The Trenton Times published the following article on July 9, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton police use overtime and State Police to hold back a tide of violent crime

By Alex Zdan/The Times 
on July 09, 2013 at 6:50 AM, updated July 09, 2013 at 7:27 AM

TRENTON — A Trenton police unit was around the corner from Rowan Towers late the night of June 15, so close the officers heard the fusillade of gunshots that took 19-year-old Tiara Green’s life.

They arrived at the high-rise within seconds. The building lobby had become a makeshift triage center for Green and two other wounded people, and a refuge for the 30 other people who had been gathered in Gilbert Alley behind the tower when the shooting started.

Out of the darkness, a gunman had walked up and begun shooting into the crowd from some distance away, firing with little care as to whom he hit, police said later. Green died in emergency surgery shortly afterward.

No police department can be everywhere at once, and Trenton’s layoff-depleted department has had to compensate like few others in the nation since losing more than one-third of its manpower.

Shootings were already on the upswing when a large number of police officers were laid off in 2011. The rate of gunfire increased even more rapidly in 2012 and this year. Including Green, 120 people were shot between Jan. 1 and June 30, and 19 murders were recorded just halfway through this year.

Since May, Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. has used overtime funds to bring in officers and detectives on the weekends to patrol high-crime areas in the most recent effort to tamp down the violence.

“We realized it was time to address the spike in crime,” Rivera said after a budget hearing for his department two weeks ago. “Our summer initiative program has been very successful, particularly in the targeted areas of Stuyvesant and Passaic.”

When the initiative is active, several officers ride around a designated area that’s often lit with police searchlights, making their presence known in marked units and making arrests. In the week after Green’s death the city reported no shootings — a rarity, considering the 94 incidents in six months work out to about a shooting every other day.

Yet cops and members of the community will admit the Trenton Police Department is not as feared on the streets as it once was, and criminals seem to have less worry about being caught.

“That doesn’t seem to be a big deal anymore,” said the Rev. Joseph Ravenell, pastor of Samaritan Baptist Church in North Trenton.

Ravenell has spent 20 years as a prison chaplain, tending to people behind bars. He was surprised at the attitudes during a recent visit he made to the Mercer County Correction Center in Hopewell Township. People seemed at home in the prison.

“And it was like I was back on the block, there were so many kids from the neighborhood,” Ravenell said.

“So the idea of getting caught doesn’t seem to weigh that heavy,” he said.

In the 1970s, the Trenton Police Department was 400 strong, said Lt. Mark Kieffer, the president of the Superior Officers’ Association whose father was on the force at the time.

Recruit classes became fewer starting about a decade ago, and the force atrophied below 300. Layoffs nearly two years ago mean the department can barely field 200 rank-and-file cops now.

The New Jersey State Police has staged three deployments into Trenton, and Rivera said he’s talking with State Police brass this week. Troopers have been used in most of the state’s urban areas, from a tourism district in Atlantic City to an ongoing deployment to Camden to the Passaic River Corridor Initiative, which brings manpower into Newark, Irvington, and even Paterson, a State Police spokesman said.
Trenton city council members yesterday introduced an idea of their own to bring down gun violence: the Safe Box.

A locked church suggestion box has been refashioned into a low-tech tipline for people to write and submit anonymous information. Councilwoman Phyllis Holly-Ward, who devised the idea, said Safe Boxes will be placed mostly in churches. No one will know whether a person is dropping in a crime tip, a suggestion to the pastor, or a prayer request.

“We cannot guarantee you this will stop the gun violence or solve any crime,” Holly-Ward said during a news conference outside Grace Baptist Church in the shadow of Rowan Towers. “What I can tell you is silence is a killer in itself, and silence is no longer an option.”

Four churches have signed on to host the Safe Boxes. Their pastors will hold the keys and periodically go through the boxes, sorting out the tips and passing them along to police.

Angela Murchison, a relative of Green’s, called out Holly-Ward during the event, saying she did not believe the Safe Box would be effective.

“You’re talking about a piece of paper in a box,” Murchison said. “That’s not going to affect what’s going on in the community.”

Rivera said he supported the measure, as people with information are often reluctant to come forward and tell the police.

“I don’t blame those individuals, because I understand some of them are operating under fear of retaliation,” Rivera said.

“The reality is our shootings are up, this is affecting our homicides,” he said.

Crime Stoppers has been offering cash rewards for anonymous tips for a dozen years. Board member Jim Carlucci said anything that gets people to share information with law enforcement is a good thing.

“The community is the missing piece here,” he said. “Whether it’s Crime Stoppers or Safe Box, the goal is to get the community to respond.

Donning yellow T-shirts made for them by an artist’s community that Councilwoman Marge Caldwell-Wilson said is “fighting crime with art,” the majority of Holly-Ward’s council colleagues supported the Safe Box idea.

Councilman George Muschal, a former cop, admitted there are already telephone tip lines like Crime Stoppers, and said the Safe Box addition would only help.

“But when you look at it, and you see all these people gunned down, when is enough enough?” Muschal asked.

West Ward Councilman Zach Chester, whose constituency saw the city’s 20th homicide of 2013 Saturday night, said the cycle of violence should not be allowed to continue.

“I’m fed up,” Chester said. “We’re all fed up.”

Chester defended the votes of himself, Holly-Ward, Muschal, Caldwell-Wilson, and Verlina Reynolds-Jackson against applying for a federal grant that could have brought a dozen more police officers on the force. He said the $2.27 million in matching funds the city would have had to provide is too steep a price.

“The decision not to support them was a financial decision,” Chester said. “We don’t have the resources to apply for these applications.”

Kieffer and his members are still steaming over the vote, which they believe justified a tax increase.

“If you want public safety to be your number one priority, you’ve got to put money towards your number one priority,” Kieffer said.

Staff writer Jenna Pizzi contributed to this report. Contact Alex Zdan atazdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.