A flat-screen television shows street activity as an East
Orange officer works inside the police communications command
center at police headquarters in East Orange, New Jersey March 28, 2006.
(Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Posted on 04/03/2006 1:05:26 PM PDT by Pharmboy
A flat-screen television shows street activity as an East
Orange officer works inside the police communications command
center at police headquarters in East Orange, New Jersey March 28, 2006.
(Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Lenox Avenue in suburban East Orange was long a hotbed of drugs and gun mayhem and one of New Jersey's toughest streets. But Big Brother has cleaned it up.
Police here say that thanks to new technology there has not been a single violent crime in almost a year on a street where the notorious Bloods gang sold $10 hits of crack cocaine and drive-by shootings were once commonplace.
Now high-tech cameras and gunshot sensors are mounted at each end of Lenox Avenue, and on many other East Orange streets. The residential avenue of mainly multifamily homes is blocked from traffic and, with the exception of the 24-hour police presence, it looks as tranquil as most New Jersey suburbs.
"There's no drug dealers or nothing here. They all left," said Andre Davis, 15, riding his scooter on Lenox. "There's no gang bangers, no drugs. The cops done a good job."
The effort is part of a push to reverse a trend which saw the town -- once a middle-class suburb of executives who took a 30-minute train ride to Manhattan -- reverse a decline sparked by the deadly 1967 race riots in neighboring Newark, which gradually transformed the town into a slum populated almost entirely by lower-income blacks.
"This was once a very prominent city and a very safe place to live," said East Orange Police Director Jose Cordero of the town of about 70,000 people, whose Central Avenue was once called "the Fifth Avenue of New Jersey."
More recently, Cordero said, "People were fearful of not being able to walk their streets."
The veteran New York City police officer took the top job here in 2004 and says homicides dropped to a 25-year low of 14 in 2005, down from 22 in 2003. Overall crime is at a 20-year low.
Last summer, police installed cameras in crime-ridden neighborhoods and on the city's commercial center, each equipped with sensors that can detect the sound of gunfire. Police use the cameras to zoom in on certain streets and virtually "walk" down the pavements looking for crime.
DONATED TECHNOLOGY
In what local cops call "The Brain Room," a half-a-dozen officers monitor large flat-screen televisions showing street activity. And a "Virtual Community Patrol" allows residents to view panoramic still pictures of their block and report crimes to police using their home computers.
"This program ... essentially hands over to community residents the ability to place the eyes of the police on a criminal problem with the click of a mouse," Cordero said.
East Orange spent about $300,000 on the system, but the Internet technology that brings it all together was donated by a Manhattan-based company that provides broadband networks for law enforcement. Police here say the equipment was free because the firm that makes it hopes to use East Orange as a model to convince other towns to buy such systems.
Only a handful of U.S. cities including Newport News, Virginia, have installed gunshot detectors -- more normally used by the military to detect snipers in places such as Afghanistan. East Orange police believe their overall crime technology is superior to that of any similar-sized U.S. city.
"This is a city moving in the right direction," Sgt. Chris Anagnostis said as he drove around the town he has policed for 19 years, pointing to just-built commercial developments still awaiting tenants and new apartment buildings and townhomes.
But for now Central Avenue, once home to upscale department stores, fashionable boutiques and elegant restaurants, is a parade of fast-food joints and discount stores.
On at least one block, things have improved. The Hollywood Theater, a plush movie palace where Spencer Tracy once attended a movie premiere, has recently reopened as a five-screen multiplex. The theater had been dark since 1986 before the $2.5 million renovation by Hollywood Cinemas.
Ken Baris of Jordan Baris Inc. Realtors in nearby West Orange said a slew of new developments are selling well and, with homes in nearby towns such as Montclair regularly fetching over $1 million, he believes it is only a matter of time before commuters return to a town they long ago abandoned.
HOPING FOR RESURGENCE
Mayor Robert Bowser wants to transform East Orange into an arts center that could attract New Yorkers tired of exorbitant rents, noting spacious, newly refurbished, pre-war apartments here rent for a fraction of Manhattan prices.
Bowser is in talks with big-name retailers and galleries, plans to open a school for the performing arts and hopes to attract a jazz club. But progress has been painfully slow.
"The problem with every major retailer we speak to is that none of them want to be the pioneer who is the first one to come to the city," Bowser said in an interview.
"What I'm concerned about is the people problem. We need a balance," he said of his city, where more than 90 percent of the population is black and less than 4 percent is white. "I always say, 'If we get one Starbucks we will have arrived."'
"People just have to believe in us," he said.
Baris said more and more white people, or "urban pioneers," have begun looking at East Orange again as a place to live.
But some here are not convinced change is coming.
Businessman Nafis Rajaun, 32, plans to move away because he says gangs still operate here despite the police effort.
"The kids here have no hope," he said. "They have nothing to aspire to other that being a rapper or an athlete, and that's a million-to-one shot. In my neighborhood the only people recruiting are the gangs."
It's not that they are lower income blacks, it's that there are far far too many criminals amongst the population.
As to the surveillance, it raises questions but is better than surrendering homes to drugs and gangs.
Having grown up in Newark I can only say that there might be hope yet if Corey Booker gets to be the Mayor but NJ has a long long way to go before any of it's big cities are returned to the civilized column.
Jersey crime-is-down ping...
I have a great-aunt who used to live in East Orange. I remember her showing pictures of her walking in front of her Victorian house and taking her nephew (my father) to an Amusement park over in Irvington, I think. Seemed like a nice place to live.
From what I understand, East Orange always had a sizeable black population (Dionne Warwick was born there), but that it was stable and lower-middle to middle class. When the riots hit Newark next door, panic selling occurred, Section 8ers moved in, and the town went to hell in less than three years (longtime Newarkies/Orangeites can correct me if I'm wrong).
The interesting thing is that South Orange and West Orange have become popular places for middle to upper income blacks, along with upwardly mobile Asian and Latin American immigrants. Time will tell if they will become like successfully integrated like Montclair or a slum like East Orange. If they can keep the gangs and section 8ers out, they should be fine.
No one will invest in that community. No shops, no supermarkets, just devestation.
The City died that day and has never recovered. Doubtful it ever will.....in my lifetime.
I don't think East Orange went under right after the riots, but I could be wrong. It was already a poor community, mostly Italian. It went from poor Italians to poor blacks.
Newrk itself is seeing resurgence in some areas, has been for years.
Plenty of nail salons and Chinese take-out joints, however!
Nevertheless, what you say is largely true. All you have to do is look at Newark, Plainfield, Detroit, Dixmoor (near Chicago), and Anacostia (DC) to see that the scars of the riots of the 1960s appear to be all but permanent.
Its no secret as to why Ironbound/Downneck and the Bloomfield Avenue corridor are the only areas of Newark to post a population gain over the past 15 years. Even the immigrants won't settle along Springfield Avenue or in Weequahic.
My brothers and I were all born in Muhlenburg Hospital in Plainfield, I was the last in '59. I remember being little & hearing about the riots in Plainfield. By then we lived near Somerville, and they had some "unrest" there too around the same time.
The women had to take a bus to a nearby town to shop for food.
The consequences of such rioting lasts for generations and causes untold harm to everyone in their community.
Don't know what the answer is other than to keep praying that people get their lives together and do their best.
Olympic Park as in Irvington. Spent many a summer there. Oh it was heaven!
This is a crucial, and frequently ignored, distinction. There is no privacy in public. There is no right to privacy in public. There should be no expectation of privacy in public.
That's why it's called "public".
If you search it on the Internet I know there is at least one website with photos and stories remembering Olympic Park. There was a real golden age back then or so it seemed.
Plainfield, especially downtown Plainfield, is having a bit of a resurgence. However, not without tension.
After Hurricane Floyd hit Bound Brook in a big way, many of the Hispanic immigrants moved to Plainfield around the downtown area. Many of the boarded up shops were opened and became bodegas. Aparently however, there is some racial divide in the high school.
The Sleepy Hollow section near Scotch Plains has never been that down and out. Many of the old Victorian homes near Sleepy Hollow are being gentrified by gay couples refurbishing them.
My cousins grew up there and yes, left after the riots.
Booker's going to win this time for sure. But parts of Newark are not at all like the Central and South Wards. It's a mistake to see the whole city as being the same as the very poor areas.
ya think?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.