This north Brooklyn neighborhood may be one of the coolest in the city, with its influx of new residents, many of them artists priced out of neighboring Williamsburg, but it ranks a lowly 52nd for per capita crime in the DNAinfo.com Crime & Safety Report.

Artists may have replaced vandals, but major crime in the 83rd Precinct increased 6 percent from 2009 to 2010, with shootings and murders spiking 30 percent each, robberies rising 23 percent, and car thefts jumping 12 percent. Bushwick ranks 58th in the city for violent crimes — murder, rape, robbery and felony assault — based on 2010 statistics.

Although burglaries dropped just more than 1 percent in 2010, Bushwick ranks a lowly 66th of 69 for that category. Still, things are a lot better than in past generations, when the neighborhood was transformed from a tidy community of wood-frame houses into an abandoned wasteland plagued by drugs and fires. When white residents began their flight from this part of the city in the 1960s, unscrupulous lenders preyed on the remaining minority residents, who defaulted on their loans and abandoned their homes. Then came the blackout of 1977, when Bushwick was torn apart by looting and arson. The downfall continued in the 1980s and 90s, thanks to crack cocaine.

The city finally launched an aggressive program in 1997 to improve housing, while the police targeted the drug trade.