ATLANTIC CITY — A summer marked by violence, including the slaying of three teens, is coming to a close, but community leaders and law enforcement officials are still searching for new methods to curb youth violence.
A group of Atlantic City leaders traveled to Newark last week to learn about ongoing efforts there to keep young people away from violent activity and how those practices could be applied here.
Jim Johnson, special counsel to Gov. Phil Murphy and co-author of the state’s transition report on Atlantic City, said after a recent meeting of the Atlantic City Executive Council that the key takeaway from the information-gathering visit was that building trust between law enforcement and the community was essential to combating outbreaks of violence.
“That is really one of the big points in the realm of rebuilding communities,” Johnson said.
People are also reading…
The group, which included Johnson; City Council President Marty Small Sr.; Citizens Advisory Board Chairwoman Joyce Mollineaux and Vice Chairman Steve Young was introduced to Newark’s Community Street Team.
The street team, which is largely composed of residents with criminal records who have reformed and are trusted by at-risk youth, “takes the idea of engagement and professionalizes it,” Johnson said, noting the group received a 20-step training course on interacting with those most at risk in the city.
“They look for people who’ve been in trouble in life, and have turned their lives around, because they’re the ones that are going to be trusted by these folks that are most at risk of either killing or being killed,” Johnson said.
The Atlantic City group also looked at Newark’s “safe passage” program, which aims to provide students a path to and from school free of violence, and a victim assistance program.
The next step, Johnson said, is identifying policies and practices from these programs that could be applied in Atlantic City. The city had its seventh fatal shooting in July, the last three of which involved teenagers: 15-year-old Na’imah Bell, 18-year-old Katusca Robles and 16-year-old Quran Bazemore.
“Atlantic City is unique, so maybe we do it a little bit differently here, but there’s going to be a community outreach portion of that organization so it has got to start at grassroots,” said Mike Epps, executive director of the Atlantic City Initiatives Project office, earlier this month. “Not separate from, but in cooperation with the Police Department, the Board of Education and the hospital.” This isn’t the first time Atlantic City has turned to Newark for potential solutions. Rutgers University criminal justice associate professor Joel Caplan oversaw the city’s implementation of Risk-Terrain policing in 2017, a tool also used in Newark to help police prevent crimes by tackling factors in the environment identified as risks where crimes take place, not the people themselves. The tactic reduced violent crime in targeted areas in both cities. It decreased by about 35% in Atlantic City over a year, Caplan said. The fact that Atlantic City officials are looking into safe passages and street teams seemed like a natural next step to Caplan. He said it meshes with the department’s new, more community-oriented approach to policing.
“We’re not just looking from a law-enforcement standpoint,” police Chief Henry White said in early August. “We know we’re not going to be able to arrest our way out of this problem.”
