From the New York Times news section:

A Park Shed Its Reputation. Then Came the Tessa Majors Murder.

The deadly stabbing of Ms. Majors, a college student, rekindled fears about Morningside Park near Columbia University.

By Corey Kilgannon

Dec. 14, 2019

Morningside Park seems to jut up, like a narrow extension of Central Park, into Upper Manhattan — separating affluent Columbia University, in the elevated Morningside Heights neighborhood, from Harlem to the east.

“It’s literally the border between the Columbia community and Harlem,” said Amanda Ong, 21, a Columbia senior.

The park was long considered to be a dangerous expanse, especially after nightfall. But as crime dropped over the years, so did those fears. …

Columbia’s relationship with its surroundings has had many uneasy patches. The university, which has a huge endowment and owns scores of buildings, has been criticized by some longtime residents as a gentrifying force.

Tyrone Carter, 60, who works in a wine shop in Harlem, said that growing up in Harlem, he and his friends rarely ventured to Morningside Heights because it was “a different demographic.”

“People here lived through a heroin epidemic, a crack epidemic,” Mr. Carter said. “So being black in Harlem, some see it as invasion when young white up-and-comers start buying up buildings. I was born and raised in Harlem, and I can barely afford to live here now.”

Maria Lopez, 61, a longtime park neighbor, gazed at the crime scene and said, “When I was growing up, and even in my 20s, you never came to this park, daytime or nighttime.”

But now, she said, many newcomers exhibit a boldness that contrasts with the wariness that some older New Yorkers retain from more dangerous times.

“People with money think, ‘I have the right to walk through here,’” she said. “Old-timers would never do that.” …

The attack also reopened longstanding questions over both racial tensions and Columbia’s relationship with more economically struggling nearby neighborhoods with many black and Hispanic residents.

Some students said they were worried less about their own safety than about the attack being used to portray Harlem as unsafe.

“A lot of response I’m getting from people is, ‘Oh, be careful of that area,’” said Ms. Ong, the Columbia senior, adding that such a response was “racially coded.”

Matthew Lim, 22, a Columbia junior, also worried about how the news might affect the relationship between the Columbia community and longtime Harlemites.

“We know that, just because of one incident, we shouldn’t make broad-stroke judgments about people who live here, but it’s hard if it affects a member of our community,” he said. …

The local city councilman, Mark Levine, called the park much safer than it was 20 years ago, but added that the recent uptick in robberies was “unacceptable.”

He said that some of the messages his office received from constituents after the attack were “laced with ugly and inappropriate racial comments” — some demanding the return of stop and frisk and a more aggressive style of policing more common two decades ago.

“One of my concerns arising from the young age of the suspects in this case is that there’ll be pressure on police to ratchet up aggressive enforcement on kids as young as 13,” Mr. Levine said.