New Jersey mayors team up to fight crime

The mayors of New Jersey’s three largest cities have joined forces to help fight crime.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and Paterson Mayor Jose Torres announced the general partnership late last month, saying they will nail down specifics at a roundtable discussion scheduled for September, according to NBC New York. The partnership will involve resource and information sharing.

“Crime recognizes few boundaries – urban or suburban,” Fulop wrote in The Jersey Journal. “That’s why it’s so important to have police departments cooperate as regional crime fighters, especially to slow the movement of guns and drugs.”

He wrote the three cities plan to collaborate on public safety matters, including information sharing, tracking criminals, trading gang intelligence and offering communal police manpower and task forces, such as operation Cease Fire, an effort to mitigate gun violence.

“Our cities have lost valuable lives,” Torres told The Jersey Journal. “This partnership will allow all three major cities to share services and help create a task force to track gang members and violent crime offenders. By sharing information and working together, we will keep criminals from abusing jurisdictional boundaries of the multiple agencies operating to protect our lives.”

However, public safety isn’t only about fighting crime, wrote Fulop. The cities also plan on dealing with the persistent issues that drive up crime rates, such as poverty and joblessness.


“[The three cities will] provid[e] employment training and job entry programs, using resources from three municipalities, their respective agencies and public and private partnerships to allow for greater opportunity,” wrote Fulop.

Baraka echoed this sentiment to The Jersey Journal. “We must provide residents, as well as offenders with alternatives to gangs and drugs, and provide them with jobs and hope," he said. "We are all in this together, and together we will eradicate crime by improving the overall quality of life in New Jersey’s urban cities.”

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