The driving force behind the recent surge in violence in Newark is the illegal drug trade, said the city's police director.
NEWARK -- The driving force behind the recent surge in violence that's helped push the city's homicide total past the 2014 tally is the illegal drug trade, said the city's police director.
In an interview last week about a string of killings over the last weekend of November that claimed the lives of five people, Newark Police Director Eugene Venable pointed to drugs as a common thread.
It's currently unclear how, if at all, the killings are related. While declining to elaborate on the details of the incidents, Venable said that much of the violence is being caused by gang members in the city's central and south wards.
"Some of the people involved may be classified as members, but their gang associations are not causing this," he said. "They're happening because of individual and drug-related disputes over narcotics territory."
Newark recorded 111 homicides in 2013, before the annual tally declined in 2014 to 93. But the Monday fatal shooting of Darel "Creep" Evans, who was featured in a Sundance Channel documentary series set in Newark, ensured that the slide will not continue. With Evans's death, the homicide count now stands at 94.
"We're definitely not satisfied," Venable said in an interview at the police department's Clinton Avenue headquarters. "Our goal is to reduce these homicides by 50 percent, and we're definitely not happy because we haven't done that."
One of the most recent homicides occurred less than a block from the Clinton Avenue precinct. On November 28, Najee Daniels, 22, was shot multiple times on a street corner near the intersection of Bergen Street and Clinton Avenue before dying at University Hospital.
Last year, Newark experienced a similar wave of bloodshed, as four people were killed and at least eight others wounded over the long Thanksgiving weekend. In the aftermath, Mayor Ras Baraka to declared a "state of emergency" to combat the violence.
Asked why the most recent rash of homicides and shootings did not prompt a similar announcement, Venable said that that the 2014 declaration was intended as a call for aid and partnerships with other state and local law enforcement agencies.
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Lack of partnerships is no longer an issue, the director said. "We've established partnerships with the state and local agencies, and we're not having as dire of a problem with the staffing," he said.
Authorities insist that the strategies are showing some success, pointing to reductions in non-violent crime. Mayor Ras Baraka pointed to incremental changes in the police department and policing strategies as signs the city's crime reduction efforts are working.
"We recently hired additional Newark Police officers and all of these recruits are out on the streets," he said. "We are developing a (civilian review board) and have witnessed incremental progress in crime reduction through our combined efforts with other law enforcement agencies. While we are by no means satisfied with the homicide rate or the number of shootings that have occurred, we continue to find innovative ways to address crime and to empower our citizens once again."
But gun violence continues to plague the city, according to police department statistics.
The most recent tally indicates the city could end 2015 with a significant bump in shooting incidents. As of Nov. 29, 379 people had been injured by gunfire in the city in 2015, a 16 percent increase over where the tally stood at the same point last year.
Drawing a conclusion from the apparent increases may prove difficult, said Todd Clear, criminology professor and provost at Rutgers University-Newark.
"It's problematic trying to make too much out of a year-to-year fluctuations," Clear said. "You want to look at longer term patters, and in the long term, Newark's crime rates have been stable. But, stable is not the same thing as a decrease."
Recent busts of large-scale drug operations in and around Newark have helped curb some of the violence, Venable said. But once dismantled, those operations are quickly replaced, he added.
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"There (are) always people looking to take their place," he said. "What we have to do as a police department is get the small guys off the street quickly. Because when these shootings happen, they happen because of street-level crimes."
To prevent more shooting injuries and deaths, police said they have been pursuing a myriad of strategies, including arresting known gang members with warrants and cracking down on quality-of-life offenses and street-level narcotics sales.
The strategies were in place before the surge in homicides, and Venable said the police department expects to continue them through the close of the year.
But, cutting the annual homicide tally in half is "an ambitious goal," Clear said. "Cities don't have sustained changes like that," he said.
Given the violence prevention programs in place and the gains made by the police department in reducing non-violent crimes, a "meaningful drop" of 20 percent is within reach, he added.
"Public safety is not just cops acting alone," he said. "It has to be part of a initiative that (includes) groups in the public sector, the private sector, police, basically everyone."
Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
