Newark Robberies Hit 14-Year High

Newark Robberies Spike to 14-Year High after @CoryBooker Cop Layoffs

By Phil Kerpen | BookerFail.com

PoliceYesterday I pointed out that Cory Booker has been a derelict, absentee mayor in his second term, starting with sweeping police layoffs that triggered an ongoing spike in violent crime.  I used FBI crime statistics to show the trend, including an enormous spike in robberies and an increase in murders four years in a row, with a 2013 pace to make it five years in a row.

In brief, Mayor Booker’s progress on crime in his first term was more than completely reversed in second term, when he became a derelict, absentee mayor — even as he was also an absentee landlord of the derelict house at 130 Court St, which squatters set on fire.

Today, using slightly different data, the Newark Star-Ledger reports that robberies this year will reach their highest level since 1999, as this table they included in their story shows. Cell phone thefts, in particular, have reached epidemic levels.

Even the Star-Ledger, which offered a slobbering endorsement of Cory Booker for Senate, lays the blame firmly on Booker’s police layoffs:

The city’s annual robbery total hovered between 1,300 and 1,400 from 2003 to 2009, according to uniform crime reports. But in 2010, that number jumped up to 1,655, and increased by another 23 percent to 2,038 in 2011.

Newark is averaging 195 robberies per month this year, meaning the city is on pace to see more than 2,300 robberies in 2013, marking the city’s worst annual total since 1999.

Since robberies are crimes of opportunity and often deterred by active patrols, experts said the surge could be a consequence of Newark’s massive police layoffs.

“This is precisely the kind of targeted enforcement that often must be sacrificed by police executives when they are faced with manpower shortages that strip them of the ability to move resources into a specific area for a specific crime problem,” said Wayne Fisher, a professor at the Rutgers Police Institute.

Cory Booker slashed the police force from a high of 1,317 officers in his first term to just 1,062 officers as of 2012, a decline of 251 officers or 19%.  The results have been tragic.

Booker’s first term was good enough to earn him a second, but his second term has certainly not earned him a third — let alone a promotion to the United States Senate.

You don’t have to take my word for it; here is Donna Jackson of the Newark Non-Violence Coalition, who Cory Booker said “doesn’t have a political agenda. She just cares about Newark.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDWJ7gXoV7o

Phil Kerpen
About Phil Kerpen 14 Articles
Phil Kerpen is president of American Commitment, and a former vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity as well as a past researcher for the Free Enterprise Fund, the Club for Growth, and the Cato Institute.

Comments are closed.