I found something in this article for all of us. Something for Tom
Wolf, something for Gary, something for Werner. This police tech
stuff really has my attention. Starbucks comment, too.
By Mark Egan
EAST ORANGE, New Jersey (Reuters) - Lenox Avenue in suburban East
Orange was long a hotbed of drugs and gun mayhem and one of New
Jersey's toughest streets. But Big Brother has cleaned it up.
Police here say that thanks to new technology there has not been a
single violent crime in almost a year on a street where the
notorious Bloods gang sold $10 hits of crack cocaine and drive-by
shootings were once commonplace.
Now high-tech cameras and gunshot sensors are mounted at each end of
Lenox Avenue, and on many other East Orange streets. The residential
avenue of mainly multifamily homes is blocked from traffic and, with
the exception of the 24-hour police presence, it looks as tranquil
as most New Jersey suburbs.
"There's no drug dealers or nothing here. They all left," said Andre
Davis, 15, riding his scooter on Lenox. "There's no gang bangers, no
drugs. The cops done a good job."
The effort is part of a push to reverse a trend which saw the town --
once a middle-class suburb of executives who took a 30-minute train
ride to Manhattan -- reverse a decline sparked by the deadly 1967
race riots in neighboring Newark, which gradually transformed the
town into a slum populated almost entirely by lower-income blacks.
"This was once a very prominent city and a very safe place to live,"
said East Orange Police Director Jose Cordero of the town of about
70,000 people, whose Central Avenue was once called "the Fifth
Avenue of New Jersey."
More recently, Cordero said, "People were fearful of not being able
to walk their streets."
The veteran New York City police officer took the top job here in
2004 and says homicides dropped to a 25-year low of 14 in 2005, down
from 22 in 2003. Overall crime is at a 20-year low.
Last summer, police installed cameras in crime-ridden neighborhoods
and on the city's commercial center, each equipped with sensors that
can detect the sound of gunfire. Police use the cameras to zoom in
on certain streets and virtually "walk" down the pavements looking
for crime.
DONATED TECHNOLOGY
In what local cops call "The Brain Room," a half-a-dozen officers
monitor large flat-screen televisions showing street activity. And
a "Virtual Community Patrol" allows residents to view panoramic
still pictures of their block and report crimes to police using
their home computers. Continued ...
"This program ... essentially hands over to community residents the
ability to place the eyes of the police on a criminal problem with
the click of a mouse," Cordero said.
East Orange spent about $300,000 on the system, but the Internet
technology that brings it all together was donated by a Manhattan-
based company that provides broadband networks for law enforcement.
Police here say the equipment was free because the firm that makes
it hopes to use East Orange as a model to convince other towns to
buy such systems.
Only a handful of U.S. cities including Newport News, Virginia, have
installed gunshot detectors -- more normally used by the military to
detect snipers in places such as Afghanistan. East Orange police
believe their overall crime technology is superior to that of any
similar-sized U.S. city.
"This is a city moving in the right direction," Sgt. Chris
Anagnostis said as he drove around the town he has policed for 19
years, pointing to just-built commercial developments still awaiting
tenants and new apartment buildings and townhomes.
But for now Central Avenue, once home to upscale department stores,
fashionable boutiques and elegant restaurants, is a parade of fast-
food joints and discount stores.
On at least one block, things have improved. The Hollywood Theater,
a plush movie palace where Spencer Tracy once attended a movie
premiere, has recently reopened as a five-screen multiplex. The
theater had been dark since 1986 before the $2.5 million renovation
by Hollywood Cinemas.
Ken Baris of Jordan Baris Inc. Realtors in nearby West Orange said a
slew of new developments are selling well and, with homes in nearby
towns such as Montclair regularly fetching over $1 million, he
believes it is only a matter of time before commuters return to a
town they long ago abandoned.
HOPING FOR RESURGENCE
Mayor Robert Bowser wants to transform East Orange into an arts
center that could attract New Yorkers tired of exorbitant rents,
noting spacious, newly refurbished, pre-war apartments here rent for
a fraction of Manhattan prices.
Bowser is in talks with big-name retailers and galleries, plans to
open a school for the performing arts and hopes to attract a jazz
club. But progress has been painfully slow.
"The problem with every major retailer we speak to is that none of
them want to be the pioneer who is the first one to come to the
city," Bowser said in an interview.
"What I'm concerned about is the people problem. We need a balance,"
he said of his city, where more than 90 percent of the population is
black and less than 4 percent is white. "I always say, 'If we get
one Starbucks we will have arrived.'" Continued ...
"People just have to believe in us," he said.
Baris said more and more white people, or "urban pioneers," have
begun looking at East Orange again as a place to live.
But some here are not convinced change is coming.
Businessman Nafis Rajaun, 32, plans to move away because he says
gangs still operate here despite the police effort.
"The kids here have no hope," he said. "They have nothing to aspire
to other that being a rapper or an athlete, and that's a million-to-
one shot. In my neighborhood the only people recruiting are the
gangs."
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