After a resident living just east of Lincoln Park awoke to find his car propped up on cinder blocks and missing all four wheels ? a brazen crime made worse by the fact the car was parked in the man?s driveway at the time ? a neighborhood?s concerns over the level of crime in Jersey City led to a letter-writing effort that has since drawn the attention of the mayor and police chief.

One letter-writer described the situation as feeling like ?prisoners in our own homes,? while another, citing the high tax rate, was angered by the lack of results in increased public safety.

Perhaps articulating the frustration best, resident and activist Riaz Wahid ? whose efforts set off the bevy of letters to City Hall ? wrote, ?Your administration has enough money to hire cronies, to give salary increases to them on top of it, and buy traffic light cameras, but not for security cameras to protect the safety of the residents which was an election campaign promise made by Councilman David Donnelly!?

He added, ?When [Occupy Jersey City] had a protest in front of Goldman Sachs, we saw [hundreds] of police officers [with some] even in boats. How come we don?t see anyone assigned to patrol[s]??

Wahid wrote that he wants ?answers? or for Police Chief Thomas Comey to resign, as residents face steep crime ?under your watch while we pay premium taxes!?

It?s a sentiment reflected by numerous other letter-writers, including Esther Wintner, a mainstay at City Council meetings who has on more than one occasion challenged the Healy administration to better tackle the issue of crime.

?Perception is 90 percent of reality, and the perception is crime is high and it is not being addressed,? said Wintner, who also lives near Lincoln Park. ?Less politicking and more focus on important issues such as this one, is what is needed.?

For Wintner, the problem isn?t some abstraction of numbers, target goals or politics ? it?s the experience of being someone who has ?had my fair share of run ins with criminal activity in the last year. My home was robbed, someone sneaked into my yard in the evening while I was home, my daughter has been harassed on the street and I?ve had neighbors cars broken in to and their tires slashed.?

?It is a run of crime that I have not seen in the twenty years of living on this street,? Wintner, who has undertaken neighborhood watch group walks, maintains. ?While these are not horrific crimes compared to some things we see in Jersey City, they destroy the quality of life, depress property values and drive good people out of our city. Residents should not have to feel as if they are living under siege.?

According to the Jersey City Police Department?s website, which publishes the city?s monthly crime statistics, crime has dropped considerably since 2008 but in the past two years the numbers have leveled-off. The incidents reported are broken down as follows: homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny ? theft, motor vehicle theft (including attempts), and arson.

Specifically, incidents of crime reported over the past 6 months have averaged between 600 and 700 per month, a figure in the same range as the same 6 months period of 2010. While the numbers trend slightly downward in 2011, the incidents jump from month to month and do not show much consistency. Still, compared to earlier in the decade, there are signs of improvement (these figures are available at the njjcpd.org website via the Compstat link).

?The statistics speak for themselves ? Jersey City continues to become safer every day,? said Mayor Healy. ?That being said, we are never satisfied with one murder or one robbery and work closely with the Police Department to implement strategies and measures to further reduce crime and make our communities safer.?

Heally added, ?Taking a look at the statistics, Chief Comey and the men and women of the Jersey City Police Department should be credited for their hard work to continue bringing crime down.?

And yet, how reliable these numbers are remains a problem to some Jersey City officials like Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop, who says the numbers aren?t worth much.

?The reality is that as Mark Twain said, ?Lies, damned lies, and statistics,? with regards to the manipulation of numbers,? said Fulop, who echoes residents? concerns over crime rates. ?From community meetings I attend, I don?t think the public feels that crime is declining regardless of the statistics and police visibility has been an existing concern.?

And Donnelly says he has made good on his election promise to add security cameras, although it has taken longer than he would have liked.

?What people don?t realize is that we are getting cameras, we?re just behind schedule on this,? says Donnelly. ?The [Request For Proposal (RFP)] went out several times but didn?t come back in-cost until the end of 2011. We voted to accept the RFP in the meeting in December, and I was told by the administration that it?s moving forward.?

The problem resulted from a miscalculation of the cameras? cost, which was estimated at about $1.7 million. When the RFPs came back at costs ?substantially higher,? the city revised the estimation to $2.1 million.

Donnelly also bristles at the suggestion he failed to live up to a campaign promise considering the realities of a budget gap.

?What they don?t understand is that I never said [getting CCTV cameras] wasn?t going to happen, I fought for it, they just didn?t understand that it can take time,? he says. It exemplifies the challenges of navigating cost-cutting and greater public safety during a time when tax rates are a sticking point for most residents.

Regardless of how the official statistics are interpreted, the answer to address the perception of increasing crime ? which residents fear will become more reality than perception soon ? is to in turn raise perception of police presence by increasing highly visible activities like car patrols, something that is sorely missing for Wahid.
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