New Jersey's largest city on pace to see a 10-year low in homicides thanks to new policies

Newsweek
By DAVID PORTER
Associated Press Writer | AP
Jul 17, 2008

(NEWARK, N.J.) Garry McCarthy had barely settled into his new job as Newark's police director in the fall of 2006 when he came face to face with the twin scourges of violence and apathy that plagued New Jersey's largest city.

Two drug dealers had waged a running gun battle through a crowded city neighborhood, firing dozens of shots from an AK-47 and a .45-caliber revolver and eventually killing each other.

Yet when McCarthy arrived at the scene he was less troubled by the cold-blooded nature of the crime than by the reaction it produced.

"The response I got from the officers and the community was, 'What do you expect? It's Newark,'" McCarthy said recently. "I said, 'What do I expect? Where's your outrage?' I started pounding that on our bosses here: Don't accept it for what it is, but accept that you can change it."

More than two years later, changes have occurred in Newark, a city defined in recent years by a homicide rate that spiked 80 percent from 2000 to 2006.

Halfway through Mayor Cory A. Booker's first term, homicides in 2008 are within reach of the 10-year low of 59, set in 2000. It's a vindication of sorts for the 39-year-old Booker, who rode into town on an anti-crime platform and immediately made some enemies by hiring McCarthy, an outsider, to run the police department.

Click to see rest of article...
http://www.newsweek.com/id/146680

I think of ALL the Puerto Ricans, Yessenia Correa IMO (if she would have persued politics) could have been the Luis Munoz Marin.

She just dissapeared after Schundler's term if you remember she became his spokesperson, a job she handled fairly well.

Alas, she was a Republican not a Dem.

You also want politicians who will NOT keep their heads in the sand...and tackle head on the REAL issues of the city W O going the corruptive way or totally ignoring the obvious.. the corruption, injustices, lack of services, needs of a community.

I didn't see that from the Cunningham adm. or any other adm.

Schundler maybe, a small effort.

He also failed to monitor some of the people under him.

Greg Corrado, for instance, was accused of sexual harrasment by an asst. Director. She was given a settlement but in the settlement, she had to resign.

This was never covered in the Journal.

Schundler kept him on as part of his team.

I have noticed though that Healy is truly giving it his all despite some flaws...

I agree, the Journal should be covering on other's.

Now, what corruption is Viola part of?

1 djcview...


So... you've been drinking the water too? Yes, I agree your grammar is as bad as your creativity and choice of words.

You couldn't do better then this? And your phyche is even worse... now, now, we all know what happens to you when you forget to take your meds...go take your meds now.

And after that, we will then allow you to come back in when you have composed yourself.

Seems like MOMMY failed to teach you how to play nice on discussions...threads...

Constructive criticism is alive and well...

And.. who cares?... that YOU...

for fifteen years worked with neurologists, neurogeneticists, neurophysiologists, neuropathologists and any other kind of neurology physician-scientist you can think of.

Now WE all know what YOU really are...

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Or Newark's white Bret Schundler. If Obama gets in he may have more in common with Louisiana republican governor Bobby Jindal or become the next Arthur Ashe of the White House.

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I think the real story here is that, if you go into the offices of the Jersey Journal with a mind reader who can read everyone's minds, the old-time editors and reporters there think they do a wonderful job of covering politics. They think their political reporters are their ace reporters.

The reality is that, given that the Jersey Journal is a small daily with limited resources, the general assignment/police beat coverage is terrific and the arts and human interest features coverage is fine.

But the coverage of education, business and politics is truly abysmal.

I think the coverage of education and business is so bad because the beats are probably not really assigned to any specific reporter, or they're assigned to interns or new reporters who don't get much informed guidance from their editors.

But the political coverage is wretched because the reporters are lazy, unimaginative hacks who don't know how to do anything other than write up a city council meeting, an indictment or idle gossip. The results end up being reasonably entertaining, anyway, because Jersey City is a fascinating city, but other Newhouse papers do this sort of thing a lot better. Why not bring someone in from the Star-Ledger to do a seminar or something?

Some examples of how weak the coverage is:

- The Jersey Journal never really does much of a profile of anyone in politics here, except mayoral candidates. Because it doesn't really tell us who these politicians are and flesh them out as "characters," the hard news stories they do about these folks have no context.

The editors and 25-year veteran reporters know who Viola Richardson really is, but I really don't. To me, she's a just a name. I think she occasionally half-way sides with Fulop, and that's great, but I don't know what that means.

- Reporters in most cities spend a lot of time covering the top people in the planning department and other administrative departments.

When I use the Jersey Journal archive search engine, I see that the Journal has been mentioning the city planner, Robert Cotter, an average of about once a month, but I didn't know the Journal had ever mentioned Cotter till I used the Journal search engine. I don't think the Journal covers that guy or other city administrators very well.

- The Journal doesn't do much to cover community leaders who aren't already running for office, and it doesn't do much to profile, or even briefly describe, candidates in elections such as school board elections. Essentially, if you're not on the council, you aren't a huge developer, and you aren't Louis Manzo, the Journal has no interest in you.

Since 2001, Shelley Skinner has been working hard to try to improve the Jersey City public schools for several years, but the Jersey Journal mentioned her in substantive articles only 3 times before she announced she was running for ofice.

Althea Bernheim has never been mentioned except in one caption.

Mahaley Stewart Bowles, who's the only person I know who's organized parents well enough to actually bring about concrete changes in the regular Jersey City zone schools, has appeared a few times as the signer of letters to the editor, but the Jersey Journal reporters have only mentioned her 3 times.

Karen Westman, who went to heroic efforts to start and run Waterfront Montessori, a private school with an enormous waiting list, has never been mentioned in an article that the Jersey Journal actually reported. (Her name shows up in one single a tiny announcement that appeared when the school started up.)

Ben Wilson, a JCPD community relations person who runs eye-opening gang awareness seminars, could have been on Torres's list of up and coming young African American community leaders. But, of course, Torres wouldn't know about the guy. Op-ed authors have mentioned the guy, and a Jersey City resident who participated in a "person on the street" survey story mentioned Ben Wilson, but Jersey Journal reporters have only mentioned Wilson's involvement in catching a criminal once, and the only other time they've mentioned him in a story that they've actually reported (as opposed to a routine event notice) is when the guy's son (!!) got arrested and tried for gang violence.

I think the Jersey Journal has mentioned JCList's Dan Falcon in 16 or 17 separate articles, but, keep in mind that the guy has a really highly trafficked Web site. He has a lot of potential influence, but he's only getting into the Jersey Journal about two or three times per year.

In contrast, the Journal seems to be on track to mention Healy about 600 times per year, Lipski about 150 times per year, Fulop about 100 times per year and Viola Richardson about 70 times per year. (I'm estimating because the basic Journal archive cuts off the results after finding 50 matches.)

Conclusion: the politics reporters at the Jersey Journal talk to the same obvious suspects again and again and, especially when writing about politics, make no effort whatsoever to talk to anyone new.

So, it's open for debate whether Torres's original column was racist or just ignorant, but I think it seems likely that Torres doesn't know enough about anyone outside the Hudson County Democratic Organization machine or its periphery to write a good article about up and coming community leaders without doing quite a bit of reporting. I'm sure he could call up 10 smart people and come up with a decent list, but there's no way he could produce a list like that off the top of his head.

And he may be annoyed at the machine hacks in City Hall, but he needs to understand that he works for a paper with a machine hack approach to covering City Hall.

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It's at least as refined as labeling anyone who doesn't share your (hysterical) view of Fulop as "JC's white Obama" to be a member of the HCDO payroll...

Quote:...the fine art of debate, JC-stylee

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wow. you two are a-holes. that's as much eloquence as i can muster.

Quote: I don't think she comes even close to saying that, she would prefer to not call it anything - that there be *no* accountability, for fear of being labeled racist: it's a great cover.


Ironically, I took the article to be looking for *more* black leaders, *more* blacks in power - not less. The rub for the Floods/Cunninghams/Richardsons/Tabilis of the JC is that what they're talking about is a *cleaner* black leadership.

I also wish we had cleaner *white* leadership in JC (the only difference being that it happens that there *is* a white Obama on the JC scene, so we'll see...)


p.s. and could it be maybe the paper's paying more attention to black leadership than Filipino leadership only in proportion to the relative sizes of the populations in JC?

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I am no fan of Ms. Richardson, but her point that editorials unfairly focus on the perception of "leadership" or "lack of it" in the black community in Jersey City has some merit.

When an African-American politician is caught with his or her hand in the cookie jar, it is a lack of leadership while other groups' leaders are labeled as corrupt or unethical. The second largest community in Jersey City are Latinos, but the JJ isn't asking where is the new Jos? Luis Alberto Mu?oz Mar?n for the Puerto Rican community after Judge Wanda Molina's scandal?

Mayor Booker and Obama are honorable politicians (whether you agree with them or not) who "happen to be African-American."

Ms. Richardson seems to ask the JJ editorial board and its readership to call it what it is ... corruption and cronyism.

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Who say's you can't do both. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). And one for Sal, and one for Billy, and one for me, and you ain't gettin any Stymie..."I knows it"

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Yeah, because playing "the racist card" is *clearly* more tacky than confusing Willie Flood and Viola Richardson. Complete with Amos n' Andy phonetic spelling.

Wow.

AND, like me they can just blame it on the water...

no but they're both corrupt - and that's the real issue, not race.

Obama is threatening to her because he threatens her tired old trump card, which is to imply racism when the obvious stench of corruption around here is brought up.

For our local yokels like her, Cunningham, Flood, Tabili et al, Obama threatens their defense of last resort - but for the race industrialists like Jackson/Sharpton etc., Obama is even more threatening because he challenges their whole business model.

OOOPPPSSSS....SORRY!...LOL MY BAD!!!!

I drank Jersey City water from the public school system as a young teen...and at 2:00am when I wrote this post, the leftover lead was kicking into my brain cells...LOL Sorry...

Please forgive me this happens from time to time...

I'm really a sight to see...I transform into....

THE HULK!!!!

AND,

That's what Jersey City will do to ya!

WARNING:

Stay away from the water!!!!

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Er . . . Viola Richardson is not Willie Flood.

And..who the hell is SHE to critisize?????

Oh yes, lest we not forget that, yes Viola, well done.

Play the racist card it works everytime!

Momma 's taken care of her baby, and got's him a city job.

Something that Obama is totally against.

I believe I read it in Dreams from my father.

Corruption comes in many colors, let's just call it:

"United Colors Of Corruption"

Get the point now???

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Esquire had a article last month that did a real good job at making him (Booker) a superhero.

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ok so if the paper doesn't endorse Sandra Cunningham (the same Sandra Cunningham who refused to attend any public debates when 'running' for her late husband's state senate seat and whose 'foundation' spends 85% on 'expenses' and 15% on charity according to tax records) - then you're "not prepared for the kind of change Barack Obama refers to" (code for racist...)


please.


(ianmac47 is right, Cory Booker is NJ's Obama, not these Hudson County political machine tools)

I thought our Obama was already mayor of Newark.

Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson blast JJ newspaper writer Political Insider Augie Torres... story below.

Jersey Journal

IN THEIR OPINION
Race aside, great leaders are hard to come by
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
BY COUNCILWOMAN VIOLA RICHARDSON
SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL


Augie Torres, writer of the Political Insider column, if you had a conscience, you would be ashamed of yourself.

Your recent column calling for "where is Jersey City's Barack Obama" was offensive, insulting and simply trite. You disguised your race-biased offensive as an effort to ridicule Mayor Jerramiah Healy's administration for having two deputy mayors that have been arrested.

Point in fact, when Ador Equipado got arrested on charges of misconduct and shaking down newlyweds, was your paper indicting the Filipino community for their lack of leadership? No, not at all. However, quite to the contrary, when Kabili Tayari got arrested for returning his rental car too late - a civil, not a criminal, issue - you use it as a whipping board to go after black leadership.

First, to answer your question, where is any other community's Barack Obama? The senator may be a once-in-a-lifetime leader, and the milestones he set already prove that. It's not the fault of the black community in Jersey City or any other community that such exceptional people do come about so often. He is a bright man with great potential who overcame many challenges to get where he is today. You don't see many like him in any ethnicity or race all too often. Great leaders, scientists, journalists or anything great just doesn't get mass-produced.

We've been a country for 232 years, and how many truly exceptional leaders have we had from any race or political party? Not many.

But your ridiculous stance gets even deeper when you attempt to determine who "black" leaders should be. Isn't that America's problem internationally, when a few select people try to determine who a particular country's leader should be? The people pick the leaders, not the politicians or the columnists.

You try to support your question of black leadership by bringing up the point that there was no Martin Luther King Jr. parade. Four months ago when the parade was canceled, your paper showed no interest in that fact, but now it's convenient to hurl that reality into the question of black leadership and the reality of King's legacy with modern youth? What a shameful conclusion you are making.

If that's your logic, I guess Christopher Columbus has no importance, because his parade ended years ago, the one that used to end outside The Jersey Journal's doors. Does this mean there is no white or Italian leadership? Jersey City has not had a Memorial Day parade in decades, but does that mean the people here don't support the troops? If you bothered to call the MLK Jr. Committee president to find out why the parade was pulled, would you have a different conclusion?

Then you go on to say "ignored" black leaders. Again, ignored by whom? Perhaps they are ignored by The Jersey Journal when it comes to fair coverage and not their tokenism perspectives. Maybe they are ignored by the public because the public doesn't believe in them as much as The Jersey Journal does. As I recall, and press clippings prove, The Jersey Journal never embraced the black leadership that did rise to the top in this city. The Jersey Journal never embraced Mayor and State Sen. Glenn D. Cunningham; in fact, he was never endorsed by your paper. Your paper wrote he should have remained a U.S. Marshal. Perhaps psychologically, your paper is not prepared for the kind of change Barack Obama refers to.

State Sen. Sandra Cunningham has never been embraced by your paper, either. Before she set foot in Trenton, your paper and your parent company, The Star-Ledger, made every effort to undermine her campaign for office and to minimize her potential by summing her up as virtually mentally incapacitated. In fact, the only black leader your paper ever endorsed in any race was that of L. Harvey Smith when he ran for mayor, and you begrudgingly did that, by your own words, because Healy refused to grant you pre-election interviews.

Your tired, but typical establishment and imperial point of view about ethnic leadership, and your right to determine such, only worsened when you started to name possible future leaders. That's not your right to do, particularly when those people you named have not put themselves in that category.

Perhaps The Jersey Journal will only come to grips with real issues in the community when its leadership, the editors, has one amongst them that actually lives in Jersey City or a city that is similar to it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Political Insider column appears in the Journal tomorrow and touches upon the issue about which the Ward F councilwoman writes.



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