Officials gathered Wednesday as a new class of 41 city police officers was honored at Thursday morning a graduation ceremony.
NEWARK -- A new class of 41 city police officers was honored Thursday morning at an outdoor graduation ceremony held in the heart of the city.
The officers represent the first in what Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has promised will be a series of additions aimed at bolstering the department's ranks.
"We have been desperately waiting for you," he told the assembled new officers after taking to the podium.
The department currently employs 968 sworn officers, officials said. With a class of 50 Newark police recruits having entered the academy in September, the number could surpass 1,000 by March 2015.
MORE: 50 Newark police recruits enter academy
Baraka was joined by Police Director Eugene Venable, Police Chief Anthony Campos, members of the city's Municipal Council and other local dignitaries at the ceremony, where recruits and their families crowded into chairs underneath a tent near Springfield Avenue.
The class began as group of 51 in April. Following six months of training at the Essex County Public Safety Academy, 34 men and seven women completed the course to officially join the city police department Thursday.
Officials described the need for the graduating officers as dire. Early gains in the city's yearly battle against violent crime were lost over the summer, with officials blaming the police department's depleted ranks.
According to police documents, the city's recorded crime total as of Oct. 25 was nine percent lower than where the total stood at that same point in 2014. The city's current homicide total of 83 remains at least eight percent ahead of where the total stood at the end of October 2014, the documents indicate. The total number of shootings as of Oct. 25 was 17 percent ahead of the year-to-date total, the documents say.
To help reverse the trends, all 41 officers will be assigned to patrol duty in the most troubled corners of the city, Venable said. The new class will also be counted on to continue the process of repairing the city's relationship with those communities, he added.
"We want to change the culture and the relationship the department has with these communities so that's it's not us versus them," he said. "We don't want you be looked at as warriors, but as guardians of safety."
Anthony Ambrose, Essex County Chief of Detectives, echoed the sentiment, calling the additions to the police force a "step in the right direction."
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report alleging widespread abuse of citizens' civil rights and disproportionate targeting of African-Americans.
The agency is currently in the process of choosing a monitor that will oversee a range of reforms to its disciplinary system, training and other procedures -- making Newark the 13th city in the country to operate with a federal watchdog.
Mayor Baraka later advised the newly-minted officers that it's only with their help that the police department will move beyond the need for a federal federal oversight.
"We don't need a federal monitor," he said. "With you, we the city can move forward with a whole new police culture."
Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.