NEWARK
BLUES
HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
BUDGET
CUTS.
FEWER
COPS.
AUSTERITY HITS THE
MEAN STREETS.
B Y JOHN RUDOLF
I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y PJ LOUGHRAN
IT’S COMING UP on midnight on
a sweltering July night in Newark
when the call goes out from dispatch:
shots fired in Vailsburg, a gritty residential neighborhood in the West
Ward. The officers joking outside the
4th precinct station house scatter,
scramble into squad cars and race
down the darkened streets.
They find the victim, a man in his
30s, sprawled on the pavement under a crooked elm tree, a red patch
spreading across the shoulder of his
white T-shirt. He stares up at a starless sky as paramedics arrive and
take him off on a stretcher. He’ll live,
an officer observes. Shirtless boys
gape in front yards and old women
lean out of windows. The shooter
escaped on foot.
Another call crackles on the radio:
more gunfire in Vailsburg. Again the
squad cars race. The scene is chaotic,
with dozens of agitated young people
swarming outside a dilapidated single-family home. At the curb sits a