A Bleeding City, Seeking More Than a Band-Aid

The current state of Newark is both a blessing and a curse to Cory Booker: the former because there must be so much low-hanging fruit and even the tiniest bit of competence and honesty will be a HUGE improvement, but also the latter because the depravity is so deeply ingrained and entrenched.

---------------------

A Bleeding City, Seeking More Than a Band-Aid

 

By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: May 21, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/nyregion/21newark.html

NEWARK, May 18 — Kelvin Kelley, who was 16, was laid to rest on Monday, the gunshot wounds to his torso concealed by the crisp beige suit he had recently worn to a high school speech team competition at Harvard University. The following day, mourners said goodbye to his best friend, Hassan Ferguson, 16, who was killed alongside Kelvin in a Central Ward parking lot on May 9.

It was the same day that Newark elected Cory Booker as the city's first new mayor in two decades.

These two killings and another shooting on Wednesday brought the number of murders in 2006 to 40, 11 more than during the same period last year. Nearly half of those killed were under 21.

Hopes for a safer, saner city are squarely focused on Mr. Booker, a suburban-raised Rhodes scholar and former Newark council member who has promised to bring law and order to a city awash in illegal guns, gang violence and fear. A big part of his plan hinges on overhauling the city's troubled Police Department.

"Everything falls on my shoulders now," he said after attending Kelvin's funeral. "The challenge is to switch from talking about solutions to implementing solutions."

Public safety, most everyone here agrees, is the issue that could make or break the mayoralty of Mr. Booker, a 37-year-old Democrat who is often mentioned as a national up-and-comer. He is to take office on July 1.

In Mr. Booker's own polls taken during the campaign, more than 80 percent of residents cited crime as the No. 1 issue, far outstripping concerns over the city's beleaguered school system, a lack of decent jobs and a poverty rate that keeps Newark mired in the bottom tier of America's most battered municipalities.