On a typical spring weekend in north Newark you will find the area practically wholesome. Ladies walk their dogs here while their husbands play tennis at the courts and their children play baseball down at the field. Look out any window and you’ll find a cherry blossom blooming white, pink and red. The area is mostly parks, small apartment buildings and senior citizen towers. If you walk up a little farther you will find mansions, mostly white ones, that look like museums.
It all seems so beautiful, easygoing and safe. But like most good things, it is fading under the shadow of crime. Statistics from the Newark Police Department for the Second Precinct, which embraces north Newark, tell a mixed story. Compared to a year ago murders, robberies, auto thefts and shooting incidents are down. But aggravated assaults, burglaries and thefts are up.
North Newark, while part of the city of Newark, is located right between Belleville and Bloomfield. If you should happen to make a right you’ll be in Belleville; if you make a left you’re in Bloomfield. The distance is that short and the area is that small. It often feels as if all of us who live here are trapped inside a snow globe.
I spoke with Officer Lopez, a bald, handsome, green-eyed Dominican man who gets swooned over by the Indian ladies who work in Dunkin Donuts.
“It’s important that we [the police department] make sure that crime in the area stays low.” He says no more than that while he sits by the window with his large coffee and glazed bowtie. The Dunkin Donuts that we and so many of us would go into every day went away for a year. It was getting held up too much, so the owner moved it inside of Pathmark. Now it is back—with a security camera that you notice every time you walk through the door and Officer Lopez making daily rounds.
I ask one of the girls behind the counter how safe she feels now. “I feel real safe, very safe, no crime, no trouble, good area.” She looks past me as she says this. Her eyes are glued on Officer Lopez. His own are settled on the bums by the pay phone in the parking lot. They have become one of the noticeable changes.
I have lived here for 11 years, and I remember when it was construction workers who loitered in the parking lot. They used to stand up against the wall with their tool belts hanging off their waist and their hands grasping coffee cups. They would make kissing sounds at girls walking by they thought were pretty. They’d snicker at ones that weren’t so much.
Now there are bums who stick their dirty palms in your face for change. Their breath smells sickly of beer and wine. There used to be only one liquor store in the area. It was seven blocks down, next to what used to be Foodtown and is now a Spanish supermarket. Another liquor store has opened across a street from one of the many senior citizen buildings and less than a block from Dunkin Donuts. It also happens to be right next to the only check-cashing place within walking distance.
My grandmother refuses to cash her check without an escort. “All those winos and bad men hanging out there looking to rob somebody. I tell you what—they are not going to rob me.”
Abji, who owns a store the size of my bathroom in front of the light rail, has been close to being robbed several times. He has fixed the door in such a way that it slams so loud he will always know when someone walks in or out of it. “I get thieves. They try to take things out of my store.” He waves his hand around the room.
The store is crammed with newspapers, drinks, candies, coffee, muffins, ice cream and lottery tickets. “It’s okay though,” he whispers. “I got something back here [behind the counter] that will keep them away.” I peek around betting with myself whether it’s a gun or a security alarm. He pulls out a knife like the kind Crocodile Dundee carried in New York.
The store around the corner from my building was hit twice last year; it was enough for them to cut back on their hours. The candy store five blocks away does not stay open past six. It’s not just homeless or drunks that are occasionally found walking around. This year drugs have been shuffled into the area.
Druggies are starting to walk around in broad daylight. They look like zombies, and it startles the people coming home from work. Suddenly, no one really wants to sit outside.
My neighbor’s son around the corner is one of the dealers. He used to sell children’s books door-to-door. Now he hangs over the subway rail with little bags in his pocket.
The druggies scratch their itch by the subway ramp. The skater kids have decided to take their act up into Bloomfield now. The classic cab drivers refuse to go onto certain streets for fear of being robbed, according to Marie, who does the dispatches for the company.
Ms. Jones, my neighbor in 3A, has lived and worked in Newark all her life. She is a subway driver for the light rail. She is very quick to inform anyone just how great this part of Newark is. “What other place in this city can you go park, leave your car, jump on the subway to go to New York or whatever, and come back in eleven hours and it’s still here in perfect condition? God, it’s gotten to a point where the police don’t ticket you even if you’re not residential.”
She does have a point—this is a great area for parking cars, but only during the day. At night, kids break into cars and go out on joyrides. My mother’s has been taken for a spin and crashed three times. The kids who committed the crime came from Bloomfield, say police officers. According to Newark’s 2nd precinct that patrols the area, there have been 16 auto thefts so far in 2008.
I ask my grandfather what he thinks of the area as we take the slow walk up to the Essex County Cherry Blossom Center. He hangs out there with all the other old guys who can’t work anymore and can’t bear to be in their house with their wives a moment longer. “Yeah, this place has gone down. We used to have block parties, but now we don’t.” He shrugs.
“We used to hang out all evening long, and now we don’t. Your grandmother has stopped taking her long walks during the week. It’s not safe anymore.”
“Why?” I ask him.
He stops walking and leans on his cane. He looks over at me.
“When it comes to crime, it doesn’t really go away. It goes somewhere different. If one area gets safer, then another area gets more dangerous. This used to be a safe place, but it’s not now because it’s taken in danger from someplace else—someplace that used to be more dangerous. I like to hope that it’s just passing through. It would be a shame to have to move.”
Genise Clark is a journalism major at Rutgers-Newark. Posted September 2008.
