GOOD COP, BAD COP
Forum creates separation of candidates most critical/ most supportive of cops >>
TRENTON » A mayoral forum on policing shed a light on what candidates would be supportive of police while others would be more critical of the work officers perform.
Perhaps the most damning comment Tuesday came from Trenton Councilman Alex Bethea when he was asked if he would be willing be have officers work shorter days because they are currently “burnt out” with the current 12hour shift schedule.
“I’m not convinced that our police officers are burnt out,” the at-large councilman said. “I see sometimes a lot of sitting around in cars. I’m not convinced. I don’t know where that question came from.”
Police agreed to the 12hour shifts in March 2015 in exchange for an 11.75 percent salary increase.
Offering a softer stance, candidates Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, Mercer County Deputy Clerk Walker Worthy Jr. and former city Councilwoman Annette Lartigue said they would be willing to sit down with police and work out a solution.
The mayoral forum hosted Tuesday at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral was sponsored by the Trenton Civic Trust and focused on public safety and police/community relations.
Another critic of police was city activist Darren “Freedom” Green, who is also running for mayor.
“We have to remove the culture of death,” Green said. “It happens inside of policing across this country. Anyone doubting what I’m talking about, the evidence is on the grave sites of Emmett Till, 1955, or maybe Tamir Rice, 2014, or maybe now in the news Stephon Clark, 2018.”
Green said the community must engage head-on with the blue wall, “where officers can come and do what they want.”
“You have officers who have their peers covering up,” Green said. “What happened to integrity? This is the part that is eroding trust between police and community.” Offering a plan, Green said he would establish a citizens review board, “where citizens can play an integral part in holding our police officers, whom we pay their salaries, to be responsible, to be held accountable when they’re wrong.”
“I’m not anti-police,” Green proclaimed. “I’m just anti-wrong.”
The most pro-cop candidate was Gusciora, who is a municipal prosecutor in Lawrence and Princeton.
“Officers have a tough job and it’s challenging,” Gusciora said, adding there are a “few” that overstep the bounds. “At the end of the day, they do protect us. But we do have to work with them and they have to work with us.”
The five candidates present at the forum believe community policing should be installed in Trenton, where officers would walk beats.
Trenton Mayor Eric Jackson campaigned on community policing too, but never implemented the practice during his tenure.
“I believe we have to take our police officers out of the car and put them on foot, walking the beat, particularly in those high-crime areas,” Bethea said. “I would encourage my police officers to develop a dialogue, a communication, a rapport with the residents, so that they can have a trust between the two of them. Because right now, there is a disconnect.”
Bethea said he would also offer incentives for police to move into the city to create a “camaraderie.”
Green said cops under his director’s leadership would also walk the beat.
“The people who live in the communities need to know their names, need to build a relationship with them so it becomes
personal,” Green said. “The police officers need come into the schools and have career days, allowing young people to see this is a career, an opportunity, where they can begin the transformation inside of their community. Right now, when you look at most young people, they see officers as an adversary.”
Gusciora said police have to be partners.
“We can’t have this antagonism,” the longtime assemblyman said. “That’s why community policing is important.”
Worthy said police “need to be more sensitive” to the needs of residents.
“We must train our police officers,” Worthy said. “Most of our police haven’t been trained since they left the academy. That is unacceptable ... If they don’t get the proper training, we can’t expect them to act like they have some sense when they’re dealing with our people because they’re not from our community.”
Both Gusciora and Worthy said they would advocate for funding to bolster numbers in the police department. Currently, there are roughly 250 officers and at one point, there was 375.
“If we have the staffing levels that we used to have, we can have officers walking the beat and being out in the public,” Gusciora (D-Mercer/ Hunterdon) said. “That’s why it’s so important that we have
to get the staffing levels up.”
Lartigue was the only candidate to offer support of an auxiliary police force, where volunteers armed with batons would help police patrol the streets.
“The reason I believe in auxiliary policing is ... because it is an opportunity for our officers to have the support they need,” the former councilwoman said. “Public safety is about community policing being hand-in-hand with our members. We have to get away from the snitches get stitches and get with, we’re going to take our own block.”
The greatest conflict between the candidates on Tuesday came when Green insinuated those elected officials running for mayor are part of the problem.
“If you sat in a seat of power, control and influence in the last 20 years, you’ve been a part of the decisionmaking process that has created the conditions outside of this door,” the city activist said. “You cannot be allowed to revitalize now ... So the question becomes when they give you all these initiatives, you must ask the logical question: ‘Why aren’t you doing it now?’ Too many times we get caught up in nepotism, cronyism and nonsense. Who you grew up with is killing this city. But the choice you have now is are you going to keep walking back with the people who brought you from behind or are you going forward
with a new spirit.”
Worthy, who spoke directly after Green, apparently took offense to the comment.
“Some of us have experience and some of us do not,” said Worthy, who has the support of Mercer County officials and former Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer. “We need relationships to work together to build this city. You may think that you can walk in this office and not need anyone, but you do. You want to call people the ‘established candidate,’ you’re going to need some establishment to turn this city around. I’m going to do that.”
Lartigue said in order to “serve effectively” the next mayor will require “some experience.”
“We are at a very critical time in this city,” the former councilwoman said. “We don’t have much time for a learning curve.”
Gusciora illuminated that he was successful in securing a new high school for Trenton.
“I think that I have the experience to work with the community and that we can work on these problems collectively,” the assemblyman said.
Mayoral candidates Duncan Harrison and Paul Perez did not attend the forum. It was disclosed that Councilman Harrison decided to stay at a scheduled council meeting while Perez was at another event out of town.