Morgan: Jersey City community policing is coming -- probably

By Earl Morgan | For The Jersey Journal
December 16, 2014 at 8:16 AM

Community policing is coming. It?s become a virtual inevitability after President Barack Obama pledged approximately $263 million in federal funds for police training and community policing.

Obama announced that $50 million of the money will be used to purchase body cameras for police departments across the country. The balance will be utilized for community policing and, yes, more training. It?s hard to imagine any mayor or governor turning up their nose at the idea of snagging a share of those federal bucks.

Unless you?ve been living in a cave, the grand jury exonerations of police officers involved in deadly force fatalities have set off more than 100 days of constant protests that have people asking, what is going to heal things?

However, there are police departments and individual officers who are already ahead of the curve by making the effort to know the communities they protect. Officers like Lou DeStesano and Saida Simmons, who work out of Jersey City?s East District. This odd couple of DeStesano, a white guy, and Simmons, a black woman, stroll down the Lafayette section?s main drag, Pacific Avenue, and they elicit smiles and hellos. People come up to shake their hands, to chat with them and generally enjoy their presence in the neighborhood.

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http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2 ... s_coming_--_probably.html

Morgan: Something new and something old needed to make Jersey City streets safer

By Earl Morgan | For The Jersey Journal
on December 09, 2014 at 8:10 AM

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop?s administration is 18 months old and a pledge to provide community policing made during his mayoral campaign has yet to materialize.

The promise of community policing was actually a plank in the Fulop mayoral campaign. For a brief few months at the beginning of his term in office, there was a stepped up police presence in some of the city?s crime hot spots. But it wasn?t long before the temperatures in high-crime areas were back to their familiar levels.

Lately some people close to Fulop and the city police brass seem to be talking down the community policing concept as outmoded. Yet, other municipalities in the state have embraced it and, combined with digital technology, began to realize drastic curtailments in crime.

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http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2 ... ake_jc_streets_safer.html