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Mayor Sharpe James, responding to mounting criticism after eight killings here since Thanksgiving, convened an anti-violence summit on Thursday and announced a plan to add 80 police officers and seven neighborhood precincts in 2005. He said the new precincts, along with four current ones, would encompass not just police officers but also city workers from the Fire Department, Health Department and other city agencies. "We will bring services to the neighborhoods," Mr. James said at the three-hour meeting at Police Headquarters on Washington Street. "We want the police, the city and community to work together." Newark's police director, Anthony Ambrose, said that it would cost the city about $8 million to hire and train the officers over the next six months. He added that the locations and costs of the new station houses had not been determined. The mayor said that money for the plan would come out of the 2005 city budget. The extra police presence, he said, had been in the works for months and was not a response to the recent violence. So far this year in Newark, a city of 270,000, there have been 85 murders, including a killing at the Essex County jail. Forty-five of them are unsolved. There were 83 murders in 2003; 68 in 2002. [more]

A dream realized in Newark [more]
One dead, five injured in Christmas shootings in Newark
DC Homicide Rate Lowest In 18 Years [more