Trenton needs holistic plan to deal with decades of poverty, violence and death
Death during holidays seems incredibly worse than any other time, especially when end of life comes at the hands of a violent, guntoting assassin.
Another city homicide occurred just a week away from Thanksgiving as a gunman killed Quanmir Spears, 28. ShotSpotter technology identified 12 shots in the 300 block of Spring St. around 3:40 p.m. on Wednesday and that’s where police found Spears with at least one gun shot wound in his head.
Family members or friends who had expected Spears as a guest for Thanksgiving, now must prepare for a funeral following an untimely death. Of course, leaving a place setting and empty chair may make a statement about his departure but not seeing the light of day remains a significant event, especially for the avalanche of young, AfricanAmerican male bodies that stockpile.
The proliferation of this black plague should not be dismissed as “a disturbing trend in urban areas where kids have lack of direction, lack of hope and they’re prone to neighborhood-type gangs,” a distorted angle offered as insight by Mayor Reed Gusciora.
Frequently, a better strategy demands silence. No one expects Mayor Gusciora to have all the answers and explanations for our violence problem. Sure, keeping quiet may garner critics but saying nothing can be beneficial although uncomfortable.
The latest city killing happened just blocks away from Spring St. and Rev. S.Howard Woodson Way, a street named after the famous pastor who headed Shiloh Baptist Church. In early August. Mayor Gusciora closed Spring St. then offered ramped-up patrols in tough parts of the city along with an initiative to alter curfew hours.
Gusciora’s strategy attracted pushback as residents shouted their solutions to the city’s violence that has lasted through four mayors, an interim mayor and four decades.
While short-term efforts seem reasonable, a sustainable revitalization demands that Trenton leaders focus on education. We could change the future if people would understand that early childhood education tethered to bells, whistles and relentless support could turn this traumatic tide of desperate disenfranchisement.
We keep throwing law enforcement dollars at a problem, instead of making real investments in learning. We prefer paying $50,000 for incarceration instead of an investment of those dollars toward recreation initiatives, libraries and social skills.
Violence, murder, generational poverty and criminal activity in other urban areas should not mean that our capital city accepts these circumstances as natural.
Part of the law enforcement issue involves lack of leadership in the city’s police director position as Mayor Gusciora used Undersheriff Pedro Medina as acting director for three months then replaced him with retired Trenton police Sgt. Carol Russell.
Russell has spent two weeks as acting police director although she faces serious pushback from city council members should Gusciora present her as his ultimate choice. If city council members reject Russell then the mayor must choose another police director. We could lose six months or more of an opportunity to move our police department toward a better direction.
The August Spring St. press conference included Regina Thompson-Jenkins whose son, Trey Lane, 19, died after being shot on North Willow St. in 2012.
“These tears are real,” Thompson-Jenkins explained.
The tears for Spears will resonate as non-fiction, too, as Planet Earth swallows another young, black man.
L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist. Find him on Twitter @LAParker6 or email him at LAParker@ Trentonian.com.