Without bank accounts or driver's licenses, the men and women from Central and South America who came to the U.S. to work can be easy pickings for robbers.
TRENTON — For at least the past 10 years in Trenton, city Latinos have known the slang term for them used by the thieves who prey on them: “walking ATMs.”
Without bank accounts or driver’s licenses, the men and women from Central and South America who came to the U.S. to work can be easy pickings for robbers. On the streets of Chambersburg, the Wilbur section, and South Trenton these immigrants are attacked — sometimes while they’re intoxicated — and beaten and robbed of what can be hundreds of dollars. Often in the country illegally or staying on a work visa, they are afraid to go to the police, and more afraid of retaliation for reporting the crimes.
Last weekend, 18-year-old Julio Cesar Cruz was walking to his home on Rusling Avenue carrying money and groceries. He had been in the U.S. for just 45 days, and was trying to go to school near Trenton so he could get a college degree, his family said. He died when two men slammed his head into concrete while robbing him outside his house.
Julio Cesar Cruz, seen in an undated photo attached to the wall of the home on Rusling Street in Trenton outside which he was killed on Feb. 15, 2014. Authorities said last week the attack on Cruz was a violent street robbery. Such assaults are all too familiar to the city’s Latino community. Its members say it’s a combination of carrying cash and walking from place to place instead of driving that makes residents vulnerable.
“Our people don’t think like criminals do,” said Gerson Gramajo, a Guatemalan immigrant and activist who spoke at a well-attended City Hall rally for Cruz last week.
The outrage over Cruz’s killing the night of Feb. 15 brought more than 200 people to the steps of City Hall on Wednesday, where they rallied against violence targeting the city’s Latino community. Attendees held signs with messages like “It’s Now or Never We Need Justice” and “Stop Street Violence.”
“Right now, I want justice to be done,” Cruz’s brother Jose said through a translator.
“He was a person who was very responsible, he always put family first, and his main objective was to come here and study,” said Jose Antonio Cruz y Cruz, who traveled from Tennessee to Trenton to see to his brother’s affairs.
The majority of the beatings and robbings of Latino residents that are reported to police are said to be committed by black suspects. Carlos Avila Jr., a South Ward civic activist, urged the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office to treat the continued targeting of Latinos as a hate crime.
The prosecutor’s office refrained from making a sweeping statement about the request.
“It is simply too early in the investigation to tell,” prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Casey DeBlasio said in a statement.
State law sets out specific criteria for bias crimes, and so far detectives from the prosecutor’s Homicide Task Force are still sifting through all the evidence. No arrests have been made.
Police in front of a home on the first block of Rusling Street where 18-year-old Julio Cesar Cruz was beaten Saturday night. He died shortly afterward, police said. “We are always open-minded about our investigations,” DeBlasio said. “If evidence in this case supports that the suspect or suspects acted with a purpose to intimidate the victim specifically because of his or her race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, or ethnicity, we would certainly consider charging a bias crime.”
Cruz and victims of all races who have died due to street violence show the danger in the city is not limited to one group, former Mayor Douglas Palmer said at the rally.
“This isn’t an African-American problem, this isn’t a Latino problem. It’s a people problem,” Palmer said.
A large jug was passed around for donations to Cruz’s family, which is planning to take his body back to Guatemala this week. The crowd continued to grow into the evening as streetlights came on and speakers grew more fiery.
Gramajo, among them, was the only one to use the “walking ATMs” phrase. He knows the pain of being targeted for a robbery first-hand. In 2011, Gramajo was shot while struggling with two assailants on Clayton Avenue.
“When I decided to run, the guy shot me,” Gramajo said.
The bullet went into his back and out his chest, he said. Gramajo made it into a corner store a couple blocks away, where he bled until an ambulance could arrive. He said Chambersburg, which was once Italian but has become increasingly Latino, is a hotbed for robberies that go on under the noses of the police department.
“The cops don’t do anything — they show up like three hours later,” Gramajo said.
Gramajo has a green card and has been in the U.S. for 15 years. But many other Latinos living in Trenton don’t have legal documentation: They either crossed the border into the U.S. illegally or their visas have expired. They can’t get driver’s licenses, which keeps them on foot. Many don’t have bank accounts, which means the money from the paychecks they cash remains on their person as they walk the city streets.
Late Friday afternoon, business was still slow inside Antigua Bar on Whitaker Avenue. Four Latino men sat at the bar drinking Heineken beer in bottles, as Spanish music tinkled in the background and green dots from a disco ball moved about the room.
“In Trenton right now, we’re having a hard time,” said Manuel Portillo, a Guatemalan immigrant who came to the city 15 years ago and works as a home remodeler. “It’s not just the nighttime.”
Portillo said that, just last week, a woman who works in the kitchen of the bar told him she was followed by someone at 10 a.m. while she was walking and talking on her cell phone. The man slipped on the ice that was coating the sidewalks, allowing her to duck into a nearby convenience store. Still he followed her inside, Portillo said.
“And he was looking around, but he never bought anything,” Portillo said.
“Stories like that, you hear a lot of them,” he added.
Some areas are more dangerous than others, Portillo said. He and others know a three-block area around the bar can be unsafe at night.
“From here over to Clinton Avenue, after 8 o’clock, it’s not a good place to walk,” he said.
That area includes where Cruz was walking Feb. 15 when he was ambushed.
Another obstacle for Latinos is raw political power. At the rally, Avila asked how many attendees have been targeted by robbers or knew someone who was. Every hand went up.
When Avila asked how many of the people were aware there were going to be city elections this spring, about one-third of the hands rose.
Finally, Avila asked who will be participating in the voting. Not a single hand went up.
“You must get involved, because the moment you stay asleep, the moment you don’t get involved, you are not going to get justice,” Avila said.
Speakers including Deacon Benito DeJesus Torres of the Diocese of Trenton said Cruz’s death and the robberies of Latinos are all pieces of the whole picture of violence in Trenton’s neighborhoods.
“But remember one thing, this is not all about Hispanics,” Torres said. “We should all be united as one.”
Anyone with information about the Cruz murder should call the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Task Force at (609) 989-6406 or the Trenton police Confidential Tip Line at 989-3663.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
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