My Two Cents

Everyone is fed up with the crime situation in Trenton.

That is about the only statement that will find common agreement among everyone in the City. Everyone, that is, except the small criminal element who have created and sustain our current environment, and who are thriving and making money in this chaos. It is no longer enough to spray rivals with ever-increasing numbers of bullets from ever-increasing numbers of weapons, it’s now current practice to deliberately target and attack innocent passers-by, shooting them in the back just because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Beyond being fed up, there is little consensus on what to do about it. This morning’s Trenton Times features another article in what is now a series this week by Alex Zdan, describing the limited resources available to Trenton’s Police Department to handle this spike in violent crime. As stated in the article, Trenton’s Police Director Ralph Rivera spends a lot of un-budgeted monies on overtime for his officers and detectives to provide additional manpower on busy (which in his line of work means “dangerous”) weekend days and nights.

Other resources are available, albeit on a more limited basis, from the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office and the NJ State Police. But deployments of personnel from these agencies are temporary in nature, and tend to have short-term effects as well.

Several members of Trenton’s City Council rolled out a new initiative of theirs yesterday, complete with matching T-shirts. Dubbed the “Safe Box” program, this is intended to provide another method by which citizens with information about crimes  can submit anonymous tips to police. Since getting information and intelligence from witnesses and others in the community has been a long-term problem in this town, any effort to solicit more assistance is not a bad one. However, since this particular plan duplicates in large measure the same approach used by Trenton Crime Stoppers, the local affiliate of a successful nationwide organization, I am a little skeptical of its prospects.

And this morning’s Editorial in the Trenton Times picks up from Mr. Zdan’s excellent reportage this week to suggest that the State of NJ could be doing much more than it has up until now, beyond the occasional and temporary State Police deployments.

But that last is not going to happen for a number of reasons. First, as the editorial reminds us, additional State assistance on an institutional basis (as opposed to the short-term deployments we see now) to fight crime will not likely come as long as Trenton’s government is headed up by incompetents and indicted criminal defendants. That fact is, as suggested by the Times Editorial Board, unfair to the 80,000 souls who live here. But it’s a fact.

And just as important, if not more so, additional aid will not be forthcoming from a State Administration headed by a Governor who does not care about the people in his Capital City. One must not forget that , although the financial problems of this city are several, deep and of a long history, the proximate cause of the ongoing fiscal crisis of the last four years was the cancellation by Chris Christie of the previous Capital City aid program, which in its last year of Fiscal Year 2010 provided along with other state funding over $40 Million in support for Trenton’s budget. For the budget year just completed we received $25.4 Million. That’s $15 Million less than 2010’s grants, and is due to drop by several more million for this new budget year begun July 1.

Now, there are certainly arguments for and against what the State’s “proper” level of support for Trenton should be. But this space, today, will not make any of them. I merely point out that the decline in State aid over the last four years has impacted the City’s budget in a devastating way, and what we see on our streets is a partial result of that.

But, you remind me, I said just above that Governor Christie doesn’t care about Trenton. That’s pretty strong, pretty personal. Yep, that’s what I think. In the midst of a crime spree that’s been escalating dangerously since the layoff of over 100 cops 2 years ago, we hear nothing about the situation in his capital city from the state’s Chief Executive. He is all over our TV screens telling us we’re stronger than a storm – complete with theme song – and telling us we can rebuild what has been taken away from us. But he is never seen or heard with any victims of Trenton’s violence, and he has no theme song for us. He doesn’t care if we are stronger than this man-made storm devastating our town. He doesn’t care if we rebuild what has been taken away from us in Trenton.

So, in the spirit of all the above, I want to add my two cents, to suggest two approaches that may help things.

First, it is clear that a huge proportion of serious, violent crime in Trenton is due to Drugs. Which must be considered The Drug Business. Drugs constitute a major, sophisticated industry, in this town as well as everywhere else in this country.  What is also clear is that, if Trenton’s drug market had to rely solely on the resources that are available only in Trenton, the business here would dry up. Trenton’s people are too poor to sustain all of Trenton’s drugs economy.

The money that buys Trenton’s drugs, comes from outside Trenton. The customers who purchase Trenton’s drugs, come from outside Trenton.  Why don’t we start going after the Demand side of the transaction, rather than the supply? Why don’t we start targeting customers?

We see transactions all the time, all over this town. On my own street, I see late-model cars with Princeton, Hopewell, Hamilton and Bucks County dealership logos on them idling at the curb, with their drivers and passengers waiting for other cars to show up. When they do, bags and cash are quickly exchanged, and they all drive away. We call the Police radio room, but they either say they won’t respond unless we actually see a crime being committed, or police who are dispatched roll up well after everyone has left.

There is no impediment at all to this street-level trade. Zero. It continues unobstructed for buyers and sellers alike all over Trenton, with not as much as minor inconvenience. They all know it.

As long as there is no attempt to disrupt the retail trade of drugs, as long as suburban kids know they can bring their suburban money in to this town to buy Trenton’s drugs without fear of arrest or harassment, as long as Trenton is seen as a 24/7 Drive-Thru Drugs mart, Trenton’s drug violence will remain out of control.

As much as people from outside Trenton like to think and comment that Trenton’s problems are our own and our responsibility to solve, alone, that attitude fails to realize that Trenton is too poor on its own to sustain the kind of drug economy we do. That continues only because of daily infusions of cash that come in from Princeton, and Hopewell, and Hamilton, and Bucks County.

As long as we just go after the gangs, all we do is create a temporary vacuum on the supply side. Other distributors, other dealers will eventually move in. Who knows, perhaps sometimes the only real effect our arrests have may be to remove competitors from the marketplace, making things easier for others  to move in.

We need to include in our police strategy a stronger effort to go after the customer base. If we interrupt that part of the trade, if we arrest enough customers – and scare some others away  – perhaps the scale of the drugs business in Trenton might get smaller. With less money in the economy, we may see fewer turf wars. Fewer turf wars may mean fewer people – bad guys as well as bystanders – shot and killed.

We have to look at the crime problem as largely a drugs problem. And drugs are a business. Supply and demand. We’re fighting – and badly losing – our war by concentrating on the supply side. Let’s try going after the demand side: customers.

And another major item that would improve public safety in this town? How about sitting down to negotiate a contract with our police union? The largest union for Trenton’s officers is working under a contract that expired over two years ago, on January 1, 2011. A lot has changed in those 2 1/2 years since. The old contract, including several inefficient work rules (such as the number of consecutive work days and off-days that can lead to massive overtime) and other contract terms that may be out-moded as well are still in force. How much is the old contract costing the City, in dollars and inefficiency? We don’t know.

The last we heard about this topic, in the Trentonian article by Sherrina Navani, union president George Dzurkoc put the blame for the failure to get contract discussions going on the Indicted Occupant of Trenton’s Mayor’s Office, as well as City Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson.

Since neither Hutchinson nor the IO disputed that claim, either in that article or since, I guess that judgment stands.

Since the current strategies being used by TPD are not working, why don’t we involve the police themselves in being part of the solution? Are current work scheduling rules a hindrance to deploying a smaller department in the best way possible? Let’s negotiate them out. Are there other things we can work out in a new contract that can make things cheaper for the City, and allow us to put more of our resources on the street? Let’s do it. Are there ideas from the guys on the beat that may be helpful in constructing a “Plan B?” Let’s get those ideas.

City Council can be of help in getting contract discussions going, if the Administration is going to continue to obstruct things as they have for so long.

It’s all well and good to talk about getting the State to give us more aid from the State Police. It’s nice to out on matching t-shirts and have press conferences. I don’t say we shouldn’t be doing things like these.

But we can’t do things like that without also making other efforts that are within the ability of the City of Trenton to accomplish.

I suggest that these two efforts – targeting the customer base of Trenton’s drug economy, and making a new deal with Trenton’s police officers – are among those efforts that are within our control, and they must be attempted.