The Trenton Times published the following article on March 26, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton police director’s four-point crime plan receives mixed reviews from council

By Alex Zdan/The Times 
on March 26, 2013 at 7:15 AM, updated March 26, 2013 at 7:18 AM

TRENTON — Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. needs to spend less time fighting against members of his own department and more time implementing plans that will decrease violence in the capital city, council president Phyllis Holly-Ward said yesterday.

She was not impressed with Rivera’s presentation to council last Tuesday, which Holly-Ward felt focused on negative statements about an “evil force” inside the department Rivera believed was fighting his leadership. Rather than hearing an outline of a robust strategy to fight violent crime, Holly-Ward was frustrated by what she interpreted as Rivera’s priority to get “naysayers” within his department in line.

“What is everyone going to do? We’re going to just sit around and die while you’re getting the inside together?” she asked.

During the hour-long presentation, Rivera defended decisions he’s made such as disbanding the department’s tactical units and reopening police substations, but Holly-Ward said he did not provide the detailed plan she was hoping for. Holly-Ward and her constituents have seen the cost of crime on the city’s streets.

“I need to see some results now,” she said. “I need to feel them, see them.”

Adding that Rivera’s presentation changed her expectation of what a police director should be doing, Holly-Ward said that she is no longer sure she has confidence in Rivera to lead the police department.

“I don’t know if I do or don’t now,” she said.

Rivera, who has been on the job for a year, could not be reached for comment yesterday. A message left at his office was not returned, and the department’s spokesman declined comment.

Last week, Rivera had said dealing with the established, harmful culture inside the department took priority.

“Here’s the bottom line: We had to fix the ship before we chart the waters,” Rivera said during one exchange. “Plan A is never going to work if the culture doesn’t want it to work.”

Rivera was called before the council in part because elected officials and residents were disappointed Rivera had never publicly unveiled an overall crime plan.

In an interview immediately after his presentation last Tuesday, Rivera clarified the four points of his plan, which was launched three months ago without a public explanation.

His plan has more officers in the patrol bureau as a result of the Tactical Anti-Crime (TAC) unit’s dissolution in mid-December, and uses precinct buildings in the East and West Wards as bases to redistribute police in the city’s neighborhoods, he said.

Some of the marked units will be assigned to suppression patrols — sitting on or moving through high-crime areas to deter further trouble. Ongoing proactive and long-term investigations will be managed by outside federal, state, and county law enforcement agencies like the FBI, New Jersey State Police and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, Rivera said.

All of it will be informed by “intelligence-led policing,” with information coming from city sources and the State Police, Rivera said.

Rivera last week defended disbanding TAC, which he said freed up a “good chunk” of money that was already helping the department as a whole. Overtime decreased, and the officers sent back to patrol are no longer making the 3 percent extra detective pay they received while in the specialized unit.

If overtime is not decreased, the repercussions will be dramatic, Rivera has said.
Savings are necessary if two formerly demoted lieutenants and 10 sergeants who regained their ranks last September are to stay promoted. Rivera’s arrangement with the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) means he has to show overtime savings or those supervisors will be demoted again, he said.

In Rivera’s hands Tuesday night was a dog-eared copy of what he calls the “real numbers” — statistics collected by his department using the FBI’s definition of offenses and submitted to the New Jersey State Police for review each month. These numbers are part of the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which is federally-mandated and overseen by the FBI.

“All the numbers here, where you look at all the numbers, show crime is down,” Rivera said last week.

Indeed, Rivera is correct — in the big picture. Total reported crimes are down 4.4 percent the first two full months of this year compared to the same time in 2012, decreasing from 727 to 695. The drop for those calendar months even includes overall violent crime, down 9.5 percent from 200 incidents to 181, according to the most recent UCR data which is publicly available on the State Police website.

The FBI designates four categories of violent crime: murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

The UCR numbers for January and February 2013 show homicides have gone up compared to last year, from three to six, while rapes have remained flat. Robberies of all types are up 16 percent, at 101 from 87 in 2012. Armed robberies have surged 41 percent, up to 62 from 44. Those committed with knives, other dangerous weapons, and no weapon at all have decreased, the numbers show.

Assaults are down overall, including those committed with firearms, which include shootings. Assaults with a gun went down to 33 from 38 the year before, according to the UCR information. As of late yesterday, 42 people had been shot in 2013 during 35 separate incidents in the city, Lt. Steve Varn said. Those numbers include the six homicides, all of which were committed by gunfire.

TAC was designed to address criminal activity before it grew more serious. Rivera’s disbandment of the unit in December has met with concern from residents and the police union. Several council members shared those worries with Rivera.

“At the point where we’re always being reactive, at what point are we being proactive with the guns and drugs and stuff?” Holly-Ward asked.

Rivera responded with a litany of outside agencies, including the FBI, bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, U.S. Marshals Service, and the gang and gun units of the State Police.

Rivera said all of those departments are helping to fight crime in the city.

During the interview after his presentation concluded, Rivera was asked if there is any unit of the Trenton Police Department that is designed to be proactive. Rivera said the patrol officers had that duty. But the suppression units are by their nature reactive.

“We have assigned suppression cars to patrol those areas and saturate those areas where we see spikes in crime,” Rivera had said to the council.

During the meeting, Rivera had engaged in a heated dispute with Councilman George Muschal, and Holly-Ward said she was disappointed that all decorum had been lost.

“If one person can get to you like that extent, how can you control an entire department?” she said.

“I’m just disappointed he was able to let someone take him so much off his track,” she added.

Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.