New Jersey Attorney General reflects on efforts to turn around Trenton’s crime problem
Less than two months after Acting Attorney General John Hoffman was appointed to the position, 52-year-old Barry Church was struck and killed by a stray bullet while sitting on his front porch.
The event led to the creation of a multi-faceted crime fighting initiative placing a significant number of state police officers on the city’s streets and enlisting the help of neighboring law enforcement agencies.
“I remember thinking how sad it is that the city is in a place where people can’t sit comfortably on their porch at the end of a summer day,” Hoffman said in a recent interview. “I got some people together to sit down in my office and we said, ‘This has to end; we have to do more than we’re doing right now.’”
NJ Acting Attorney General John Hoffman
Hoffman and other law enforcement leaders then devised the Targeted Integrated Deployment Effort (TIDE), the Targeted Anti-Gun (TAG) initiative and the Trenton Violence Reduction Strategy (TVRS).
That was in August 2013 and those initiatives — still active today — have been labeled a success by law enforcement. But the AG didn’t stop there. Earlier this year, Hoffman increased the number of state police working under the TIDE initiative and created a full-time Warrant Squad, a Shooting Response Team and three State Police Crime Suppression Units, one of which deploys a significant amount of officers to work in Trenton.
The new initiatives were not indications that previous ideas were not working, Hoffman said, they were simply extensions of conversations and efforts that began in 2013. The AG now believes all of the pieces are in place to lead Trenton down a path of recovery from the bloodshed that has stained the city’s streets.
“It’s easy to come out with a new idea or a new initiative, but we need to institutionalize real change,” Hoffman said. “Right now, we need to make sure that we are doing these things the best that we can, make them permanent fixtures in the city and work with Trenton PD as closely as possible.”
The TAG initiative is a prosecutorial strategy that eliminated the common one-year plea deals for gun-toting criminals. Now, suspects who have been “tagged” must serve a minimum of three and a half years in jail for the gun offense.
The Trenton Shooting Response Team investigates all non-fatal shootings and consists of personnel from state police, the sheriff’s office, TPD, the county prosecutor’s office and other Mercer County law enforcement agencies. Hoffman said the strategy has positively affected crime fighting in two ways: it improves evidence gathering and sends a message to the community that police care about their well-being.
“We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from the community because we have this multi-jurisdictional force getting to the scene of these crimes immediately,” Hoffman said. “The officers are there when memories are fresh and witnesses are around.”
As a result of the partnership with TPD and current crime fighting initiatives in Trenton, Hoffman said, more than 330 guns were seized and recovered this year. Hoffman also said the number of shooting victims has dropped. Between May 1 and Nov. 30 of this year, the number of shooting victims (fatal and non-fatal) decreased about 25 percent compared to that same time period last year and about 33 percent compared to 2012, Hoffman said.
“I think that shows a real improvement in the shooting environment in the city and if we can keep building on that, I think we’ll be in better shape,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman’s commitment to “returning the city back to its rightful owners” is apparent not only in the amount of manpower he commits to Trenton, but also in how he forcefully speaks about his initiatives. Hoffman, who used to walk the streets of Trenton as a PSE&G meter reader for a summer job during college, has a real affinity for the city. At a press conference earlier this year, he challenged a reporter who claimed that some people thought his announcement of an increased state police presence in Trenton was a “dog and pony show.”
Hoffman told The Trentonian that he doesn’t enjoy touting statistics on a regular basis because the numbers are not always a reflection of law enforcement’s efforts to prevent crime. At that August 2013 meeting in his office, Hoffman said, he and law enforcement leaders talked about long-term strategies that would have a lasting effect on the city and its residents.
“We said, ‘Let’s not just shoot for cheap numbers or cheap stats,’” Hoffman said. “It’s important to make sure that what we have done will make a difference after we’re gone. There will be times when the numbers won’t be great, but that doesn’t mean we’re not doing the right thing. It just means that you can’t control everything.”
