By Damien Cave And Ronald Smothers, The New York Times
 Keith Meyers/The New York Times Nursery Street and Broadway in Newark, where Detective Orlando Velazquez was shot yesterday. The suspect was killed by the police. |
NEWARK, N.J. -- As police officials were lining up a new supply of bulletproof vests on Tuesday in response to a rash of violence in which three city police officers had been shot since July 10, news of a fourth shooting crackled across the department’s radios.
Detective Orlando Velazquez, 41, was on only his second day in Newark’s North District, the police said, when he was shot through the hand during a struggle with a purse-snatching suspect.
The detective, unlike the three other officers shot since July 10, did not belong to the Neighborhood Enforcement Stabilization Task Force, a controversial unit charged with pursuing quality-of-life crimes in the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods.
But for many city officials and residents in Newark, such details mattered less than the fact that the fourth city officer in less than a month had been shot. Detective Velazquez’s wound, which was being operated on Tuesday afternoon at University Hospital in Newark, made July a high-water mark for violence against the police: before this month, only four Newark officers had been shot in the line of duty since 1985, according to police statistics.
In addition to the four city officers shot since July 10, a detective with the Essex County Sheriff’s Department was shot in Newark on July 2 by a murder suspect who then shot himself.
Police officials and local leaders said on Tuesday that the increased violence against the police was a response - from gangs and drug dealers - to a heightened law enforcement presence. In the spring, the Newark police reassigned about 100 desk officers to the street in an effort to dislodge drug gangs that were growing ever bolder.
“We found a lot of areas where drug dealers had a comfort zone,” acting Police Chief Irving Bradley Jr. said at a news conference. “So what we did was add an additional hundred officers out there, and we disrupted their comfort zone.” Now, he added, “they’re rebelling against the change.”
Kevin Jenkins, chief of staff to Councilwoman Gail Chaneyfield-Jenkins, also attributed the rise in violence and police shootings to the brazenness of what he called “youth gangs who were no different from community terrorists.” While he insisted that crime in Newark was declining over all, he said this situation was a “different level of crime,” very localized and linked to drug gangs and turf wars.
“I think this police presence is necessary for the times we live in,” he said. “We are not going to allow any group, young or old, to turn against their community.”
Modia Butler, executive director of Newark Now, a nonprofit agency that was founded by Cory Booker, a former mayoral candidate, said the situation was a “simmering concern” as opposed to a full boil.
Jack McEntee, president of Newark Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 12, however, said that the police were struck with disbelief on Tuesday upon hearing of yet another shooting. “To have this many people shot in such a short span is very disconcerting to our officers,” he said. “They’re angry about it.”
City officials are already marshalling a multipronged response. At a news conference Tuesday, Mayor Sharpe James called in from the Democratic National Convention in Boston to denounce the “barbaric acts” against the police, and to describe several initiatives. The most visible is bulletproof vests.
Noting that few officers until now wore them regularly, he said that 900 of the city’s 1,400 officers - essentially, everyone on patrol - would now be required to wear form-fitting protection vests, which typically weigh three to six pounds. Mr. James also said that he would add more police officers to the streets and coordinate a new system of backup, combining the resources of the Newark police with transit officials, the Essex County Sheriff’s Department and other agencies.
Police Chief Anthony F. Ambrose added that the use of one-officer police cruisers would be eliminated in all areas of Newark after midnight. In neighborhoods with a high concentration of drugs and violence, Mr. Ambrose said, two-officer units will be the norm, and calls for high-risk crimes will always be answered by no fewer than four officers. A new committee of law enforcement officials and scholars has also been formed to study the shootings and their causes.
For now, the police are treating the shootings as a series of unrelated incidents.
On Tuesday, Detective Velazquez, 41, was shot just after 10 a.m. when the purse-snatching suspect grabbed another officer’s gun in a struggle with officers near the corner of Nursery Street and Broadway. It was not clear, the police said, whether Officer Velazquez was shot by the suspect or by fellow officers who fired at the suspect, who refused to drop the gun and was killed by the police. His name was not released last night.
The first injured officer, Richard Borges, was shot July 10 while serving an arrest warrant. Three days later, Officer Patrick Gonnella was shot during a confrontation between the police and several gunmen, including one who was killed in the conflict. Then, on Sunday, Patrick Cantalupo was shot in the buttocks while making a drug arrest.
The police said that they are still looking for leads in the shooting of Officer Cantalupo. Three suspects in the other shootings, the police said, are members of a gang called the Bloods.
Mr. McEntee said that the Police Department’s new plan for backup and vests “is a step in the right direction” but might not be enough. Other tactics - including additional use of emergency response teams or undercover agents - are also being discussed, he said.
In the meantime, officers are trying to fit into older bulletproof vests, and are also discussing the best way to protect themselves and their partners.
“Whatever legal use of force is necessary to get home at night,” said Mr. McEntee. “That’s what we want them to do.”