“This Has to Stop”

For once I agree with what something that Kathy McBride said.

But probably not in the way that she meant it.

The Trenton At-Large Council member  is quoted in this morning’s Trenton Times as saying “This has to stop,” referring to the rampant and almost casual gun violence and crime occurring daily on the streets of our city. This quote comes in reference to a press conference that the Counciwoman has called for this afternoon on the block of Laurel Place where she lives, a press conference she intends to use to press Governor Christie to provide emergency assistance to the City of Trenton to help combat a situation out of control.

Laurel Place  was the location yesterday afternoon for what truly must have been a horrible incident. A brawl involving over a dozen men reportedly escalated into gunfire, sending one to the hospital with a shot to the arm. As the brawl gathered steam, Ms. McBride and other neighbors cleared the street of several children – including her own – and senior citizens. Thankfully, none of the neighborhood bystanders were injured.

Today, Ms. McBride has apparently been moved by this incident, which touched her personally in a way that many other similar recent incidents on nearby Bryn Mawr Avenue, or Oakland Street, or Hoffman Avenue – all very close by and all within the last two weeks – failed to.

I won’t fault Ms. McBride for responding to yesterday’s incident as she has. When something like yesterday’s shooting comes close to home, and your own family are threatened, of course you react. I can’t disagree with that.

But I will respectfully ask: Ms. McBride, where has your anger and your outrage been over the last two weeks? I look for your name, in vain, in any of the press accounts of the three crimes mentioned above, Ms. McBride.

Cornelius Boakai was murdered on Bryn Mawr Avenue, less than a thousand feet from Laurel Place, just last Thursday night. Do you not speak for him, as well as for your own children?

And what is your press conference this afternoon intended to accomplish? According to the article by Alax Zdan, she intends to ask Governor Christie “to deputize out-of-county and out-of-state law enforcement officers, as he did following Hurricane Sandy, to come to the aid of Trenton’s beleaguered and understaffed police department,” whatever in the world that means.

Does the Councilwoman have an actual plan that she intends to forward to the Governor? Or is this merely the latest in a series of empty gestures we’ve seen from Council and the Administration about the wave of violent crime we’re experiencing without relief?

During a November City Council meeting, in response to citizen complaints about shootings and stabbings on THEIR streets endangering THEIR children and THEIR senior citizens, McBride talked a good game. According to the Times, “McBride said council needed to take the reins and demand help from the state in the form of more officers to patrol Trenton streets… ‘We need to and we can march these seven bodies without the mayor or with the mayor, that’s his choice,’ McBride said. ‘This body can actually go to the governor’s office and ask for some immediate relief. I don’t know what they’ll say to us, but it’s a start. We need immediate release, we need help here in these seven miles, and we needed it yesterday.'”

So, did the Council “actually go to the governor’s office?” No. Did Council move forward with any formal response or plan to address rising crime? Also, no.

Did the Governor respond to the Indicted Occupant of Trenton’s Mayor’s Office in December, when the IO sent an impassioned, but poorly-written and argued appeal for immediate state assistance? Once again, no.

So, what does the Councilwoman expect to achieve with one more press conference today, with one more call for help from the state, if it is unaccompanied with any kind of real plan?

Other than an outpouring of genuine, but misplaced emotion, not much of anything at all.

Back in November, after Ms. McBride’s call to March to the State House, I suggested that the Governor and his administration would not likely to respond to any broad, fuzzy appeal for emergency help from the state until Trenton could demonstrate that it had fully engaged all of the resources available to the city in the most efficient way possible, and still could not meet the challenge to public safety posed by severely increased violent crime.

I believe Trenton couldn’t show that kind of engagement or planning in November, and the City still can’t. Trenton has not only failed to make a reasonable case that our resources are inadequate, we can’t make an argument for what help we would like the state to give us, and how best we can use it!

The leadership of the Police Department is increasingly at odds with the members of its own force, and is feuding openly with City Council. The plans and policies that have come out of the Department have clearly not been working, and members of the department have famously asked, “Do We Have a Plan B?”

The continuing vacuum of leadership on the second floor of City Hall continues to drag the City down. In the middle of this rapidly-deteriorating public safety situation, the Indicted Occupant comes up out of his hole only occasionally, to smile and wave at public photo opportunities, and tease about his non-existent chances of re-election next year. Last week, he said, “’I’m not concentrating on re-election right now,’ he said after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new $2 million Greg Grant Park on East State Street. ‘The work you do will re-elect you, so I’m concentrating on the work.'”

Don’t worry too much about that! The work you are doing won’t re-elect you. It most certainly will convict you, and soon. In the meantime, you are not helping us with the public’s safety, so can you please just get the hell out of the way and resign, already?

Does Ms. McBride really expect another press conference this afternoon to demonstrate to the Governor that Trenton needs help? That we know what the right help will be, and that we know how to use it if we get it?

I don’t think so. The Councilwoman’s vague request for deputies to work as they did during Hurricane Sandy is likely to result in the same response as her, and the IO’s, previous requests. That is, none.

Do I think the State can provide more help to the City? Yes. Are we in a good position to accept that kind of aid? Will we know what to do with it? I doubt it.

So, yes, Ms. McBride, “This has to stop.” But by “This,” I mean the kind of knee-jerk, half-baked, not-thought-out emotional appeal that is good at getting attention, but horrible at getting results.

I am grateful that none of your children were harmed last night, and that no one else was seriously hurt. I hope you and your neighbors will give information and every assistance to the police to help them identify and punish those responsible.

And I hope that you use your anger at this incident, and the other incidents that already this year that have taken eight lives including Mr. Boakai’s, and work with your colleagues on Council and with the Administration to come up with plans that may have a fighting chance at tackling our public safety emergency. And if those plans have a legitimate role for other players including the state, well let’s see them and discuss them with the Governor’s office.

But, as far as more of these stunts like this afternoon’s press conference to announce another half-assed idea?

This has to stop.