From today's Star Ledger.
Corzine budget adds funds to Operation CeaseFire
For 10 months, the organizers of Operation CeaseFire have been preaching against gun violence in Newark and Irvington but have been limited by a shoestring budget. Now, they may have hit the jackpot.
Gov. Jon Corzine wants to give them $750,000 to redouble their efforts in the two cities and move into three more bullet-riddled towns: Trenton, Camden and Jersey City.
Corzine included the money in his fiscal 2007 budget proposal unveiled yesterday.
"This is great news," said Michael Wagers, director of the Police Institute at Rutgers-Newark and the lead organizer of CeaseFire. "We'll take everything we can because the folks on the street - police officers and outreach workers - are doing a tremendous job on a tight budget."
Operation CeaseFire, modeled after a program that has been partly responsible for a historic drop in killings in Chicago, began last May in a 2-square-mile area that includes some of New Jersey's most violent street crime. The program meshes police crackdowns, social services and outreach by ex-cons and former gang members, who try to talk people out of retaliatory attacks. Since May, non-fatal shootings have dropped, but homicides - which CeaseFire does not target - are up.
Now Wagers hopes to include homicides in his program, and expand it into the other three cities by the end of the year, he said.
"This money will get us fired up," he said.
Contributed by Jonathan Schuppe