Cory Beats Sharpe’s Record

Cory Booker does not put public safety first, and therefore his second term as mayor of Newark has been tragically horrible. A decent first term earned him a second term; a disastrous second term should get him fired, not promoted.

To set the tone for the second term, Booker enacted massive police layoffs, despite the fact he had significantly raised taxes, as the New York Times described: “Taxes have risen more than 20 percent over the past three years, even after the city laid off about 1,100 workers, including more than 160 police officers. Crime has risen, and unemployment is up.”

The table above shows the cold, hard facts on Newark violent crime direct from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.

Comparing the last full year before Booker’s police layoffs to the most recent data for 2012:

Overall violent crime is up 24 percent, an increase of 622 total crimes.

Murder, which had declined significantly, shot back up 18.8 percent. That means 15 more people were murdered in Newark in 2012 than in 2009.

Robberies have increased since Booker first took office in 2006, but increased dramatically following police layoffs: they are up 49.8% from 2009 to 2012.

Bottom line: there were 398 more violent crimes in Newark in 2012 under Booker than there were in 2005 under Sharpe James. The bad old days are back, and then some.

And sadly, after this summer’s crime wave, murders are now on pace to be 10 percent higher in 2013 than last year, which will make the fifth year in a row with an increase. Robberies are up another 24 percent so far this year.

Booker’s second term story is a tragic one: slashing the police force has hurt a lot of people, costing many their lives.

The first job of government is to keep people safe, but Newark’s mayor had other priorities. Senators make life and death decisions for the whole country. Booker cannot be trusted to make the right ones.