NEWARK
BLUES
HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
MATT RAINEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Booker discusses the fatal drive-by shooting of Newark Police Officer Willie Johnson
at a news conference in Newark in 2011.
got to do more with less,” he says.
In a time of widespread fiscal
hardship, this refrain is surely familiar to workers of all stripes, whatever sector they fall in. Yet Newark’s
cops do not work at an ordinary job,
like the rest of us.
Their work is closer to being a soldier on the front lines of a ceaseless,
low-intensity war. As Burroughs
tells it, less than 24 hours earlier
an officer in the next precinct over
was patrolling a low-income housing
development when gunfire erupted
from two cars circling the block.
The officer called for backup, then
charged after the shooters, who shot
a few rounds at him. They missed.
“He went straight into the line of
fire,” Burroughs says.
Two teenagers bailed out of one of
the cars and fled on foot. They were
pursued and tackled to the ground,
and a pistol was recovered from the
vehicle. The next day’s paper buried
a summary of the shootout in the
back pages. It was nothing special for
the Newark police. “It’s a dangerous
job,” Burroughs says.
“This is real. It’s not TV.”