New Mini-Precinct Opens in West Ward Friday

Last month, protesters that included West Ward Councilman Ron Rice rallied on South Orange Avenue, demanding a greater police presence in a neighborhood near the South Orange border plagued by crime.

This month, those protesters got their wish.

“I’ve had my criticisms but when gratitude needs to be given out, I’m just as plentiful when that needs to be done,” Rice said Friday at the opening of a police “mini-precinct” located on the corner with Columbia Avenue.

“Promises made, promises kept,” Rice added.

The storefront at 760 South Orange Ave. will be manned by a minimum of two officers 16 hours a day from Monday to Friday and eight hours a day Saturday and Sunday, said Samuel DeMaio, director of the Newark Police Department. On weekends, the mini-precinct will be staffed from 11 am to 7 pm “for now,” DeMaio said, adding the weekend hours may expand.

Mini-precincts throughout the city were  closed or scaled back after 150 police were laid off in 2010. This year, however, funds to hire about 50 additional police officers, and possibly more, have been written into the municipal budget, Mayor Cory Booker announced during his State of the City address early this month. There are also police substations in the South and North wards. 

The mini-precinct opened Friday, the third in the West Ward,  will serve as a base for foot patrols as well as car-based Newark police and Essex County Sheriff’s officers, who monitor South Orange Avenue and other county roads. The mini-precinct provides those officers with a place to do paperwork,  saving them a trip to the main precinct on Irvine Turner Boulevard and speeding their return to the field, DeMaio said.

In addition, neighborhood residents won’t have to travel as far to meet with police in person and can also use the space for community meetings.

 “We’re going to make it a great facility and we’re going to make sure it’s staffed,” said Chief Sheilah Coley,  who began her career with the department a quarter-century ago as a patrol officer in the neighborhood.

Juliet Grant, of the Isabella Avenue Block Association, welcomed the opening Friday.

“It’s bad around here,” she said.  “There’s killings, drug sales. People are afraid to come out of their house after 4 o’clock in the afternoon.”

Rice said more changes will be coming to the neigborhood. Across the street and a block to the west of the new mini-precinct is a dilapidated home that will soon be refurbished and converted into a family development center, Rice said. Along with fighting crime, Rice said Friday it was also important to support families so that young people don't become criminals in the first place.