NEWARK
BLUES
HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Newark Police are called to a man who collapsed in the street.
cuts, according to data compiled by
Raphael Caprio, a Rutgers professor.
Those cuts, in tandem with hits to
local tax collection, forced virtually
every major city in the state to slash
vital public services, including police.
It’s a pattern being replicated across
the country, from California to Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Florida. In
cities where cuts ran deepest, crime is
climbing, defying a national downward
trend. And in almost all cases, these
cuts would have been even deeper if
not for federal assistance, particularly
from the 2009 stimulus package. With
the stimulus exhausted, and an anemic recovery underway, these cities
may have further to fall.
Some national Democrats, like Vice
President Joe Biden, have drawn an
explicit link between shrinking police departments and rising crime.
For Booker, though, the relationship