Starting Friday, the East and West police substations will be manned and open 24 hours a day, beefing up the police department’s presence in the two wards.
In an October 2006 photo, the Trenton Police Department holds an opening ceremony for its West Patrol District Headquarters on Hermitage Avenue in Trenton. The police plan to reopen the precinct, which was closed in 2010, to help combat the surge of violent crime in the city.
A bicyclist approaches the intersection of Greenwood and Cuyler avenues in front of The Trenton Police East District building in a 2008 photo. The police department plans to reopen the precinct, which was closed in 2010.
TRENTON — Two police precincts shuttered in 2010 in a cost-cutting move will re-open Friday, when city officials are expected to announce new strategies to combat escalating violence in the city.
Starting Friday, the East and West police substations will be manned and open 24 hours a day, beefing up the police department’s presence in the two wards and allowing patrol units to report directly from the precincts, Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. said yesterday.
“It doesn’t make sense to pay a mortgage on those buildings and not utilize them,” he said. “It will add a visible presence, reduce response time and make the community feel safer.”
The announcement comes as the city continues to deal with a surge in violent crime that has led both Rivera and Mayor Tony Mack to reach out to state officials to request more State Police manpower or funding to hire more city officers. Trenton has seen 24 homicides so far this year, with 12 since September.
Rivera and his chief of staff met Monday with state Attorney General Jeff Chiesa and Col. Rick Fuentes, the superintendent of the State Police, to talk about bringing more state troopers to the capital city. Rivera said he could not discuss how many State Police the state might lend to Trenton, but said more officers could arrive in the capital city as soon as next week.
“We’re putting together a plan now for intelligence-led policing to saturate grids where we have determined to have the most spike in violence,” he said. “We’re working out the logistics right now and I’m hoping to have more State Police here as early as next week.”
For 20 hours on Tuesday into early Wednesday, State Police were among several agencies that participated in a task force with city cops, resulting in 12 arrests on charges ranging from outstanding warrants to weapons offenses.
As with the State Police enforcement, Rivera said he could not go into more details on the precinct reopenings or a revised policing plan Mayor Tony Mack has alluded to in the past two weeks, but said more information would be revealed Friday.
Officials will reopen the West precinct, located at Hermitage Avenue and Artisan Street, at 11 a.m. and the East precinct, at Greenwood and Cuyler avenues, at 1 p.m. and hand out toys to kids from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at each building.
“We understand manpower is low, but when I spoke to people in the community and told them it was opening back up, they were absolutely thrilled,” said Councilwoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, who announced the precinct reopening at a council news conference on city violence last week.
Rivera did not have details on the cost of reopening the precincts, but said they were within his department’s $32 million budget.
The two precincts, built in 2006 under then-Police Director Joseph Santiago at a combined cost of more than $5 million, have sat empty for the past two years, unused save for the occasional community meeting. In 2008, the two substations were closed overnight as the police department tried to curb spending. As the city grappled anew with budget cuts and a multimillion dollar deficit in 2010, both were completely shut down.
Rivera said he’s been interested in reopening and restaffing the two stations since being named police director in March.
“I saw we had two precincts there, two brand new precincts as far as I was concerned, two facilities strategically located in the east and the west,” he said. “I feel there’s nothing sadder than seeing an empty police station rotting away, if you will. When you’re already in a high-crime area, that’s something that just adds to the despair of the community.”
Rivera said the move would strengthen community policing and give residents and businesses a greater sense of security, especially in the West Ward, portions of which are hot spots for gun battles and drug dealing.
Some disagree, though. Councilman George Muschal, a retired police officer, said the precinct construction was a waste of money in 2006 and would continue to divert police resources.
“You’re going to take officers off the street or pay overtime to man it,” he said. “You take someone of the street, you have to turn around and pay overtime. Ain’t no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
“It’s nothing to jump up and down about,” he continued. “It’s smoke and mirrors to say we opened up police stations. It was the biggest mistake of that council’s life to build two police stations.”
In the past, Mack himself was never a fan of creating and staffing precincts in each ward, campaigning against them in 2006 during his unsuccessful mayoral run on the basis that officers would be plucked from street patrols to man desks in the precincts.
Mack seemed more open to the idea at a City Hall coat drive yesterday.
“The plan is to increase visibility in those communities and to offer increased responses,” he said.
Staff writer Alex Zdan contributed to this report.