Fighting real-time crime requires real-time action
Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora dropped a story line regarding state officials offering $4.5 million in transitional aid to build a satellite State Police barracks in the city.
A city initiative would mirror the real-time crime center (RTCC) state officials opened in Newark in December 2014. The information sharing initiative allows state and local law enforcement agencies to interface, especially for violent crime investigations.
This time-released information allowed Gusciora to stymie criticism as Trenton faces a tidal wave of violence and murder.
“I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression we’re doing nothing,” he said. “We need those [police] levels. State Police has agreed they would step up and assist . ... The [Trenton] police are doing the best we can with the limited resources that we have and the budgetary constraints we have.”
The Trentonian reported the RTCC, as described in acquired emails by Tina Vignali, a transitional aid monitor at the Department of Community Affairs, will be developed “under an agreement with the State Police.”
A city with a recently-opened state-of-the-art high school should have a “city-wide, state-ofthe-art, real-time crime center” as referenced by Vignali. Perhaps former Gov. Tom Kean could rework his once popular PSA, this time with “Trenton crime and education — Perfect Together.”
Gusciora told The Trentonian he expected the RTCC project to be completed in the next year or so.
Gusciora and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy dovetail another investment in crime with intentions to lock up a problem that they say and should know will never recede without community engagement and a successful education system.
It’s a low-power move being made by Democrats. It’s embarrassing and heart wrenching. It’s despicable and dastardly. And the pitch, made by Mayor Gusciora, represents a secret handshake, a subtle chin toward chest head nod and glanced eye connect with his constituents.
After saying we will never arrest our way out of this problem — a law enforcement insight voiced by former city police Director Joseph Santiago — Mayor Gusciora has opted for a cavalry call to “arrest those suckas” as he joined the ranks of BBQ Becky, Permit Patty and Cornerstore Caroline.
The RTCC mention serves as a message to gentrificationists to hold on for just another year to 18 months and Gusciora will enhance Trenton with a few more law enforcement officers who live in suburban enclaves, some who don’t give a flying Robin Vaughn expletive about Trenton.
If Gusciora increases law enforcement ranks or extends police influence, he could run a reelection campaign that promises pollo y arroz in every pot and a law enforcement officer to play mommy and daddy in every household.
When African Americans and Latinos wise up, we will understand that whether the board game offers Monopoly or Ouija, game pieces and money stacks always slide away from us.
Gusciora would have struck a different tone and pay dirt had he announced a state supported reopening of at least one of the city’s libraries that have been shuttered for a decade. Never any money around for that type of investment — always ducats available for incarceration.
Never any money around for any vehicle that drives reading acumen, always dollars in coffers for learning to read in prison efforts. If having a captive audience enhances education success then Trenton should slap bars on its state-ofthe-art high school.
“We still have not reached the levels (of homicides) we were at 10 years ago. That doesn’t mean we’re not concerned,” Gusciora told The Trentonian.
“If someone wants to kill someone, they lay in the shadows and they target a person. You can’t prevent somebody who wants to kill another human being.”
If that serves as Mayor Gusciora’s new position on violent crime then it’s fair to question his curfew and scratch your head about this state police RTCC gambit.
Undoubtedly, a reduction of police officers contributed to the record 37 city murders in 2013 but Trenton suffered 31 homicides in 2005 with a nearly full regiment of law enforcement officers.
Lots of questions developed with The Trentonian article which included no Gusciora pivot to police Director Sheilah Coley. Are they on the outs? For the record, residents have the right to know about law enforcement plans and recreation objectives as summer approaches.
The article included insights from several sources although no contributors, not even Mayor Gusciora, mentioned parental abandonment, a proliferation of guns or failed education initiatives as issues that contribute to violence.
None mentioned our city’s trashed neighborhoods, boarded houses and lack of code enforcement — all indicators of a city’s overall health.
Those topics connect at some point although the only issue that matters now involves removal of guns and an extrication of shooters from city streets — by any and all legal means necessary.
L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist. Find him on Twitter @LAParker6 or email him at LAParker@Trentonian.com.