Bishop Willie Billips, left, pauses to speak to Wildredo Mercado, center, and his nephew Jalen, 6, outside the Brownsville Houses, a housing project in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Monday, Dec. 30, 2013, in New York. Year-end boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that New York is the safest big city in America ring hollow in Brooklyn’s Brownsville, a neighborhood of entrenched gang violence that has proven stubbornly immune to strategies that have pushed crime to historic lows across the rest of the city. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)