Kevin Heldman is an award-winning journalist. He's reported from such places as a psychiatric hospital, a Japanese prison, a London homeless shelter, Albania and Afghanistan. East New York is, by far, the worst neighborhood in New York City, among the worst in the nation, and has been for quite some time. Kevin tried to report out why. Then something happened. This is What The Hell Happened In East New York?, a co-production with The Big Roundtable that seeks to answer that question in two parts. The first is a four-episode podcast that chronicles Kevin as he unravels the issues with East New York, and ultimately, himself. The second is Kevin's exhaustive investigation into why East New York is the way it is.

East New York, Brooklyn- the #1 ranked worst neighborhood in literally every single quality of life category- from arrests to suicides to cirrhosis cases, vd cases, child abuse cases, pollution & toxic chemical contaminated sites, police brutality cases, number of homeless shelters, number of drug rehabs, number of sex offenders residing, AIDS deaths, number of incarcerated, and every year the highest number of 7 major felony arrests and number of misdemeanors.

I spent years of my life immersed in East New York for an investigative article and podcast simultaneously launched on Digg/The Week, The Big Roundtable and Apple Podcasts.

The most consequential article I ever wrote.

East New York is likely the worst hood in the United States- impossible to rehabilitate or reform or gentrify because it's trapped-locked in on 4 borders- acres of graveyards on its northern border, huge toxic Kennedy Airport on its eastern border, huge polluted Jamaica Bay, landfills and a masssive abandoned old school style institution and campus that used to warehouse all NYC's developmentally disabled on its southern border and a fortresses of numerous massive housing projects in Brownsville (Mike Tyson's old hood) on its western border.

And a rotting freight train track built around 1899 and all it's rotting freight cars and the related toxic freight, minerals, electrical circuitry, coal, diesel, oil, copper, etc runs through the whole middle of the neighborhood from east to west.

Full article here -- https://digg.com/2016/what-the-hell-happened-in-east-new-york

Civic leaders want to fix East New York? Do they know what they're up against?

BALKAN-ALBANIAN TRANSNATIONAL CRIME INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
(2011-- on-going)

These stories are about Albanian organized crime, but they are really a more human, social, psychological story of a people; of the defendants and victims and communities involved. This is about corrupt and murdered politicians (Albanian but with US connections), corrupt government and/or law enforcement in Albania and the Balkans, murdered Albanian police, US stock fraud, massive amounts of transnational illicit drug trafficking, violence, kidnappings, much interstate US crime, and many crimes in Canada.

Remembering Albania in 1997; interviews in the penitentiary in Michigan (the Albanian inmate with 10 sentences, six for life); with the FBI's Balkan Task Force; riding down the highway with the government's confidential informant; in the Albanian coffee shops and community off 15 Mile Road Detroit; wandering late night on the streets and in the cafes, bars, pizzerias, strip clubs, and social clubs in the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island - - where rap groups The Bloody Alboz (TBA), Rebel, Uptown Affiliates, Unikkatil, and singers Aurela Gace and Anita Bitri ring bells.

The Albanian civil servant with the silencer, the Uzi, the shotgun from Fat Tony, the kilos, the betrayals, snitches, cooperating witnesses looking for their 5K letter, wiretaps and body wires, pen registers and trace and traps, border crossings, bodies dumped on the BQE highway, the reporter getting anonymous tips (credible) on fugitives and traffickers, the dead pop singer - - inside and outside of the on-going Federal RICO death penalty-connected trial in Manhattan. Shqiptar.

Part I: Introduction to Albanian Transnational Crime
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2011/03/an-introduction-to-the-new-york-albanian-mob-067223

Part II: From 15 Mile Road Detroit Michigan to Manhattan Federal Court
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2011/06/the-big-trial-an-albanian-american-crime-story-from-15-mile-road-to-pearl-street-067223

Part III: The Verdict in the First Case; The Crimes Continue
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2011/07/the-verdict-feds-chip-away-at-the-new-york-albanian-mob-with-bigger-battles-to-come-067223

Part IV: Anatomy of a Mob Hit; Arrests are Made Across the Nation and Overseas
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2011/07/anatomy-of-an-albanian-mob-coup-the-challenge-the-balk-the-murder-067223

Part V: The Sidekick Wears a Wire; New Kingpins Face Trial
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2011/07/runaway-sidekick-how-little-tani-kocareli-escaped-from-the-new-york-albanian-mob-then-botched-it-067223

Part VI: The streets of Tirana and the roots of Albanian-American organized crime
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2012/06/the-streets-of-tirana-and-the-roots-of-albanian-american-organized-crime-067223

Mr. Lin in the back of Lok Hin. | Kevin Heldman

TAKEOUT STORY: Behind bulletproof glass and
out on a bike for a Chinese restaurant in Mott Haven

You live in Manhattan below 125th Street, or gentrified Brooklyn, or a quiet part of Queens. You want Chinese food. You're not following some recommendation from an old Sam Sifton column or a food blog, though. You just want some chicken lo mein, sweet and sour chicken, egg drop soup and fortune cookies.

You go to that drawer full of menus with dragons or pandas or bamboo on them, and the random Chinese characters, and the obligatory promise of fast and free delivery. And in 25 minutes or so a Chinese man on a bike will come to your door and you'll maybe drop him a xie xie with your tip and he'll give you a bye bye and he's gone. End of story.

But there's a different version of that story that goes on in many parts of this city. And that version is about money, class, race, and education. And in that version people are robbed, assaulted and killed, and people live in fear, constantly on guard and under threat over Chinese food.

REHAB AS SKINNER BOX, BOYS TOWN AND HOGAN'S HEROES

Attempts to Turn Burnouts, Gangstas and Misfits into Dale Carnegie Through
Scrubbing Floors, Wearing Diapers, and Sitting Motionless on a Bench for a Month

(And Where Are These People Today)

17 and trying to look cool as a ward of the state -
nowhere else to go and nothing else to do

It started as an article in my college newspaper in 1990 - - "Just Say No to Drug Rehabs " - - which led to a bizarre booking on the John McLaughlin Show (screaming for no reason, bombastic talk show host) where I was slouched down in a chair between an expert reporter from Newsday (Dennis Duggan) and an expert from the New York Times (Michel Marriot) trying to explain that rehabs back then sometimes were way out of control; not good places (I was in two of them for two years as a teenager). Residents from the drug rehab Phoenix House (one of the places I was in) were bussed in as audience filler. Their president, Dr. Mitch Rosenthal ( http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/list/143.php) was the featured interviewee. Surprisingly he didn't seem to have a feel for what the hell goes on among residents in the basement of a treatment facility in a tenement in the Bronx.

INSIDE THE NUDIST LOCKER ROOM:
THE AUTHOR DISROBES TO COVER THE NAKED
Peter Kacalanos, frail and agreeable with a full beard and long gray pony tail,
is the 59-year-old president and founder of the Skinnydippers,
a New York City based nudist...

A YOUNG MAN, HOMELESS IN THE LIVING ROOM
Bill H., Shakespearean actor, lives his life on a couch . He has
no direction, no prospects, and no agenda. He takes the occasional anti-anxiety
pill and says every day he feels like just falling asleep and never waking up...

MULTI-PART INVESTIGATION INTO THE JAPANESE PRISON SYSTEM (Winner of the Livingston Award for International Reporting)

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Texas teenager Rudy Meinecke was tortured for three days and nights.
His alleged tormentors included hustlers, drag queens and drug dealers.
They were all children of the Montrose

THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE WHEN SOMEONE
YOU LOVE DIES IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES
(with everlasting gratitude to The Rosalynn Carter Fellowship)

TRAVELS IN WAR-TORN AFGHANISTAN
When You Run Around Afghanistan Alone And in Shirtsleeves While
All Around You Your Fellow Americans Are Barricaded, Bunkered, And
Bulletproof-Vested Up, This is What You Can Experience

TWO BOYS FROM JUVENILE DETENTION
(ONE MURDERS, ONE STRUGGLES NOT TO)
Four months after his release from the Gainesville State School,
seventeen-year-old Federico Solis is sitting in my apartment one night,
still in his warehouse work clothes...