Cory Booker has a BIG problem to deal with.
As chronicled in my previous post about the excellent movie, Street Fight, Booker's first year as mayor of Newark, NJ, the other Chocolate City is not going quite as smoothly as planned. This isn't gonna help much either.
They were on the cusp of adulthood: four friends who made music together and were preparing to return to the college where their friendship had blossomed.The obvious issue here is whether or not mayors and other public officials can be held accountable for murders.
An apparent robbery attempt by several assailants left three of them dead, the latest victims in this city where the murder rate has risen 50 percent since 1998.
Police said the three were forced to kneel against a wall and shot at close range; a fourth was wounded.
Killed were Terrance Aeriel, 18, Iofemi Hightower, 20, and Dashon Harvey, 20. Aeriel's 19-year-old sister, Natasha, was in fair condition Monday at Newark's University Hospital after being shot in the head, police said; the hospital declined to release her condition after that, citing patient privacy laws. She was found about 30 feet from her friends, slumped near some bleachers.
Authorities were assembling details of the crime from witnesses including Natasha Aeriel, but had not made any arrests by late Monday night.
The killings bring Newark's murder total for the year to 60, and put pressure on Mayor Cory A. Booker, who campaigned last year on a promise of reducing crime.
"He doesn't deserve another day, another second, while our children are at stake," Donna Jackson, president of the community-based Take Back Our Streets organization, said Monday at a news conference in front of City Hall. "Anyone who has children in the city is in panic mode. It takes something like this for people to open up their eyes and understand that not every person killed in Newark is a drug dealer."
At a news conference, Booker said it was a time for unity and "not a time to play politics and divide our city."
Personally, I don't think it's possible to legislate "beef". People who kill other people do so because they think they can get away with it, or don't even care if get away with it. Putting more police on foot patrols, or on corners, etc. isn't likely to make a dent in murder rates. Every big city mayor immediately makes increasing police presence their #1 priority for preventing violent crime, but this tactic always seems to miss the mark because it fails to take the psychology of murderers (they don't think about consequences) into account.
Booker, however, strikes me as a different type of mayor when it comes to the issue of crime. Street Fight showed Booker, a Yale Law grad, voluntarily living in a public housing unit while running for mayor, with the aim of trying to be closer to his constituents. His entry in The World's Most Accurate Encyclopedia only adds to this image as an anti-crime mayor.
Once on the Council, Booker proved to be an unconventional public official. In 1999, he went on a 10-day hunger strike, living in a tent in front of one of Newark's worst housing projects, to protest open-air drug dealing. For five months in 2000, he lived in a motor home, parking on street corners known to be places where drug trafficking occurred.Does this sound like a guy who's "soft on crime"? I think not. To me, it sounds like Booker is doing everything in his power to prevent murders, but a mayor, and police can only do so much. Once the murder has been committed, these individuals (and prosecutors) can be held accountable to apprehending suspects and convicting them, but even that is difficult if you have communities fearful of retribution, or living under the stignant street code of "Stop Snitchin'".
Days before Booker took office in late June, New Jersey investigators foiled a plot, led by Bloods gang leaders inside four New Jersey state prisons, to assassinate Booker. The plot was led by New Jersey Bloods gang leader Lester Alford, an inmate in East Jersey State Prison in Woodbridge, New Jersey. The plan called for prisoners in four New Jersey state prisons to riot and then for Bloods gang members on the outside to simultaneously assassinate Booker. Booker has been placed under 24-hour surveillance by the Newark Police Department. The reason for the threats against Booker are believed to be in response to Booker's campaign promises to increase the number of police on the streets and take a harder line on crime.
Booker assumed office as mayor of Newark on July 1, 2006, just the third person to govern the city since 1970. After a week, Booker announced a 100-day plan to implement reforms in Newark. The centerpiece is adding police officers; other changes include ending background checks for many city jobs, an effort to help former offenders find employment in the city; refurbishing police stations; improving city services; and expanding summer youth programs.
Booker appointed Garry McCarthy, a former police commander of Manhattan's 33rd Precinct in the late 1990s, as the director of the Newark Police Department. McCarthy was credited with sharply reducing crime in the precinct but was also criticized by some for methods including setting up police barricades around neighborhoods in order to monitor the drug trade.
Booker's administration has held monthly office hours with city residents where residents can meet personally with the Mayor to discuss their problems.
Booker is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, a bi-partisan group with a stated goal of "making the public safer by getting illegal guns off the streets."
I suspect much of the dislike of Booker roots back in his image as an over educated carpetbagger, much like similar criticisms of mayors like Shirley Franklin and DC's ex, Anthony Williams. The schism between old school "civil rights era" mayors, and new schoolers with Ivy League degrees only gets magnified when such issues arise and people assume that a person with an education is unable to relate to or sympathize with, or do something about the problem.
This murder is a travesty by all means, as three young people who were trying to better their lives were gunned down in the most heinous of fashions. Whoever did this deserves a sauna in the West Wing of Hell. But blaming a public official, especially one like Booker who has demonstrated a genuine concern for trying to change the culture that produces such acts, is shortsighted and misdirected.
Mayors can't legislate beef.
Triple Murder Pictorial [NJ.com]
Execution-Style Killings Spark Outrage [ABCNews]
