Newark is in the midst of a decline, the kind you like to see — violent crime. Homicide rates hit a record low in 2022, down 15% from the previous year. Shootings were down 35% last year.
Mayor Ras Baraka took part in a discussion Sept. 18 about fighting crime with community involvement. Lenore Anderson, president of Alliance for Safety and Justice, was there. She said Baraka has been out front on this. “That resulted in things like the creation of the Newark Community Street Team, which does street outreach and conflict mediation, it resulted in things like creating a hospital-based violence interruption program, trauma recovery centers,” she said.
She said Baraka talked about how he has been affected by violent crime, with the killing of his sister in 2003.
“One of the things that he did in response was build the Baraka Center for Ending Domestic Violence and he talked about how creating this center was part of a healing journey for him and his family,” she said.
Anderson said whenever a city looks to bring the community into fighting crime there are moments of resistance from law enforcement, but eventually they come around, she said, since you can’t argue with results.
“We’re talking seven years in a row of significantly reduced violent crime,” she said, “and that then changes people’s minds, right, that’s when you start to see collaborative approaches with community become something that leaders in law enforcement are championing.”
Anderson said a lot of the money that has become available for violence prevention is in the form of one-time grants. She said those have to be made permanent to have lasting effects.