally bordered by Crown Heights to the northwest; Bedford–Stuyvesant and Cypress Hills to the north; East New York to the east; Canarsie to the south; and East Flatbush to the west.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The area that comprises Brownsville has 58,300 residents as of the 2010 United States Census, with an estimated population of 128,369 residents in 2019. Founded in its current incarnation in 1858, Brownsville was initially a settlement composed of Jewish factory workers. The neighborhood underwent a major demographic change in the 1950s that saw an influx of African-American residents. Since the late 20th century, Brownsville has consistently held one of the highest poverty and crime rates of any neighborhood in New York City.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville is part of Brooklyn Community District 16, and its primary ZIP Code is 11212. It is patrolled by the 73rd Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Politically it is represented by the New York City Council's 42nd and 41st Districts.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The area that would become Brownsville was first used by the Dutch for farming, as well as manufacturing stone slabs and other things used to construct buildings. In 1823–1824, the Dutch founded the New Lots Reformed Church in nearby New Lots because the corresponding church in Flatbush was too far away. The church, which has its own cemetery that was built in 1841, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: In 1858, William Suydam parceled the land into 262 lots, providing simple two- to four-room accommodations for workers who were living there. However, Suydam vastly underestimated how undesirable the area was, and ran out of funding in 1861. After failing to pay his mortgages, the land was auctioned off in 1866 to Charles S. Brown of Esopus, New York. Believing the area to be useful for development, Brown subdivided the area and began calling it "Brownsville", advertising the area's wide open spaces to Jews who lived in Lower Manhattan. There were 250 houses in "Brown's Village" by 1883, most of them occupied by factory workers who commuted to Manhattan. The first houses in the area were built by Charles R. Miller.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Through the 1880s, the area was a marshy floodplain that was used as a dumping ground. Fumes from the glue factories along Jamaica Bay would usually blow upwind into Brownsville. This place was inconveniently far enough from Manhattan that the affluent refused to move to Brownsville, but the land was cheap enough that tenements could be built for the poor there.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville was predominantly Jewish from the 1880s until the 1950s. In 1887, businessman Elias Kaplan showed the first Jewish residents around Brownsville, painting the area as favorable compared to the Lower East Side, which he described as a place where one could not get away from the holds of labor unions. Kaplan built a factory and accommodations for his workers, then placed a synagogue, named Ohev Sholom, in his own factory. Other manufacturers that created low-tech products like food, furniture, and metals followed suit throughout the next decade, settling their factories in Brownsville. This led to much more housing being built there. The area bounded by present-day Dumont, Rockaway, and Liberty Avenues, and Junius Street, quickly became densely populated, with "factories, workshops, and stores" located next to housing. The farm of a local farmer, John J. Vanderveer, was cut up into lots and given to Jewish settlers after he sold it in 1892. Within three years of the first lot being distributed, there were 10,000 Jews living in Brownsville. By 1904, the lots comprising the former Vanderveer farm was entirely owned by Jews, who were spread out across .


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: An estimated 25,000 people lived in Brownsville by 1900, most of whom lived in two-story wooden frame accommodations built for two families each. Many of these buildings were grossly overcrowded, with up to eight families living in some of these two-family houses. They were utilitarian, and according to one "New York Herald" article, "grossly unattractive". Many of these houses lacked amenities like running water, and their wood construction made these houses susceptible to fires. New brick-and-stone houses erected in the early 1900s were built with indoor plumbing and less prone to fire. The quality of life was further decreased by the fact that there was scant infrastructure to be found in the area, and as a result, the unpaved roads were used as open sewers. Compounding the problem, land prices were high in Brownsville (with lots available for $50 in 1907, then sold for $3,000 two years later), so in order to make their land purchases worthwhile, developers were frequently inspired to build as many apartments on a single lot as they possibly could. Within twenty years of the factories' development, the area acquired a reputation as a vicious slum and breeding ground for crime. By 1904, 22 of the 25 housing units in Brownsville were tenement housing; three years later, only one of these 25 housing units was not a tenement. It became as dense as the very densely packed Lower East Side, according to one account. This also led to dangerous conditions; a 1935 collapse of a tenement stairway killed two people and injured 43 others. This overcrowding was despite the availability of empty space in the fringes of Brownsville. There were also no playgrounds in the area, and the only park in the vicinity was Betsy Head Park.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: In the early 20th century, the vast majority of Brownsville residents were born outside the United States; in 1910, 66% of the population were first-generation immigrants, and 80% of these immigrants were from Russia. By 1920, over 80,000 of the area's 100,000 inhabitants were Russian Jews, and Brownsville had been nicknamed "Little Jerusalem". In the 1930s it was considered the most densely populated district in all of Brooklyn. Brownsville was also considered to have the highest density of Jews of any place in the United States through the 1950s. The population remained heavily Jewish until the middle of the century, and the neighborhood boasted some seventy Orthodox synagogues. Many of these synagogues still exist in Brownsville, albeit as churches.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville was also a place for radical political causes during this time. In 1916, Margaret Sanger set up the first birth control clinic in America on Amboy Street. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood elected Socialist and American Labor Party candidates to the state assembly. Two Socialist candidates for mayor in 1929 and 1932 both received roughly a quarter of Brownsville residents' mayoral votes. Socialist attitudes prevailed among Brownsville residents until World War II. The area's Jewish population participated heavily in civil rights movements, rallying against such things as poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation in schools.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The area was fairly economically successful in its heyday. In 1942, there were 372 stores, including 8 banks and 43 stores selling menswear, along a stretch of Pitkin Avenue, which employed a combined 1,000 people and generated an estimated $90 million annually (equal to about $ today if adjusted for inflation). The median income of $2,493 in 1933 (about $ today) was twice that of a family living in the Lower East Side, who earned a median of $1,390 (about $ today) but lower than that of a middle-class family in outer Brooklyn ($4,320, inflation-adjusted to $) or the Bronx ($3,750, inflation-adjusted to $). The Fortunoff's furniture chain had its roots on Livonia Avenue, its flagship store overshadowed by the tracks of New York City Subway's New Lots Line from 1922 to 1964, eventually expanding elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area. At one point in the 1943 published book, "New York City Market Analysis", it had described Brownsville as having a variety of small industry unlike Lower East Side. The book also mentioned the Jewish populations were a mix of Russian, Austrian, and Polish immigrants and were 80% of the foreign born population in the neighborhood.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: In the 1930s, Brownsville achieved notoriety as the birthplace of Murder, Inc., who contracted to kill between 400 and 1,000 people through the 1940s. The organizations' criminal businesses also extended to nearby neighborhoods of Ocean Hill and East New York. The members mainly consisted of Jewish and Italian Americans as these neighborhoods during that time were mainly populated by Jewish and Italian enclaves. A film about the organization, Murder Inc., was produced and released in 1960.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: African Americans had begun moving into Brooklyn in large numbers in the early 20th century. The adjacent Bedford-Stuyvesant was the first large African American community of Brooklyn. In the 1930s, Brownsville began to receive growing numbers of African Americans. Most of the new residents were poor and socially disadvantaged, especially the new African-American residents, who were mostly migrants from the Jim Crow-era South where they were racially discriminated against. In 1940, black residents made up 6% of Brownsville's population. The 1943 book "New York City Market Analysis" indicated the small but growing African American population was concentrated in the central portion of the neighborhood while most of the neighborhood was still populated by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Although integration did take place in the neighborhood, there were racial tensions as well. By 1950, there were double the number of blacks, most of whom occupied the neighborhood's most undesirable housing. At the same time, new immigration quotas had reduced the number of Russian Jews who were able to immigrate to the United States.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Spurred on by urban planner Robert Moses, the city replaced some of Brownsville's old tenements with public housing blocks. Although the neighborhood was racially segregated, there were more attempts at improved quality of life, public mixing, and solidarity between black and Jewish neighbors than could be found in most other neighborhoods. However, due to socioeconomic barriers imposed by the disparities between the two populations, most of these improvements never came. Compounding the matter, the newly arrived African-American residents were mainly industrial workers who had moved to Brownsville just as the area's factories were going out of business, so the black residents were more economically disadvantaged than the Jews who had historically lived in Brownsville. Finally, although both blacks and Jews living in Brownsville had been subject to ethnic discrimination, the situation for blacks was worse, as they were banned from some public places where Jews were allowed, and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) generally behaved more harshly toward blacks than toward Jews.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The breaking point for the area's Jewish population came about in the 1950s, when the New York City Housing Authority decided to build more new public housing developments in blighted portions of Brownsville. The Jewish population quickly moved out, even though the new NYCHA developments were actually in better condition than the old wooden tenements. Citing increased crime and their desire for social mobility, Jews left Brownsville en masse, with many black and Latino residents moving in, especially into the area's housing developments. For instance, in the Van Dyke Houses, the black population in 1956 was 57% and the white population that year was 43%, with a little over one percent of residents receiving welfare benefits. Seven years later, 72% of the residents were black, 15% Puerto Rican, and the development had the highest rate of per-capita arrests of any housing development citywide.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Through the 1960s, its population became largely African American, and Brownsville's unemployment rate was 17 percent, twice the city's as a whole. The newly majority-black Brownsville neighborhood had few community institutions or economic opportunities. It lacked a middle class, and its residents did not own the businesses they relied upon. In his book "Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto", W.E. Pritchett described the neighborhood as a "ghetto" whose quality of life was declining by the year. The NYCHA housing encouraged the creation of an African-American and Latino population that was poorer than the Jewish population it replaced. In 1965, sociologist and then-future U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a report about black poverty entitled "", in which he cited the fact that the 24% of the nation's black communities were single-mother families, an attribute closely tied to poverty in these communities. At that time, Brownsville and East New York's single-mother rate was almost twice the national rate, at 45%. Backlash against the report, mainly on accusations of victim blaming, caused leaders to overlook Moynihan's proposals to improve poor black communities' quality of life, and the single-mother rate in Brownsville grew.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: In 1966, black and Latino residents created the Brownsville Community Council in an effort to reverse the poverty and crime increases. The BCC secured welfare funding for 3,000 people, secure housing tenancies for 4,000 people, and voting rights for hundreds of new registrants. It closed down a block of Herzl Street for use as a play area, and it created the biweekly "Brownsville Counselor" newspaper to inform residents about government programs and job opportunities. However, in spite of the BCC's efforts, crime went up, with a threefold increase in reported homicides from ten in 1960 to over thirty in 1966; a doubling of arrests from 1,883 in 1956 to over 3,901 in 1966; and claims that there could actually have been more than six times as much crime than was reported. Multiple robberies of businesses were reported every day, with robbers simply lifting or bending the roll-down metal gates that protected many storefronts. City officials urged people to not use public transportation to travel to Brownsville.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville began experiencing large-scale rioting and social disorder around this time. These problems manifested themselves in September 1967. A riot occurred following the death of an 11-year-old African American boy named Richard Ross, who was killed by an African-American NYPD detective, John Rattley, at the corner of St. Johns Place and Ralph Avenue. Rattley believed Ross had mugged a 73-year-old Jewish man. The riot was led in part by Brooklyn militant Sonny Carson, who allegedly spread rumors that Rattley was white; it was quelled after Brooklyn North Borough Commander Lloyd Sealy deployed a squad of 150 police officers. Officer Rattley was not indicted by the grand jury. Then, in 1968, Brownsville was the setting of a protracted and highly contentious teachers' strike. The Board of Education had experimented with giving the people of the neighborhood control over the school. The new school administration fired several teachers in violation of union contract rules. The teachers were all white and mostly Jewish, and the resulting strike badly divided the whole city. The resulting strike dragged on for half a year, becoming known as one of John Lindsay's "Ten Plagues". It also served to segregate the remaining Jewish community from the larger black and Latino community.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: By 1970, the 130,000-resident population of Brownsville was 77% black and 19% Puerto Rican. Despite the activities of black civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League whose Brooklyn chapters were based in nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant, they were, overall, less concerned with the issues of the lower-income blacks who had moved into Brownsville, thus further isolating Brownsville's population. These changes corresponded to overall increases in segregation and inequality in New York City, as well as to the replacement of blue-collar with white-collar jobs. The area gained a reputation for violence and poverty that was similar to the South Bronx's, a reputation that persisted through the 21st century.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Meanwhile, rioting and disorder continued. In June 1970, two men set fire to garbage bags to protest the New York City Department of Sanitation's reduction of trash collection pickups in Brownsville from six times to twice per week. In the riots that followed this arson, one man was killed and multiple others were injured. In May 1971, the mostly black residents of Brownsville objected to reductions in Medicaid, welfare funds, and drug prevention programs in a peaceful protest that soon turned violent. In the ensuing riot, protesters conflicted with police, with windows being broken, children stealing rides aboard buses, housewives tipping over banana stands, and the New York City Fire Department fighting over 100 fires in a single night. By then, people were afraid to go out at night, yet the 400 or so white families in south Brownsville were primarily concerned about housing remaining affordable. The streets had empty storefronts, with one block of Pitkin Avenue having over two-thirds of its 16 storefronts lying vacant. In 1970, Mayor John Lindsay referred to the area, which had been the city's poorest for several years, as "Bombsville" because of its high concentration of empty lots and burned-out buildings.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: After a wave of arson throughout the 1970s ravaged the low-income communities of New York City, many of the residential structures in Brownsville were left seriously damaged or destroyed, and Brownsville became synonymous for urban decay in many aspects. Even at the beginning of this arson wave, 29% of residents were impoverished, a number that would increase in later years. The city began to rehabilitate many formerly abandoned tenement-style apartment buildings and designate them low-income housing beginning in the late 1970s. Marcus Garvey Village, whose townhouse-style three-story apartment buildings had front doors and gardens, was an example of such low-income development that did not lower crime and poverty, as was intended; instead, the houses became the home base of a local gang, and poverty went up to 40%. However, the East Brooklyn Congregations' Nehemiah Housing, which also constructed buildings in East New York and Spring Creek, served to help residents find affordable housing with a good quality of life.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The neighborhood's crime rate decreased somewhat by the 1980s. Many subsidized multi-unit townhouses and newly constructed apartment buildings were built on vacant lots across the expanse of the neighborhood, and from 2000 to 2003, applications for construction of residential buildings in Brownsville increased sevenfold. By 2015, many community organizations had been formed to improve the quality of life in parts of Brownsville. Changes included temporary markets being erected there as well as commercial developments in residential areas.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: However, these improvements are limited to certain sections of Brownsville. In 2013, 39% of residents fell below the poverty line, compared to 43% in 2000, but the poverty rate of Brownsville is still relatively high, being twice the city's overall rate as well as 13% higher than that of nearby Newark, New Jersey. Brownsville families reported a median income of $15,978 as of 2008, below the United States Census poverty threshold. There is a high rate of poverty in the neighborhood's northeastern section, which is inhabited disproportionately by African-Americans and Latinos. The overall average income in Brownsville is lower than that of the rest of Brooklyn and the rest of New York City.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The reasons for Brownsville's lack of wholesale gentrification are numerous. One reporter for the magazine "The Nation" observed that the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico-Union, which had a poverty rate similar to Brownsville's in 2000, had become a "Businessweek" "next hot neighborhood" by 2007. Brownsville had not seen a similar revitalization because, unlike Pico-Union, it had not been surrounded by gentrified neighborhoods; did not have desirable housing; and was not a historic district or an area of other significance. In addition, Brownsville is unlike similar neighborhoods in New York City that had since gentrified. The South Bronx's coastline gave way to attractions like Barretto Point Park; Bedford-Stuyvesant offered brownstone townhouses comparable to those in affluent Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights; and Bushwick and Greenpoint became popular places for young professional workers once Williamsburg had become highly sought due to its waterfront location and proximity to Manhattan. By contrast, Brownsville is surrounded by other high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods like East New York, Ocean Hill, and East Flatbush. Its high concentration of public housing developments has traditionally prevented gentrification in this area. Brownsville is still majority African-American and Latino, with exactly two Jewish-owned businesses in Brownsville in 2012.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: A columnist for "The New York Times", writing for the paper's "Big City" section on 2012, stated that the many improvements to the city's overall quality of life, enacted by then-mayor Michael Bloomberg since 2002, "might have happened in Lithuania for all the effect they have had (or could have) on the lives of people in Brownsville." On the other hand, the area's lack of gentrification might have kept most of residents' money within the local Brownsville economy. The area's largest employer is supposedly the United States Postal Service, and the lack of mobility for many residents encourages them to buy from local stores instead. Kay Hymowitz wrote in her 2017 book, "The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back", that Brownsville was "the permanent ghetto" and that despite the gentrification in other Brooklyn neighborhoods, Brownsville contained a "concentrated, multigenerational black poverty" that caused its development to "remain static".


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The total land area is , and the ZIP Code for the neighborhood is 11212. Although there are no official borders, Brownsville is generally bounded by East New York Avenue to the north on the Ocean Hill border; East 98th Street/Ralph Avenue to the west, bordering East Flatbush and Crown Heights; the freight rail Bay Ridge Branch of the Long Island Rail Road and Linden Boulevard to the south, adjacent to the neighborhood of Canarsie; and Van Sinderen Avenue to the east, next to East New York. It is part of Brooklyn Community Board 16, which also includes Ocean Hill.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: As of 2008, there were a total of 28,298 housing units in Brownsville. Brownsville is dominated by public housing developments of various types, mostly in a small area bounded by Powell Street and Rockaway, Livonia, and Sutter Avenues that is composed of multiple inward-facing developments located on six superblocks. The neighborhood contains the most densely concentrated area of public housing in the United States. NYCHA owns more housing units in Brownsville than in any other neighborhood, with about one-third of the housing stock (around 10,000 units) in its 18 Brownsville developments, comprising over 100 buildings within . In 2013, it was estimated that the housing developments alone contained nearly 21,000 people. Many of these buildings were built in the mid-20th-century and are deteriorating .


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: In addition, below Pitkin Avenue, there is also a significant concentration of semi-detached multi-unit row houses similar to those found in East New York and Soundview surrounding the public housing developments. Many have been torn down and replaced by vacant lots or newly constructed subsidized attached multi-unit rowhouses with gardens, driveways, and finished basements. Most of these houses were built in East New York, Ocean Hill, and Brownsville under the Nehemiah development program. Of the Nehemiah developments, most of them were built on the western half of the neighborhood. Other newly built or restored housing includes 3,871 housing units for low-income residents, as well as Noble Drew Ali Plaza, a 385-unit apartment building that was notorious for drug dealing before the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) helped New York Mets first baseman Mo Vaughn buy and redevelop the building.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The Livonia Avenue Initiative, a multi-phase project situated along Livonia Avenue, is intended to create 791 apartments or houses for low-income residents. The initiative includes Livonia Commons, a proposed mixed-use project on the north side of Livonia Avenue. Livonia Commons' postmodern buildings will contain 270 apartments for lower-income citizens and of commercial space at ground level. The initiative's of community space will host a senior center and two concentrations of school classrooms, operated by two different groups. There would also be a gym, a swimming pool, a darkroom, and some studios. The entire Livonia Commons project would add of mixed-use space in multiple buildings. , there were 242 apartments being built, in addition to 468 affordable-housing units that had already been built in the East New York/Brownsville area.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Closer to the border with Ocean Hill, there are many limestone and brownstone townhouses in addition to tenements. In Brownsville, about 71% of rental housing is poorly maintained, more than the citywide rate of 56% and the boroughwide rate of 59%.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Many of Brownsville's empty lots are now community gardens, which are also widespread in nearby East New York and are maintained by multiple community groups; the gardens are often planted with vegetables that could provide food for residents. The gardens were originally supposed to be temporary, filling lots that would have otherwise gone unused. After a failed sale of several abandoned lots in the 1990s that would have involved destroying some of these gardens around the city, some city residents founded the New York City Community Garden Coalition to protect these gardens.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: From 2013 to 2015, NYCHA sold developers 54 lots in Brownsville, totaling . Some of these lots contained parks or parking lots. In December 2014 the HPD issued requests for qualifications to determine which developers could build new affordable housing on one of 91 empty HPD-owned lots in Brownsville. After controversy arose over the fact that some of these lots were actually garden sites, the HPD rescinded approval to build on 34 garden sites in Brownsville, while nine other garden sites in the area were approved for redevelopment.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The Loews Pitkin, an opulent , 2,827-seat movie theater built in 1929, was among 22 theaters in the area; the rest of the theaters had either been demolished or converted into stores. The Loews Pitkin, named after theater entrepreneur Marcus Loew, had fallen in disuse by the 1970s before being revitalized in the late 2000s. The theater's decaying interior was used as a church and a furniture store before Poko Partners bought the space in 2008 and redeveloped the theater into a charter school and retail space for $43 million. The theater was renovated in response to residents' requests for more retail space, and as part of the theater's refurbishment, the charter school would open in 2012 along with of retail space.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The NYPD's 65th Precinct (originally the 73rd Precinct), built in 1901, covered most of the area until its closure in the mid-1980s. The old 65th Precinct building at 1546 East New York Avenue was then sold to a family with the last name of Chen. In 2004, the Chens sold the building to Family Services Network of New York, a nonprofit organization funded by the state government. Family Services borrowed $1.1 million, but failed to pay the mortgage. Despite Family Services' grandiose $3.8 million plan to rehabilitate the 65th Precinct building into a community center, it sits derelict , with graffiti on the walls, garbage in the interior, and jail cells still intact.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: One block of Livonia Avenue from Barbey Street to Schenck Avenue is designated as "African Burial Ground Square", commemorating an African burial ground at the site that was discovered in 2010. The site contains remains similar to those found in the African Burial Ground National Monument in lower Manhattan, as well as those discovered under the former 126th Street Depot in East Harlem. As part of the designation, the Schenck Playground, behind the New Lots branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, would be rethemed with African cultural motifs and designs.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Hyman Spitz Florists, one of the businesses that dates back to Brownsville's initial settlement, was founded in 1898. It persisted at the same address, 1685 Pitkin Avenue, until 2004. Hyman Spitz Florists had helped provide flowers for such occasions as Donald and Ivana Trump's wedding.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Brownsville was 58,300, a decrease of 799 (1.4%) from the 59,099 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 76.1% (44,364) African American, 0.8% (471) White, 0.3% (165) Native American, 0.7% (416) Asian, 0.0% (18) Pacific Islander, 0.3% (180) from other races, and 1.2% (703) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 20.6% (11,983) of the population. 29.9% of the population were high school graduates and 8.4% had a bachelor's degree or higher.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The entirety of Community Board 16, which comprises Brownsville, had 84,525 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 75.1 years. This is lower than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are middle-aged adults and youth: 28% are between the ages of 0–17, 27% between 25 and 44, and 23% between 45 and 64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 11% and 12% respectively.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: As of 2016, the median household income in Community Board 16 was $30,207. In 2018, an estimated 28% of Brownsville residents lived in poverty, compared to 21% in all of Brooklyn and 20% in all of New York City. One in seven residents (14%) were unemployed, compared to 9% in the rest of both Brooklyn and New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 57% in Brownsville, higher than the citywide and boroughwide rates of 52% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Brownsville is considered to be low-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: New York City Department of City Planning showed that in the 2020 census data, there were 40,000+ Black residents and 10,000 to 19,999 Hispanic residents. Each the White and Asian populations were less than 5000 residents.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The NYPD's 73rd Precinct is located at 1470 East New York Avenue. NYCHA property in the area is patrolled separately by Police Service Area #2 (P.S.A. 2).


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville has consistently been considered the murder capital of New York City, with the 73rd Precinct ranking 69th safest out of 69 city precincts for per-capita crime in 2009. That year, there were 3 murders per 10,000 residents (higher than in any other neighborhood in the city), making for 28 overall murders in Brownsville; in overall crime, the 73rd Precinct was the 66th safest out of 69 neighborhoods. In the fifteen years between 1990 and 2005, reports of murder in Brownsville–Ocean Hill dropped 63 percent (to 22 murders in 2005); robberies 79 percent (to 597 in 2005); and felony assaults decreased 51 percent (to 562 in 2005). Crime rates in Brownsville had declined in the same manner that they had elsewhere in the city, but the declines were not as dramatic as in other areas of the city, with 72 people shot and 15 killed in Brownsville in 2013. With an incarceration rate of 1,698 per 100,000 residents, Brownsville's incarceration rate is three times the city's as a whole and higher than every other neighborhood's incarceration rate. At a non-fatal assault rate of 175 per 100,000 people, Brownsville also sees the most violent crimes per capita out of any neighborhood in the city. By contrast, Morrisania, a Bronx neighborhood that once had a crime rate as high as Brownsville's, saw its crime rate decline by 25 percent between 1998 and 2011, while Brownsville's crime rate stayed roughly even during the same time period.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The social problems associated with poverty, from crime to drug addiction, have plagued the area for decades. Despite the decline of crime compared to its peak during the crack and heroin epidemics, violent crime continues to be a serious problem in the community, especially gang-related gun violence. Empty lots and unused storefronts are common in Brownsville due to high rates of crime, mostly in the area's public housing developments. A reporter for "The New York Times" observed that some of the area's playgrounds were inadequately maintained with broken lights and unlocked gates, and that shootings were common in these public housing developments. Brownsville was so dangerous that one UPS driver, robbed at gunpoint, needed an armed security guard to accompany him while delivering packages to houses in the neighborhood. In an effort to reduce crime, the NYPD started a stop-and-frisk program in the early 2000s; this was controversial especially in Brownsville, with 93% of residents in one eight-block area reportedly being stopped and frisked (compared to a 7% rate citywide). However, serious crime per resident is decreasing, and from 2000 to 2011, the rate dropped from 45.0 to 35.3 serious crimes per 1,000 residents.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The firehouse for the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)'s Engine Company 231/Ladder Company 120 is located in Brownsville. Engine Company 283/Division 15's quarters are also located in Brownsville.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: A , $32 million FDNY facility was completed at 1815 Sterling Place in 2019. Designed by Chicago-based architectural firm Studio Gang, the new facility is both an FDNY training center and the firehouse for Rescue Company 2. Ground broke on the project in July 2016. The new firehouse, announced in December 2015, replaced Rescue 2's old location, a small building at 1472 Bergen Street in Crown Heights, which was built in the 1920s and had been occupied by Rescue 2 since 1985.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Just east of the Crown Heights–Utica Avenue subway station, on the border with Crown Heights, there is a park called Lincoln Terrace (also known as Arthur S. Somers Park), which slopes gently down toward the southern Brooklyn coastline. The New Lots Line transitions from a tunnel to an elevated structure within this park. The of land for Lincoln Terrace was purchased by the city in 1895–1897. In order to deter aircraft from flying through the area during World War I, parts of the park had turrets installed in "serviceable but inconspicuous locations" in 1918. Through 1935, additional land was added to the park (including land purchased from the Interborough Rapid Transit Company in 1928, which had built its New Lots Line in 1920). Streets were closed to make room for the extra parkland. The park was originally named after Abraham Lincoln, but in 1932, the western section of the park (west of Rockaway Parkway) was renamed after activist Arthur S. Somers, an area resident who had died that year. Around that time, the park and its playgrounds were refurbished.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Betsy Head Park is located in a lot on the north side of Livonia Avenue bounded by Strauss Street and Thomas S. Boyland Street. Opened in 1915, it is named after Betsy Head, a rich Briton, who died in 1907. In 1936, a new Olympic-size swimming pool, one of 11 across the city, was added as part of a Works Progress Administration project. In 2008, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Betsy Head Play Center as the first individual city landmark in Brownsville.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: At Livonia Avenue and Powell Street, Livonia Park is named after Livonia, in the Baltic region in what is now Latvia and Estonia. Livonia Avenue itself is so named for the same reason. According to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the park honors Livonia and its native people, the Livonians. The Livonians were never fully independent, instead being alternatively led by the Teutonic Order, Sweden, and the Russian Empire. The Kingdom of Livonia was a nominal state of Russia from 1570 to 1578 during the Livonian War, but did not actually gain independence. Eventually, the Livonians were assimilated into the larger Latvian population, keeping parts of their language and a few other cultural vestiges. The Russian Empire became communist as part of the October Revolution in 1917, and Latvia and Estonia gained independence soon after, only to become part of communist Russia again until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The park itself was designated on August 15, 1969, as part of NYCHA's development of the Tilden Houses. There are trees, benches, gaming spaces, a drinking fountain, and many grassy plots within the park. The red-and-white bricks in Livonia Park feature the colors of the Latvian flag.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville also has its own recreation facility with indoor swimming pools, outdoor athletic fields, and a playground. The Brownsville Recreation Center at the corner of Linden Boulevard, Mother Gaston Boulevard, and Christopher Avenue. Like all other indoor pools in the city, the Brownsville Recreation Center requires a NYC Parks pool membership. It was opened in 1953 as the Brownsville Boys' Club, a "one-room clubhouse" affiliated with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Over the next two years, the club raised $1.5 million in funds, and the city opened a brand-new recreation facility. Improvements were made to the center in the late 1990s and 2000s, including $265,000 of general repairs in 1996; $400,000 of heat and air conditioning refurbishments in 1998; and a $1.5 million renovation in 2008 that entailed installing a new playground, improving amenities such as benches and lighting, and replacing the athletic field with artificial turf.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The "Soul in the Hole" is a famous basketball court in Brownsville. The Hole is known for street basketball, and the "New York Daily News" characterizes it as having the "toughest" streetball competition in Brooklyn. It is located in the Brownsville Houses along Rockaway Avenue between Riverdale and Livonia Avenues. Famous players who played there included Fly Williams.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The traffic triangle bounded by Pitkin and East New York Avenues and Legion Street was originally named Vanderveer Park after Peter L. Vandeveer, the former owner of the land constituting that triangle. Vanderveer donated the land in 1896, and in 1911, it was renamed Zion Park in recognition of the Jewish community. The Zion Park War Memorial, a monumental wall based on a design by sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey and architect Henry Beaumont Herts, was installed in the triangle and dedicated in 1925. During the 1970s, the monument was heavily vandalized, but it was restored and cleaned up by the 1990s. This monument features a star of David. The bas relief sculptures are mounted on a limestone stele and side pylons.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: The Wyckoff Triangle, bounded by New Lots, Riverdale, and Van Siclen Avenues, is named after local property owner Hendrick Wyckoff, who ceded the land used for the traffic triangle. During the American Revolutionary War, Wyckoff was a spy for the colonists rebelling against the British. Through the 1920s, Wyckoff's family maintained the park, which is now privately maintained because it is too small to be a NYC Parks public space.


title: Brownsville, Brooklyn

text: Brownsville is a heavily Democratic area; in the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama "won what was very close to a unanimous vote" in the neighborhood.