Just three months into 2010 robberies, burglaries, grand larceny and car thefts are on the rise in much of the borough, especially in some traditionally safe neighborhoods, NYPD statistics show.

“It’s terrifying,” said Lauren Bousquet, 24, who just after midnight last Sunday was robbed at gunpoint along with two friends by a trio of young thugs on Joralemon St. in Brooklyn Heights.

“I don’t feel like we were doing anything that risky. It was fairly well-lit,” said Bousquet. “It was a reasonable time and in a safe neighborhood. How do you stay safe?”

Bousquet and her friends were mugged in Brooklyn’s sleepy 84th Precinct, where there was a 104% increase (from 24 to 49) in robberies through March 21.

Some locals say the early upsurge in crimes like burglary is an outgrowth of the bad economy.

“You have all these kids hanging out without jobs and it’s combustible; that and a decrease in the number of cops on the streets is a bad combination,” said City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Fort Greene). “That combination has lead to, and will lead to, an increase in violent crime.”

In Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace’s 72nd Precinct, burglaries were up 120%, from 25 to 55. In the 67th Precinct, in Flatbush, car theft is up 51%, from 45 to 68.

Boroughwide, nearly 70% of all Brooklyn’s 23 precincts saw a 20% or higher jump in robberies, burglaries, grand larcenies or auto thefts, NYPD statistics show.

But not all the crime in Brooklyn so far this year is economic.

Even scarier felonies are up in some neighborhoods such as Clinton Hill’s 88th Precinct, where a rapist was at large for almost three weeks and six people have been shot this year.

“I don’t want the neighborhood to go back to where it was 10 years ago. I’ve seen it at its worst,” said Renee Parris, 47, an administrative assistant who lives near Gates and Classon Aves., where one woman was raped March 23.

“I have to be more careful,” she said. “We all have to be more careful.”

After the the Daily News reported last week that citywide murders and shootings have increased in the first three months of 2010, Mayor Bloomberg called the statistics “worrisome … still very low, but still up.”

Worrisome enough that in some Brooklyn neighborhoods, residents are taking action.

Flatbush’s 70th Precinct Community Council President Ed Powell said that after five years without a volunteer patrol group, he is reactivating 50 volunteers to help safeguard the neighborhood, where shootings have climbed from two to six.

“I’m seeing the shootings and I’m seeing the muggings and I refuse to sit by while things go backwards to where they were before,” said Powell, 69.

The NYPD did not return repeated calls for comment. But experts said Brooklyn’s crime spike may look worse than it actually is, a result of having low crime numbers to begin with.

“When things like this happen they don’t turn out to be harbingers of doom,” said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“We’re talking about a relatively small scale … and frequently these are the kinds of things where a few people are a crime wave.”

(Source:  NY Daily News)