--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "bluebishop82" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I found something in this article for all of us. Something for Tom
> Wolf, something for Gary, something for Werner. This police tech
> stuff really has my attention. Starbucks comment, too.
>
>
>
> By Mark Egan
> EAST ORANGE, New Jersey (Reuters) - Lenox Avenue in suburban East
> Orange was long a hotbed of drugs and gun mayhem and one of New
> Jersey's toughest streets. But Big Brother has cleaned it up.
>
> Police here say that thanks to new technology there has not been a
> single violent crime in almost a year on a street where the
> notorious Bloods gang sold $10 hits of crack cocaine and drive-by
> shootings were once commonplace.
>
> Now high-tech cameras and gunshot sensors are mounted at each end of
> Lenox Avenue, and on many other East Orange streets. The residential
> avenue of mainly multifamily homes is blocked from traffic and, with
> the exception of the 24-hour police presence, it looks as tranquil
> as most New Jersey suburbs.
>
> "There's no drug dealers or nothing here. They all left," said Andre
> Davis, 15, riding his scooter on Lenox. "There's no gang bangers, no
> drugs. The cops done a good job."
>
> The effort is part of a push to reverse a trend which saw the town --
> once a middle-class suburb of executives who took a 30-minute train
> ride to Manhattan -- reverse a decline sparked by the deadly 1967
> race riots in neighboring Newark, which gradually transformed the
> town into a slum populated almost entirely by lower-income blacks.
>
> "This was once a very prominent city and a very safe place to live,"
> said East Orange Police Director Jose Cordero of the town of about
> 70,000 people, whose Central Avenue was once called "the Fifth
> Avenue of New Jersey."
>
> More recently, Cordero said, "People were fearful of not being able
> to walk their streets."
>
> The veteran New York City police officer took the top job here in
> 2004 and says homicides dropped to a 25-year low of 14 in 2005, down
> from 22 in 2003. Overall crime is at a 20-year low.
>
> Last summer, police installed cameras in crime-ridden neighborhoods
> and on the city's commercial center, each equipped with sensors that
> can detect the sound of gunfire. Police use the cameras to zoom in
> on certain streets and virtually "walk" down the pavements looking
> for crime.
>
> DONATED TECHNOLOGY
>
> In what local cops call "The Brain Room," a half-a-dozen officers
> monitor large flat-screen televisions showing street activity. And
> a "Virtual Community Patrol" allows residents to view panoramic
> still pictures of their block and report crimes to police using
> their home computers. Continued ...
>
> "This program ... essentially hands over to community residents the
> ability to place the eyes of the police on a criminal problem with
> the click of a mouse," Cordero said.
>
> East Orange spent about $300,000 on the system, but the Internet
> technology that brings it all together was donated by a Manhattan-
> based company that provides broadband networks for law enforcement.
> Police here say the equipment was free because the firm that makes
> it hopes to use East Orange as a model to convince other towns to
> buy such systems.
>
> Only a handful of U.S. cities including Newport News, Virginia, have
> installed gunshot detectors -- more normally used by the military to
> detect snipers in places such as Afghanistan. East Orange police
> believe their overall crime technology is superior to that of any
> similar-sized U.S. city.
>
> "This is a city moving in the right direction," Sgt. Chris
> Anagnostis said as he drove around the town he has policed for 19
> years, pointing to just-built commercial developments still awaiting
> tenants and new apartment buildings and townhomes.
>
> But for now Central Avenue, once home to upscale department stores,
> fashionable boutiques and elegant restaurants, is a parade of fast-
> food joints and discount stores.
>
> On at least one block, things have improved. The Hollywood Theater,
> a plush movie palace where Spencer Tracy once attended a movie
> premiere, has recently reopened as a five-screen multiplex. The
> theater had been dark since 1986 before the $2.5 million renovation
> by Hollywood Cinemas.
>
> Ken Baris of Jordan Baris Inc. Realtors in nearby West Orange said a
> slew of new developments are selling well and, with homes in nearby
> towns such as Montclair regularly fetching over $1 million, he
> believes it is only a matter of time before commuters return to a
> town they long ago abandoned.
>
> HOPING FOR RESURGENCE
>
> Mayor Robert Bowser wants to transform East Orange into an arts
> center that could attract New Yorkers tired of exorbitant rents,
> noting spacious, newly refurbished, pre-war apartments here rent for
> a fraction of Manhattan prices.
>
> Bowser is in talks with big-name retailers and galleries, plans to
> open a school for the performing arts and hopes to attract a jazz
> club. But progress has been painfully slow.
>
> "The problem with every major retailer we speak to is that none of
> them want to be the pioneer who is the first one to come to the
> city," Bowser said in an interview.
>
> "What I'm concerned about is the people problem. We need a balance,"
> he said of his city, where more than 90 percent of the population is
> black and less than 4 percent is white. "I always say, 'If we get
> one Starbucks we will have arrived.'" Continued ...
>
> "People just have to believe in us," he said.
>
> Baris said more and more white people, or "urban pioneers," have
> begun looking at East Orange again as a place to live.
>
> But some here are not convinced change is coming.
>
> Businessman Nafis Rajaun, 32, plans to move away because he says
> gangs still operate here despite the police effort.
>
> "The kids here have no hope," he said. "They have nothing to aspire
> to other that being a rapper or an athlete, and that's a million-to-
> one shot. In my neighborhood the only people recruiting are the
> gangs."
>
I take a bus threw East Orange several times a year to my Veterans Hospital.I
been seeing a change in attiude's in the people living there from awhile back
you really had watch yourself in that area.A long time ago.
James Grabe
Veterans Allaince
Asbury Park N.J.
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