My very first apartment sans roommates was in Trenton. I felt totally safe, thr neighborhood was an old Itslian neighborhood with the best pizza shops. Neighbors looked after each other.
I moved out after my car got stolen, my boyfriend at the time had his truck stolen. My apt was burglarized.
I was then mugged. Fortunately I only lost forty dollars. When I went to fill out a police report, the police officer doing my paperwork who must have been about my dad’s age (at that time) told me to move to the burbs. The neighborhood was slowly dying.
Now the only way I see Trenton, is driving over it via the highway. All this in twenty five years.
Ferguson was on the same slow path to irrelevance, and this just moved it ahead five spaces. Glad you were OK; while New Jerseyans may be liberal on many topics, on two they are not: taxes and race. My area is filled with people who escaped from Newark when it fell, as well as their descendants; the only reason to go into Newark (besides working there) is to buy drugs and prostitutes.
The only hope for these areas are the masses of Hispanics displacing the blacks.