Marie Corfield: Saving New Jersey's children three zip codes at a time

Marie Corfield: Saving New Jersey's children three zip codes at a time:

Saving New Jersey's children three zip codes at a time

Yesterday the mayors of New Jersey's three largest cities, Ras Baraka of Newark, Jose Torres of Paterson and Steven Fulop of Jersey City, announced a bold move to collaborate on reducing violent crime in all three cities. 

The proposal evolved from the Passaic River Corridor Initiative along Route 21, which has involved as many as 80 municipalities sharing police intelligence, according to Tom O’Reilly, the head of the Police Institute at Rutgers University. State authorities have said the program has led to hundreds of arrests. 

But sharing police officers among three large cities that are not adjacent to one another while also combining social services is “sort of a first,” O’Reilly said. “They are challenging the traditional ways of thinking,” he said of the mayors. “The idea that three mayors have cut across bureaucratic lines is the first step.”

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O’Reilly said the mayors’ proposal may include expanding a Newark violence reduction program in which Rutgers is taking part, and which he said was beefed up this year, leading to two months without a gang-related homicide in the city’s Fourth Police Precinct. The program calls for paroled gang members to meet relatives of gun violence victims and to be connected with social workers. It also has a dedicated law enforcement contingent that includes state, county and federal authorities. 

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[Mayor] Baraka said that “we are also talking about reentry” programs to aid people coming out of prison. And he mentioned the possible inclusion of Marie Corfield: Saving New Jersey's children three zip codes at a time: