Seeing Is Believing the Unbelievable

On the one hand, the incident on MLK Boulevard on the evening of May 25 described in Alex Zdan’s article in this morning’s Trenton Times is not anything remarkable, by itself.  It was just another neighborhood shooting incident, what looks to be just another gang-on-gang crime. Something we’ve gotten far too accustomed to reading about lately.

Two persons were wounded in the 15-second battle involving three gunmen. But no one was killed, thankfully. None of the people involved can be numbered among the 20 souls lost so far this year with barely half of the gruesome year of 2013 gone, although they are among the 120 people in Trenton shot so far this year.  It wasn’t a particularly unusual crime, as far as the numbers  go in NJ’s Capital City these days.

However, the article is accompanied by video footage recorded by surveillance cameras mounted near the corner store where the shooting took place. This footage is absolutely bone-chilling.

We see that this incident was carefully set up, by one gunman and at least one accomplice acting as a driver in a get away car. We see in one camera angle a gunman getting out of the car, and leisurely walking a few dozen yards to a street corner where, upon turning the corner he raises a pistol and opens fire on two individuals.  In another camera angle we see those two people are also armed and return fire on the first gunman, who turns and runs back to his waiting car.

Before the first gunman runs away, though, we see him calmly turn and shoot a fleeing bystander, identified by the Times as Nathaniel Matthews, in the back as he ran away from the chaos he had unwittingly stumbled into.  We are told by Alex Zdan that Mr. Matthews sustained a bullet wound in the stomach, although we see him fall forward to the ground after it looks like he’s been struck in the back.

The man had just been walking down the street, minding his own business, only to end up sprawled on MLK Boulevard, shot in the back by a hooded coward. This is one of the scariest things I have seen in a long, long time.

This footage illustrates just how bad things have gotten in Trenton. Everyone in the footage (except the unlucky Mr. Matthews) has a gun, and they are all more than willing to blaze away at each other, regardless of who else might be around.

Mr. Matthews’ fate could strike any one of us in this town, at any time.

Over the last several years we’ve read of too many bystanders injured in incidents such as this one, “shot in the crossfire,” catching bullets intended for someone else. That’s bad enough, with too many families mourning too many loved ones caught in crossfires.

But that’s not what happened to Nathaniel Matthews. He was not injured by a bullet aimed at someone else. The hooded gunman probably saw him as a potential witness, even though Matthews started running as soon as he saw what was happening. The gunman deliberately turned to aim his weapon at him, and shot him in the back in cold blood, without a second thought.

That, readers, is the sad state of this city today. Violent crime breaks out at all hours of the day and night, in any location, and with the involved criminals not giving a damn about who gets hurt and how. If you happen to be unlucky enough to find yourself on the scene, as a potential witness you will become a target and you will be attacked. By criminals who are utterly fearless, not deterred by the prospect of timely intervention or pre-emption by law enforcement. At all.

I don’t know if this kind of incident – the deliberate targeting of bystanders – is a recent development reflecting some grim threshold being passed, or if it is a very under-reported common occurrence. But it is frightening.

Reporting on this situation, Mr. Zdan quotes several individuals. Local Pastor Reverend Jospeh Ravenell describes a drive-by shooting right outside his church after a Sunday morning service. Police union official George Dzurkoc contrasts the current situation to the period from 1992 to 2000, when he served in the Trenton Police Department’s proactive unit: back then there were far fewer weapons on the street. “They were scared to death to carry guns” back then, he said.

And current Police Director Ralph Rivera describes how the reduced size of his department after he lost one-third of his officers to layoffs has compelled his staff to reassign his remaining officers and re-align his units into a reactive force, one geared to responding to service calls, emergency and otherwise. Whatever capacity TPD had to be pro-active, to introduce a randomness to the places and times officers would appear and conduct operations – providing some measure of deterrence among criminal elements – is an unfortunate casualty of the budget and personnel cuts the department has had to endure.

This increase in violence is attributed in part to technological developments such as ubiquitous use of smartphones on the streets and in part to “the culture, just the time we’re in,” according to Reverend Ravenell.

But technology and “the culture” are widespread, broadly available in other towns and cities that are not experiencing nearly the increase in violent crime afflicting Trenton. We read in the Times just yesterday in another Alex Zdan piece, that on a per capita basis, Trenton is much more violent than Baltimore, Newark, Philadelphia and Chicago.   Readers of this space may recall that I wrote a year ago about how Trenton’s murder rate compares unfavorably with Chicago in the 1920’s, during the worst of the Al Capone/Prohibition/Untouchables era.

In fact, crime in cities has generally been on the decline for several years now, for reasons that are not generally understood or widely agreed. However, Trenton’s recent experience with a massive increase of violent crime stands in stark contrast. It’s safer in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago than it is here. One has to look at Detroit and nearby Camden for cities with statistics as bleak as ours.

Why is Trenton so bleak compared to all these other places?

And it’s not looking to get any better, any time soon. As things stand now, each one of us stands a chance of becoming the next Nathaniel Matthews, shot in the back for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What can be done? It’s been clear for several years that the overstretched Trenton Police Department is increasingly over-matched by a brazen criminal element that is not intimidated by our cops.  There are many more guns on the streets, and no hesitation in using them. The constant violence in Trenton, as someone is shot nearly every other day on average, is widespread, casual and affecting more citizens than just the members of rival gangs.

Director Rivera may feel he has few alternatives to the way he has aligned his department. But whatever he and his colleagues are doing, it is clearly not working. Occasional assistance this year from County Sheriff’s Deputies  and State Police have failed to put much of a dent in things, have they?

We have to ask, and not for the first time this year: Do We Have a Plan “B?”