Everything Newark

Newark Star Ledger: Booker unveils his tough-love plan for Newark. Booker rolls out a plan to prevent crime in the city, enroll the community to help, and asks for accountability. This is really encouraging for citizens who, for a long time, have felt captive in their own neighborhoods by violent crime.

Booker unveiled his new program at a news conference at West Side Park that included law enforcement officials, politicians and a display of expensive new police equipment.

He called the two prongs of his plan “discipline” and “love,” in which criminals will be punished and struggling people—drug ad dicts, jobless youth, poor families and ex-cons looking to turn around their lives—will get the help they need to stay out of trouble.

The program starts this weekend and will end Sept. 7, when the new school year begins. At that point, Booker said he will start another initiative aimed at school safety.

7Online: Anti-Violence Task Force To Target Newark Killings. Newark and U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie announce a joint effort to quell violent crime in the city of Newark. The task force, which includes the DEA, FBI, and U.S. Marshals office adds dozens of officers on the ground in Newark’s neighborhoods and, presumably, costs the city little in terms of municpal dollars—very shrewd move on the part of Mayor Booker. Here’s hoping that this new task force puts down the trend of violent crime we’ve seen in recent weeks, including a string of five shootings in Newark and Orange just Monday night.

With scores of killings already committed this year in the state’s largest city, an anti-violence task force led by federal law enforcement agents said Monday it will focus solely on Newark to try to end the carnage.

New York Times: Booker Names 6 to Top Jobs in Newark. Two days before his inauguration, Cory Booker named officials to the top jobs in his administration. Booker’s appointments will be scrutinized relative to how they are able to deal with the growing crime problem as citizens fear an increase in the homicide rate.

Anthony Campos, a 20-year veteran of the Newark Police Department, was named acting police chief. Mr. Campos, 39, is currently the deputy chief of police and will succeed Chief Irving F. Bradley Jr. Mr. Booker said he was conducting a nationwide search for a permanent police director and chief but that he had authorized Mr. Campos to increase police presence on the street within hours of the swearing-in at noon on Saturday.

Newark has seen a rise in violent crime in the last year, and both Mr. Booker and Chief Campos cited last weekend’s violence in the city, in which eight people were shot and two of them died.

New York Times: U.S. Demands Newark Return $6.9 Million in Housing Aid

In their third blistering review since April, federal housing officials criticized the Newark Housing Authority yesterday for paying the City of Newark $6.9 million in federal money to add police and health services at its apartment buildings and then failing to document whether the residents ever received the extra aid.

I don’t get it: how does a public agency—especially one designed to serve the needs of people in poverty—fail an audit? In my industry (I work in the public sector), failing an audit because you’ve misappropriated several millions of dollars often means that somebody goes to prison.