Newark Shootings, Camden Burglaries Make Crime Christie’s Issue

By Terrence Dopp
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Shootings in Newark surged 43 percent
after New Jersey’s largest municipality fired 162 police
officers in November. Camden burglaries rose 65 percent after
the state’s poorest city shed half its force in January.
Democrats and unions blame Governor Chris Christie, a
first-term Republican who cut municipal funding by $445 million
last year to help balance his budget. Though many studies reject
a direct link between fewer cops and more crime, the issue may
still prove a political hurdle for Christie.
U.S. cities from San Jose, California, to Cleveland have
fired police amid budget deficits, leading to claims of
increased response times and stretched departments. Christie,
whose cuts have won him national attention, was elected a year
before a record 29 new governors took office this January,
including 17 cost-slashing Republicans. His 2013 re-election
race would be a test of residents’ response to such reductions.
“I voted for the governor, but I regret it,” said Joe
Adade, 53, owner of a shoe shop on Halsey Street in downtown
Newark, who holds Christie responsible for the crime jump.
“Police officers don’t come around here anymore because now
they have to be all over town.”
Trenton, New Jersey’s capital, said in July it would fire
108 police officers, a third of the force. New Jersey has 3,800
fewer cops now than in January 2010, when Christie took office,
according to the state Policemen’s Benevolent Association.
Narcotics and gang units have been placed back into patrol, and
beats assigned to communities and schools “have been
forgotten,” said Anthony Weiners, president of the union.

‘Perfect Storm’

Nationwide, crime has dropped annually for more than a
decade, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which
released preliminary 2010 statistics in May. If violations rise
this year, it will be because of the public-safety cuts, said
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police,
the nation’s largest police-officers union.
“They’re basically creating the perfect storm in a
laboratory,” said Pasco, a 25-year veteran of the federal
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “All of those things
that led to crime reductions, especially cops on the street who
know their beat, won’t be there.”
In Camden, which has rehired 74 of the fired officers using
federal grants, murders rose 37 percent this year through Aug.
1, according to the county prosecutor’s office. Total violent
crime rose 11 percent.

Crime Statistics

In Newark, where a quarter of its 280,000 residents live in
poverty, crime reduction has been a priority of Mayor Cory
Booker. In January 2010, he announced a 21 percent decrease in
offenses since 2006, the year he took office, including a 46
percent drop in shootings. That March, the city posted its first
murder-free month in 40 years.
This year through July 31, shootings are up 43 percent from
the same period of 2010, murders and auto thefts are each up 19
percent and robberies are up 15 percent, according to the city
police department.
“It’s crazy out here,” James Stewart, first vice
president of the Newark Fraternal Order of Police, said July 16
while listening to the police scanner in his personal car.
That evening, a reporter invited to accompany Stewart to
police scenes observed many of the same officers responding to
nearly every call that came across the radio for their precinct,
one of four that covers the 24-square-mile city. A standoff with
a suicidal man tied up dozens of police, fire and rescue workers
for nearly an hour.

Kansas City

Any link between police staffing and crime is a matter of
dispute among criminologists.
Many U.S. police forces decades ago passed the point where
adding more officers has the effect of lowering crime, said Gary
Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University in
Tallahassee.
Kleck cited experiments in Kansas City in the 1970s and
Newark in the 1980s that found increasing patrols had no effect
on crime. Job training, drug treatment and programs to
reintegrate ex-prisoners play a more direct and substantial
role, he said.
“What has been happening to cities like Newark is that
inner-city economies are crumbling,” Kleck said in a July 14
telephone interview. “What that means is that Newark’s
municipal government doesn’t have the tax dollars to pay for
police and so they lay off officers, but it doesn’t mean those
layoffs caused higher crime.”

‘Not Overwhelming’

Researchers at San Diego-based National University, who
compared crime rates with staff levels in 24 cities and counties
over a 12-year period, found “some but not overwhelming”
support for the view that more cops equals less crime. The study
didn’t account for factors other than staffing that might have
affected the rates.
Wayne Fisher, a former Newark cop who is executive director
of the Police Institute at Rutgers University’s School of
Criminal Justice, said manpower reductions on the scale of
Camden and Newark go beyond the level of cuts used in previous
crime studies. Fewer police make it impossible to direct
increased patrols to areas experiencing spikes and erode the
ability to solve crimes and conduct investigations, he said.
“I don’t think anyone doubts the fiscal crisis for states
and cities is real, but there’s no free lunch here,” Fisher
said in an interview. “The cuts made to police have had an
impact and will continue to have an impact on public safety.”

Aid Cut

New Jersey police departments are historically among the
best-staffed in the nation. New Jersey, the 11th-largest state
by population, had 389 sworn officers per 100,000 people in
2008, the third-highest ratio, according to U.S. Justice
Department data, which are collected every four years. The
national average is 251 per 100,000.
“Crime is an issue of perception: if the general public
makes a link between cuts in aid to cities and rising crime, it
makes no difference” whether that connection is real, Ben
Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey
Politics at Rider University in Lawrenceville, said in a phone
interview. “If crime goes up and you’re the incumbent, you are
responsible.”
Christie’s job rating fell to the lowest of his term in a
June poll by Quinnipiac University, with disapproval from 47
percent of voters. The governor has battled with unions over his
cuts in funding for schools and municipalities.

‘Not Responsible’

The governor, during a July 26 appearance with Booker in
Newark on job creation, said he doesn’t expect to lose support
over the crime issue. Police unions are also to blame for
refusing concessions that would have saved jobs, he and Booker
said.
“We’re not responsible for making those choices at the
municipal level,” said Christie, 48. “We only have the money
that we have and can’t spend more. In the end, government is
about making choices, and the municipalities are facing their
own choices as well.”
Booker said that crime rose for the six months following
his firings and has come down since June. He declined to comment
on whether residents blame Christie. Booker said his own
approval has risen in internal polling after a 20 percent drop
following the cuts.
“My Twitter account blows up anytime there is a shooting,
with people telling me to hire the police back,” Booker said.
“The perception problem is very tough. If you ask the average
Newark resident if crime is worse now than it was last year,
most of them will say yes. The reality is that it’s not, but
it’s very difficult to fight against that.”