No one died.

This time.

Hit by bullets, four young men fell to the ground outside of Tracey Towers on May 4.

Thankfully, they will recover.

Yes, let’s breathe a sigh of relief, but no, let’s not just go back to what we were doing.

Because next time, or the time after that, we’ll have a dead kid, neighbor or friend to pick up off the sidewalk. It could be anybody with a name, a birthday, a favorite song, a baseball game to go play.

On the surface, this latest incident is like any other violent scenario involving urban minorities. Assailant and victim are collapsed into one impression, the bottom line being: it’s tragic but they were bad kids and had it coming. This is the message we repeatedly get from the 11 o’clock news and the tabloid treatment of these stories.

But let’s look closer at the more complex picture and see if we can still put it out of our minds.

The incident occurred 8:30 p.m., not 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. The young men are Ghanaian – there is a large Ghanaian community at Tracey. At least one of them is enrolled in college.

According to someone who has his ear to the ground, they were on their way to see “Spiderman 3.” This is not to say there aren’t troublemakers at Tracey, just that these young men don’t appear to be them.

Police say they found weapons next to the victims – metal pipes, bats and electrical wire.

They must have been spoiling for a fight, right?

Well, maybe, but it’s even more likely they were expecting a fight. Because, as almost anyone at Tracey or the Knox-Gates community across the parkway can tell you, turf-based skirmishes are nothing new in the neighborhood. Many residents report that the tensions and the fights go back five years or more, and they aren’t limited to Tracey and Knox-Gates.

So, it seems that part of everyday life of being young in Tracey, and other parts of the community, is arming yourself just to get a cheeseburger on Jerome Avenue. This is the kind of thing that isn’t reflected in the crime stats.

What can be done?

We need to talk more, in our churches, schools and community associations, but also across blocks, neighborhoods, and local institutions about youth violence and work toward solutions. To our knowledge, there has been no community meeting in the last several years to address this issue specifically. It’s time.

(One key point: if there is a meeting, organizers must involve and invite young people. There won’t be a solution without them.)

We also need to figure out how to best utilize the resources of the 52nd Precinct. Our instinct is to call for a greater police presence in Knox-Gates and at Tracey, and maybe that’s necessary right now. But many neighborhood youth say they don’t trust the cops enough to give them information, etc., so while more cops might be a good idea in the short term, it’s not going to solve the underlying problems.

The shootings on May 4 were a wake-up call for our community.

Now, it’s up to us to start communicating and creating solutions.

Ed. note: A group called the Children’s Collective is planning a Community Night Out on Children’s Safety at MS 80 tonight – Thursday, May 17. (See Neighborhood Notes on page 10 for more information).