Neither more nor less

Last night ,Saturday morning at 1:00 AM , on Avenue A in the middle of the block between 7th St. and St. Marks Place , a young man was struck in the mouth and robbed of his cell phone by some in a group of several young males and at least one female all of whom quickly left the scene. The young man , unable to speak , was accompanied by a young woman who related to police what had happened.

The injury was severe enough that as mentioned above the young man had been rendered unable to speak and with considerable blood issuing from his mouth his hand and upper arm had become painted a solid blood red . An ambulance arrived and the young man was removed to an emergency room for medical attention .

Before the ambulance was able to leave the scene though , a group of young males who clearly knew the injured young man gathered at the rear of the ambulence creating a disturbance , displaying considerable agitation and anger . There was some discord with cops before the group ran off into the night in the same direction as the earlier group responsible for the assault , up avenue A .

Felony assaults are up in this part of town and this particular assault may be an example of a kind of assault that we may see more of .According to the statistics that I have seen , most assaults occur outside of bars ... mostly the result of too much drinking .This assault had nothing to do with a bar or likely even drinking .I suspect that this is an assault that is the result of groups of young people ,mostly male ,confronting each other solely for the sake of having a confrontation and doing so in a manner that often leads to some level of combat on the street . Avenue A , an entertainment strip belonging to no one in particular now , is in this case simply a destination , a suitable "turf" for this combat.

Recently a young man was stabbed to death in Union Square Park in such a confrontion of rival groups . A few years back groups on 6th avenue between 3rd and 4th street typically fought it out with varying results . In the Times Square arcades ,which have mostly been closed , groups of youths more than once fatally confronted each other . Groups of young males and females have for ages when provided a turf to battle over ... battled.... and often fatally . I suspect that from what I am seeing on the avenue , from what I know of the past in other locations and the way entertainment scenes evolve in our city , that we are now seeing another new round of violent confrontations on the common ground of avenue A .