Newark Will Add 80 Poilce Officers, Mayor/State Senator Says
/Mayor Sharpe James, responding to mounting criticism after eight
killings here since Thanksgiving, convened an anti-violence summit on
Thursday and announced a plan to add 80 police officers and seven
neighborhood precincts in 2005. He said the new precincts, along with
four current ones, would encompass not just police officers but also
city workers from the Fire Department, Health Department and other city
agencies. "We will bring services to the neighborhoods," Mr. James said
at the three-hour meeting at Police Headquarters on Washington Street.
"We want the police, the city and community to work together." Newark's
police director, Anthony Ambrose, said that it would cost the city
about $8 million to hire and train the officers over the next six
months. He added that the locations and costs of the new station houses
had not been determined. The mayor said that money for the plan would
come out of the 2005 city budget. The extra police presence, he said,
had been in the works for months and was not a response to the recent
violence. So far this year in Newark, a city of 270,000, there have
been 85 murders, including a killing at the Essex County jail.
Forty-five of them are unsolved. There were 83 murders in 2003; 68 in
2002. [more]
