ATLANTIC CITY — Officer Nick Grasso pointed to four small bullet holes in the front of a row home in the 300 block of North Carolina Avenue early Tuesday afternoon.
“Every once in a while, we’ll get a shooting out here, and when we canvas, the majority of the residents say they don’t know anything,” Grasso said as he turned to walk down the porch steps after no one came to answer his knock at the door. “We’re trying to bring the community together so they can trust us again.”
Grasso, along with his partner, Officer Thomas Gilardi, were on the first day of their new beat as Neighborhood Coordination Officers in the city’s 2nd Ward, a territory that runs between Tennessee and Maryland avenues and from the Boardwalk to Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
It’s part of a new community policing initiative to increase safety in the resort while building up the relationship between officers and the community.
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Pairs of officers will be in each of the city’s six wards to handle quality-of-life issues and help residents navigate any problems they are having with the city, while frequenting community events and civic meetings.
Grasso and Gilardi moved onto the next home, where the porch had security cameras in each of its four corners.
AJ Emry, 54, answered the door, explaining his shed had been robbed two or three times in the past year, but it’s been better since he installed the cameras.
“We’re here for you,” Grasso said, handing him a business card with his city-assigned cellphone number and explaining that Emery can call with any issues he may have.
“This is the direction you should be in,” Emry said. “We’ll see how it works.”
The Neighborhood Coordination Unit was funded by $7.5 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. The money will be spread over five years and allows the department to hire new officers, freeing up 16 others in the department, two for each of the city’s political wards and four for homeless outreach in the Tourism District.
During a news conference Tuesday morning at City Hall, Chief Henry White spoke about the “old-fashioned type of police work” with “boots on the ground.”
Lt. Wilber Santiago, the unit’s commander, said he remembers walking in the city as a young boy and seeing officers on their beats interacting with the community.
“They instilled in me why I wanted to become a police officer,” he said. “When I was tasked with doing this program, I was honored in saying, ‘Wow. I’m going to do what I really signed up to do.’”
The need for better community and police relations is one of the points stressed in special counsel Jim Johnson’s 2018 report, which outlines recommendations for the city to move toward regaining local control of its finances and operations.
“Few things make as much of a difference in the community and to a community as seeing the cop on the beat,” Johnson said. “Feeling safe in their neighborhoods and knowing that community leaders are working with the top brass to identify issues before they become problems, to work on problems before they become crises and when crises come, to commit to working on them together.”
Community policing “pays enormous dividends” when it is done well, he said.
“It can result in crime prevention, it can reassure people that the neighborhood is safe and they are being looked out after,” Johnson said. “It can keep youth on the right path by identifying issues early on in life and working with community and with parents and with caregivers to identify solutions. It can promote communication and with communication, trust between police and the community members they serve.”
Grasso and Gilardi hit the Boardwalk after the news conference, weaving in and out of stores and talking to business owners about the issues they see each day.
Pamela Khullar, owner of The Shoe Stop, said she deals with teenagers harassing her constantly.
“I called the police, but by the time I call them, they’re by Arkansas Avenue,” she said. “They’re teenagers. They can run; I can’t run.”
Gilardi said the unit will help with transparency while helping the community.
“It really gives you an opportunity to relate to the residents in the ward and get that trust back in the Police Department,” he said. “Here, besides looking at crime stats, we want to hear from the community, to see what they need.”
