Jersey City had 13 homicides this year, a historic low for the city since 2012, which also saw 13 homicides.
This announcement was made during a small press briefing with Mayor Steven Fulop, Public Safety Director James Shea, Police Chief Michael Kelly, and Police Division Director Taiwana Moody. The officials released the city’s latest internal crime data and comparative statistics, which show last year there were 17 homicides, and the year before there were 20.
“That includes the four victims of the active shooter on Dec. 10,” said Shea. “That’s almost a third of homicides for the year. We are happy the overall trend for the past five years is showing a decrease. We believe we have taken our average homicides down to a place that we can sustain them and maintain at this level, or decrease.”
This does not include the two shooters who opened fire at bystanders at the JC Kosher Supermarket. Shea said FBI guidelines do not include justified homicides in the city’s overall homicide figures.
Despite the decrease, Fulop said the city is by no means “doing a victory lap” because there is “still more work to do.”
“There is still a problem with gun violence. We know if you are in a community that has any sort of gun violence, it traumatizes people with PTSD, and you don’t want to hear about trends in the right direction if you’ve been a neighbor or in close proximity, and our goal is to get that so no one has to live anywhere near gun violence,” Fulop said. “We’re moving in that direction, and I think a lot of what we show here to date, over the last couple years, speak to that. We still have a little more work to do.”
The officials credited the decrease to several factors, including the city’s expanded surveillance camera system, more police officers, the police department’s Cease-fire Unit, and an increased police presence in historically high crime areas.
Crime figures
The overall crime numbers for the year are positive, although there was an uptick in robberies, aggravated assaults, criminal mischief, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft.
Robberies increased slightly from 361 in 2018 to 372 in 2019, while robberies with a weapon decreased from 175 in 2018 to 128 in 2019.
Aggravated assaults rose from 350 in 2018 to 413 in 2019.
Shootings across the city decreased from 74 in 2018 to 57 in 2019.
Shea said this means someone fired a gun, and someone was hit but clarified that Jersey City is “one of the only cities that includes if you shot yourself.”
“Our average shooter is local, unfortunately,” Shea said. “We say all the time our shootings happen usually by people who grew up in Jersey City within sight of the block they grew up on.”
Shea attributed the decrease to increased police presence in historic “hotspots” where gun violence occurs and the city’s diligent Cease-fire Unit.
He also said that, historically, identifying shooters has been difficult, because witnesses often do not want to come forward, fearing retaliation. But through the city’s expanded surveillance camera system, identifying shooters has been easier, noting that the police department’s solve rate for shooting incidents has increased from 23 percent in 2018 to 36 percent in 2019.
“That also contributes to the shootings going down, because we are catching people before they hit someone with a gun,” Shea said.
The city has also taken 280 illegal guns off the streets in 2019, a slight decrease from 288 illegal guns seized in 2018.
Incidents of criminal mischief rose from 845 in 2018 to 1,014 in 2019, and burglaries decreased from 1,001 in 2018 to 855 in 2019.
Incidents of larceny-theft increased from 3,222 in 2018 to 3,353 in 2019.
Motor vehicle thefts also continued to rise for the third year in a row, from 413 in 2017; 501 in 2018; and 637 in 2019.
This uptick, Shea said, is consistent with what other police departments are reporting across the country, as criminals catch up with technology such as microchipped car keys meant to enhance vehicle security.
“Across the country, people are starting to wonder if thieves are starting to find a way to defeat computer chip keys,” Shea said. “Motor vehicles are always a target for theft … it’s the most expensive thing you own, usually left unattended on a city street.”
More investments
Fulop said the city has worked hard to strengthen the city’s public safety department. The measures taken include hiring more than 620 police officers since he took office in 2013, ultimately increasing the department from 827 officers in 2014 to 976 in 2019; and expanding the city’s closed-circuit camera system by roughly 200 cameras since 2014, when the city had only 50 working cameras, to 212 in 2019.
He said in 2020 he hopes to continue to increase the police department to more than 1,000 officers and add an additional 50 cameras.
Kelly said that the south and west police districts are “at least 25 percent ahead of the north and east in terms of manpower.”
But those districts are now growing. The most recent class of officers sworn in was dedicated to the north and east districts, according to Fulop.
Kelly said as the police department grows he wants to have fixed posts in high crime areas as well as more strategic neighborhood policing so residents can get more familiar with local police officers.
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