Trenton under siege: Shootings just won’t stop
After investigating four killings in six days, Trenton detectives late Tuesday raced to Coolidge Avenue. They found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds.
The latest shootings extended a troubling period for the city, which cut more than 100 police officers from the payroll in September as it struggled with budget problems.
“We don’t have the manpower on the streets or enough detectives on duty to protect the public like we should,’’ said South Ward Councilman George Muschal.
Late Monday, 21-year-old Jerel “Bigga Rell” Grimsley became the city’s 22nd homicide victim of 2011.
Just before midnight, police said, a group of males shot at a car in an alley behind the 500 block of Lalor Street. Grimsley was in the car, and was shot in the torso. The car raced away, and minutes later the driver flagged down an officer on Roebling Avenue, said Detective Sgt. Stephen Varn. The Trenton Emergency Medical Service was called to Roebling Avenue, and the victim was transported to the trauma unit at Capital Health Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The recent spate of shootings began last Wednesday, when Troy Bradley and Pavevo Davis were shot dead on North Overbrook Avenue in a possible home invasion. On Christmas morning, a man was killed near the intersection of Phillips Avenue and Nassau Street. A killing earlier in the month makes it five in 12 days. The number could rise if the Coolidge Avenue victims don’t make it; they were reportedly in critical condition late Tuesday.
Muschal, a former officer, blamed the recent killings on cuts to the police force. Trenton laid off 105 officers in mid-September and then rehired 18 of those officers on a temporary basis using leftover grant money and savings from police retirements. Recently, Muschal said, a murder victim’s body remained in the street for 30 minutes before a sergeant could get to the scene.
Most nights, Muschal added, as few as eight policemen are on duty, and that number will do down by two if a suspect has to be driven to the county jail in Hopewell Township — a job that takes two officers.
One night recently, he added, Trenton had eight officers on duty to the 16 of Hamilton — which bills itself as having one of America’s lowest crime rates.
Trenton’s increasingly troublesome pre-teens — who recently bashed in a man’s head with a brick, shot a police car with BBs and fired on a fire truck with paintballs — are becoming more brazen because they know there are not enough officers on the street, Muschal said.
Meanwhile, Grimsley’s Facebook page filled with remembrances on Tuesday.
“Bad things happen to good ppl,” wrote Eliana M. Martinez. “What a crazy world we live in. May you rest in peace.”
Tia Short-Tillery wrote: “We had so many plans in our life that I know now we won’t get to do.”
